Just a few weeks after accepting my software development job - and having less time to organically meet people in person - I decided to take a crack at online dating in the Catholic world. My experiences with dating apps in the past weren’t super great, and I’d actually grown to hate them; preferring to meet women the old-fashioned way. But after reading a book about Christian dating by Fr. Thomas Morrow, I started looking for a new approach to finding someone who shared my values and that I could bond with in an authentic way.

Nonetheless, I was still a bit fearful of letting a new social media platform consume too much of my time and focus after spending several years working hard to root such distractions out of my life, especially with starting my first full-time job out of college. So I went into it with some rules for myself: ・Don’t download the app on your phone and message women all day long only check it on your computer at home ・Limit checking messages to the weekends ・When you do meet someone, minimize messaging back and forth and be intentional about video calling and setting up an initial date, if you don’t have time for that - you probably shouldn’t be on at all

These rules I made for myself turned out to be the ideal recipe to encounter the perfect woman for me. Angela graciously took up my offer on some video calls and after some interesting conversations about what we each envision for our future, I asked her if I could meet her for a date. Surprisingly, she didn’t find it too grand of a gesture that I was going to drive 8 hours to meet her in Toronto from my home in Adams County Pennsylvania - but she had one requirement: that I call her mother in the Philippines for permission. This request was one of many of the first signs that she was exactly the kind of woman I was looking for.

Angela was raised with and has sought to honour the traditional Filipino values of dating and courtship—emphasizing intentional pursuit, family involvement from the outset, and dating with the purpose of Christian marriage. This approach presented challenges, particularly after relocating to Canada. However, even in environments where these values were less common, Angela remained committed to her principles, allowing her standards for a romantic partner to evolve thoughtfully over time.

Chase, growing up in the United States, experienced a different path but nonetheless arrived in the same place. Divorce and family division surrounded him as he grew up, and in his youth he had little-to-no respect for marriage. In the midst of his conversion; however, Chase experienced a change of heart and fell in love with the Christian values of marriage, particularly in the Catholic tradition. By the age of 23, he found himself feeling more like a sojourner in his own community when it came to his moral values because so much of his perspective had changed. When he met Angela, it was a breath of fresh air.