Want a guy who opens the car door and has a five-year plan for the wedding? There’s an app setting for that now.
Match Group recently relaunched Upward, a Christian dating app that’s now welcoming anyone looking for marriage and a little old-fashioned romance. Its new Chivalry Mode encourages men to message first, leaving women to reply or unmatch. There’s also Marriage Timeline, where users can share how soon they’d like to get married and find people with similar plans. So you can discuss wedding expectations before you’ve even gone on a first date.
Dating apps have changed their minds about who should make the first move. Bumble originally required women to message first when it launched in 2014, but eased that rule in 2024 after its CEO said some women found the expectation exhausting. Upward is now encouraging men to initiate conversations, with a special setting for people who prefer it that way.
Match Group is also betting that Gen Z is ready to get married.
‘Chivalry Mode’ Is the Latest Dating App Feature, and It’s Turning Modern Dating Upside Down
According to Match Group’s 2026 Singles in America research, 72% of Gen Z respondents want to get married. Upward has embraced the idea with an Americana-inspired advertising campaign called “Wanted for Life,” featuring lines like “Known to change a tire, not his feelings for you.” Someone actually got paid to write that.
Daniel Cox, director of the Survey Center on American Life, told WIRED that Gen Z’s age could help explain the high percentage. Younger adults are less likely to have married already, so their answers aren’t necessarily evidence of some renewed enthusiasm for traditional marriage. Cox also believes the interest in old-fashioned courtship comes from frustration with modern dating and its lack of established expectations. “People are wanting something over nothing,” he said.
And marriage hasn’t exactly been climbing everyone’s priority list. In a 2023 Pew Research survey, just 23% of American adults said being married was extremely or very important to having a fulfilling life. Close friendships came in at 61%. The percentage of high school seniors who expected to get married someday also fell from 80% in 1993 to 67% in 2023.
As for the people actually using Upward, the experience hasn’t been great for everyone.
Tauti, a California social work student, lasted less than 48 hours before getting fed up with the conservative men she encountered. “I did not know me being Christian and leaning liberal was a big ask,” she said on TikTok. Other users have criticized the decision to welcome non-Christian singles, arguing that the app is abandoning its original purpose.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting marriage or preferring traditional courtship. But an app offering a marriage timeline still doesn’t mean the person on the other end of the conversation is someone you’d want to marry.
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