When Lauren of Oklahoma signed on to CatholicMatch in August of 2018, she did so at the insistence of a good friend. Her friend had seen an ad for CatholicMatch in the back of a church bulletin and knew that Lauren wasn’t meeting any Catholics in her local area.
She didn't respond to every message, but his made the cut!
Begrudgingly, Lauren, who had a previous marriage annulled and wasn’t a fan of her experiences on a previous dating site, agreed to try CatholicMatch “for ONE month and ONE month only.” Towards the end of that month, she and the friend got together again and decided which messages she should respond to. Fortunately for Jason, his message was one of the lucky few!
Jason, who was in Arkansas, had spent a considerably longer time on CatholicMatch, having first signed on around 2012. By the time he came across Lauren’s profile after expanding his search radius, he was getting a little jaded by the process. Like Lauren, there were few Catholics in his home state. Both Lauren and Jason have a background in sales, hers being in the medical field and his being in the construction supply industry, but that wasn’t what they first noticed about the other’s profiles.
They wanted all of the same things!
Jason, who was 38 at the time they met, and had traveled extensively for his job for years, was surprised to find a beautiful woman around his age “with the same values,” especially the desire to settle down and to have a family. Lauren was first struck by his profile pictures, which largely showed him fishing or doing other activities outdoors. She has one of them, “my favorite picture of him,” on her phone to this day. She liked that he too emphasized the importance of family and that his first message, as well as the ones that followed, was “not aggressive, but he was definitely interested and pursuing me.”
They had a great first date...
After messaging for several weeks, they talked on the phone in early October. Several weeks after that, he drove her way to take her on their first date. Lauren recalled that though they lived four and a half hours apart, because of a business trip, he ended up driving over six hours for that first meeting! She was impressed with his effort right away. For her part, she was “so nervous” and tried on no less than seven outfits beforehand.
They went out for a meal at the restaurant that would eventually cater their wedding reception and talked freely for several hours. Lauren was impressed by two things on that date; first, Jason’s “beautiful blue eyes,” and secondly, that he prayed before dinner at the restaurant, the first time any man had done that on a date with her. For his part, Jason found that “she was just really easy to talk to, and she had a beautiful smile.” Both were grateful to find that they shared core values, and both felt, even on their very first date, that they could be themselves with each other.
When asked what obstacles they encountered during their relationship, Lauren responded “early on, it was the distance...that’s an investment of your time, especially when you’re wanting to still have a family and that window’s getting more narrow. But [at first, while long distance] you don’t know them on a Tuesday evening, you only know what they’re like on a fancy date on a Friday and Saturday.”
Jason advised, “People that are looking for others, they need to make sure that their values really line up. I would say, politics is huge, that’s very sensitive, but finding someone of the same religion, especially if you grew up in a family being Catholic, is so important.”
Then, they started moving toward marriage!
Though the self-proclaimed “slow mover” Jason waited around seven months before “getting serious” in regards to their future and meeting her family, the couple dated exclusively essentially after that first date. Towards the end of 2020, after he had moved to Oklahoma and after, as Lauren joked, “I may have been pressuring him,” Jason bought an engagement ring. But, weather ruined his original plan of proposing during a trip to his family’s cabin in the woods, and several other alternate ideas didn’t pan out either, and then of course COVID was in the mix.
Finally, in January of 2021, he decided one night that the time had come. Lauren, an accomplished pianist, was playing a song on the piano, and turned around at the end of the song to find Jason down on one knee, ring in hand.
They're now enjoying married life...
The couple was married in July of 2021 and they reflected together on their first few months of married life. Lauren responded immediately, “I’m glad I’m doing [marriage] with him. He is my best friend. You learn your strengths and weaknesses through your partner..The best way of growing is with another person.” Jason noted, “Lauren helps me in a lot of different ways. She’s kind of the better side of me, that really makes me better as a person. She makes me better in a way I never needed to be before…[Marriage] is a great thing. It takes effort, it takes work.” Both agree that “being of the same faith makes all the difference.”
Their words of advice for other CatholicMatch users:
When asked what words of advice they have for someone considering online dating, Lauren quipped, “Try it for a month!” Jason advised, “Try to find your best friend. Spend time choosing current pictures for your profile. Keep your profile simple, be to the point, ‘say here’s what I’m looking for'."
Lauren encouraged having a wingman (or woman), like she herself did, “someone who knows and loves you who can see connection points.” Furthermore, “listen to your family, they can see things others can’t see.”
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