Are you ready to start dating but don’t know where to start? With COVID-19, many of our love lives have come to a halt. We can’t go out to meet people, whether it be on a Saturday night out in Aggieville or in class. You’ve likely reverted to social media and dating apps like Tinder and Bumble. With just a couple of taps and swipes, the ability to meet new people is at your fingertips.
Now I know Tinder has a bad rap. The hookup culture has taken over for sure. But with the right intentions, you might be lucky enough to find someone you talk to for more than just a week.
After asking around, I found two couples that beat the odds and were lucky enough to get a relationship out of it.
Angel and Hunter
Angel Tranburesh, sophomore in business administration pre-law, matched with her boyfriend Hunter Layfield on Tinder. Tranburesh and Layfield have been together for a little over five months, but didn’t meet until three months after matching.
“Hunter said, ‘Hey cutie’ and I said, ‘Hey there (:,’” Tranburesh said.The two hit it off from there. Tranburesh has her friends to thank for convincing her to download the app.
“He says he fell head over heels for me and I was definitely interested because of his bio,” said Tranburesh. “It said something about youth ministry I can’t remember.”
Layfield is a member of the military, so it was hard for them to meet right away.
“The distance at the very beginning and not being able to meet him right away was hard,” Tranburesh said.
With the help of a bible verse, Tranburesh knew Layfield was the one.
“I read verses in the Bible: 1 Corinthians 13:4-7,” she said. “The verse says the word ‘love’ in it multiple times, and I replaced that word with his name and he was all of those things. For example, the verse starts with ‘love is patient, love is kind,’ and Hunter is patient and he is kind. On May 11, it occurred to me that he was not only a man of God but also a man who will protect my heart and choose me first, (well after faith of course) every single time.”
Anonymous Couple
This couple wants to remain anonymous, but they have been together for a little over two years.
“I think we matched in March and we didn’t go on a first date until June,” she said.
The pair deleted the app after meeting each other and can’t remember what their first messages were to each other.
“It was probably like a pick up line based on my photos that I had on there,” she said. “I had some modeling photos so I’m sure he said something along the lines of those.”
For their first date, he drove up to Kansas City from Fort Riley to see her where?
From the very beginning, she knew there was something special about him.
“He was the only person I gave my Snapchat to,” she said. “He was the only one I wanted to text or Snapchat. Everyone else I kept kind of exclusively on the app. So once I kept talking to him I was like ‘Okay I think he’s kinda cool,’ so I gave out personal information which I was not big into.”
Telling your family you met your significant other on a dating app may not go over so well. This couple decided to spare that awkward conversation.
“Online dating is interesting,” she said. “I feel like there might be more of a stigma on Tinder than Bumble. For grandma’s sake we tell them that we met in Aggieville. It kinda depends on who we’re talking to. We’re open about it to our good friends and my favorite thing is that he calls me Tinderella.”
With two years under their belt, the couple had time to work through difficulties at the beginning. The boyfriend was in the military, so the two went seven months without seeing each other after only dating for four months.
“Our biggest thing was just getting through deployment,” she said. “We decided that we really liked each other and ended up falling in love so we’re like ‘yeah we wanna pursue this.’”
Like many others, this now-taken woman swiped on hundreds of people and ended up with several matches.
“It felt really weird. It wasn’t organic,” she said. “It wasn’t natural. It was like “eww I don’t like this. I would say that there’s definitely a stigma around it, but if you use the app for the right reasons then there’s no shame in it at all.”
If these couples have given you a new hope to find “the one,” grab your phone and swipe away!
