Adreanna Pulliam didn’t expect to laugh out loud on a Christian dating app, but last summer, Upward kept surprising her. She had signed up for the platform knowing it would be different from the secular, endlessly swipeable world of Tinder and Hinge. She was prepared to come across men who identified as hyperconservative, men who wore their politics like a cross around their necks. But even her imagination had limits. So when she swiped on a guy’s profile that listed “a progressive donkey or a ‘Trump is King’ elephant” as his relationship deal-breaker, she was genuinely shocked. “I hadn’t expected to see a moderate libertarian” on the app, she says. It was a strange, unexpected kind of diversity. And then it only got more bizarre from there. There was the guy advertising his Snapchat with the username “Yaboi Blaze reallysexgod,” which felt less like an invitation and more like a dare. Another dater, for reasons she still can’t fathom, included a photo of himself at a funeral, standing in front of a poster-size image of the deceased. It wasn’t just odd; it was the kind of odd that makes you stop swiping and just stare at your phone for a moment. Pulliam was apprehensive about the prospects, but she wanted to see how Upward, one of the lesser-known apps in Match Group’s sprawling portfolio of dating platforms, was different from the mainstream options she had already grown tired of. She hadn’t had much luck with either Hinge or Tinder, and she was curious whether a dating app with faith at its center would somehow feel more serious, more grounded, more real. Instead, many of the profiles she encountered on Upward, she tells WIRED, were “MAGA types of men” who “fit more of that red-pill, trad wife, conservative values” category of dater. It was less a refuge from the culture war and more a particular battlefield in it.
Pulliam, a 25-year-old opera singer in Bloomington, Indiana, for whom marriage has always been “the end goal,” is exactly the kind of person Upward is trying to appeal to since relaunching last month. She is young, family-oriented, and unashamed to say that she wants a partner for life. She grew up in faith, and while she doesn’t fit neatly into any political box, she understands why someone might look for love in a space that promises shared values. But her experience on Hinge and Tinder left her feeling like a relic. There were men who seemed allergic to commitment, men who treated a first date like an interview for a situationship, and men who wanted to debate the meaning of “traditional values” before they even asked about her day. On Upward, at least the cards were on the table. Some of those cards were bizarre, and some were unsettlingly political, but they were honest. Pulliam is not naive. She knows that a dating app can’t guarantee a marriage, no matter how many faith statements or marriage timelines it adds. But she also knows that the alternative — the endless loop of casual dating and ambiguity — hasn’t been working for her. She wants a home, a partner, a shared life. She wants someone who can laugh at a strange profile but still take love seriously. And she is not alone. Upward’s relaunch was redesigned around two key data points from Match Group’s 2026 Singles in America study: 72 percent of Gen Zs want to get married, and a quarter of singles aged 18 to 34 “identify with a combination of traditional values around family, faith, and community,” a news release about the survey noted. Those numbers suggest that Pulliam is not some nostalgic outlier. She is part of a generation that, for all its reputation for hookup culture and digital detachment, still dreams of weddings, mortgages, and family dinners.
The pivot away from an app exclusively for Christian daters was about opening up its doors for people “who share those same goals, but may not lead with a faith-first mindset,” says Lauren DeFord, director of brand marketing at Match, of the app’s new focus on Gen Z singles. In other words, Upward is no longer just for Christians who want to meet other Christians. It is for anyone who wants a serious relationship and believes in something — whether that something is God, family, community, or simply the idea of marriage itself. That is a subtle but significant shift. It acknowledges that the desire for marriage is broader than the desire for organized religion, and that many young people are searching for stability in a world that feels increasingly unstable. It also reflects a growing trend in the dating industry: apps are no longer content to be infinite games of swiping; they want to position themselves as matchmakers for people with intentional goals. Upward still functions like Tinder in many ways. You can swipe left or right on profiles, and users are encouraged to include a Faith Statement on their page, explaining what they value most about their relationship to God. But the new features go further. Chivalry Mode, which, if you’re familiar with how Bumble used to operate, persuades men to message first, is a deliberate nod to old-fashioned courtship. Marriage Timeline lets daters share when they hope to get married with potential suitors, essentially putting a clock on the whole process. It’s a feature that would have felt absurd on Tinder a decade ago, but now it feels almost necessary. Gen Z has grown tired of being strung along. They want to know, early on, whether the person across the table is looking for a spouse or just a distraction.
Upward’s expansion is representative of the ongoing change in the dating market. Dwindling engagement and the introduction of AI have pushed companies to reassess user growth. For some, that means abandoning their original mission. It’s no longer enough to be a place where people can browse profiles; apps need to promise outcomes. They need to sell hope, and they need to sell it in a way that feels tailored to the anxieties of the moment. For Upward, that means leaning into traditional values — but not too hard. The app is trying to straddle a line between being a Christian dating platform and being a general-purpose relationship app for people who are serious about marriage. That balancing act is tricky. On one hand, faith is still central to the brand. On the other, the relaunch is explicitly designed to attract people who may not lead with a faith-first mindset. That could be a brilliant strategy, or it could be a recipe for confusion. Pulliam, for her part, has noticed the tension. Many of the men she encountered on Upward seemed less interested in faith than in politics. The profile with the “progressive donkey or a ‘Trump is King’ elephant” deal-breaker was a perfect example. It wasn’t about faith at all. It was about ideology, and it was presented as a hard boundary. That kind of polarization is becoming increasingly common in online dating, where people use profiles to filter out anyone who doesn’t share their worldview. For a Christian dating app, that can be both a strength and a weakness. It attracts people who want shared values, but it also risks turning the search for love into a search for a political ally.
For users like Pulliam, the relaunch raises a deeper question: Is Upward genuinely broadening its table, or is it simply rebranding the same exclusive culture in more marketable terms? There is no easy answer. On one hand, opening the app to people who share traditional goals but not necessarily a traditional faith could make it more inclusive. It could create space for someone who believes in marriage, community, and family but is still figuring out what they believe about God. On the other hand, the language of “traditional values” is often coded, and it can feel like a dog whistle for a particular kind of conservatism. Pulliam’s experience suggests that the app, at least in its current iteration, is still largely populated by men who fit the “MAGA types” category she described. That doesn’t mean Upward can’t evolve, but it does mean the relaunch may be more about marketing than about any fundamental change in the user base. The broader dating market is also changing. AI is beginning to play a larger role in how apps match people, and companies like Match Group are experimenting with new ways to keep users engaged. But the underlying problem remains the same: dating apps are terrible at being honest about the fact that they want users to keep coming back, while users want to delete the app forever after finding love. Upward’s new features, from Chivalry Mode to Marriage Timeline, are attempts to bridge that gap. They are small gestures toward intentionality, digital nods to the idea that courtship should lead somewhere. But they can’t solve the fundamental messiness of human connection. They can’t guarantee that someone’s profile is accurate, or that their intentions are pure, or that a first date will lead to a second.
Pulliam is still single, still hopeful, and still willing to give the app a chance. She has a voice trained to fill a concert hall, but she has a soft spot for quiet, old-fashioned romance. She wants a partner with whom she can build a life, share a home, and maybe raise children. She also wants someone who can laugh at a weird profile and still take love seriously. Upward’s new features might help; they might just as easily create more noise. But in a world where so many young people feel isolated and tired of swiping, an app that says, “We believe in marriage, and here’s your timeline,” has a certain appeal. Whether it actually works depends on whether the people on it are truly looking for the same thing. The profiles Pulliam encountered were a mixed bag, to say the least. There were the hyperconservative men, the moderate libertarian who surprised her, the guy with the ridiculous Snapchat username, and the man at the funeral. None of them were quite what she expected, and that, perhaps, is the most human thing about the whole experience. We are all walking contradictions, looking for love in strange places. Upward is betting that Gen Z’s desire for marriage is real enough to build a business on. Pulliam is betting that somewhere in that strange, messy crowd of profiles, there might be someone worth saying yes to.
