A Dating App Is Offering ‘Chivalry Mode’ and ‘Marriage Timeline’ to Get Gen Z Married

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Save this storySave this storyWhen Adreanna Pulliam signed up for the Christian dating app Upward over the summer, she was prepared to come across men who identified as hyperconservative.

当 Adreanna Pulliam 今年夏天注册基督教约会应用 Upward 时，她已做好准备会遇到那些自认为是极端保守派的男性。

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 shocked. “I hadn’t expected to see a moderate libertarian” on the app, she says.

因此，当她刷到一个男性的个人资料，上面写着“进步派驴党或‘特朗普为王’象党”作为其择偶底线时，她感到非常震惊。她说：“我没料到会在这个应用上看到一个温和的自由意志主义者。”

It only got more bizarre from there. There was the guy advertising his Snapchat with the username “Yaboi Blaze reallysexgod.” Another dater, for reasons she still can’t fathom, included a photo of him at a funeral, standing in front of a poster-size image of the deceased.

情况变得更加离谱。有人用“Yaboi Blaze reallysexgod”这样的用户名来宣传自己的 Snapchat。还有一位约会对象，出于她至今无法理解的原因，放了一张自己在葬礼上的照片，背景是死者的一张海报大小的照片。

While Pulliam was apprehensive about the prospects, she wanted to see how different Upward, one of the lesser-known apps in Match Group’s sprawling portfolio of dating platforms, was from Hinge and Tinder. She hadn’t had much luck with either of them.

尽管 Pulliam 对前景感到担忧，但她还是想看看 Match Group 庞大约会平台组合中知名度较低的应用 Upward 与 Hinge 和 Tinder 有何不同。她在后两者上并没有什么好运气。

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.

她告诉《连线》杂志，她在 Upward 上遇到的大多数个人资料都是“MAGA（让美国再次伟大）类型的男性”，他们“更符合那种红丸、传统妻子、保守价值观”的约会者类别。

A 25-year-old opera singer in Bloomington, Indiana, for whom marriage has always been “the end goal,” Pulliam is the kind of person Upward is trying to appeal to since relaunching last month.

Pulliam 是一位居住在印第安纳州布卢明顿的 25 岁歌剧演员，婚姻一直是她的“终极目标”。她正是 Upward 自上个月重新发布以来试图吸引的那类用户。

The 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.

此次重新发布是围绕 Match Group《2026 年美国单身人士研究》中的两个关键数据点进行重新设计的：调查新闻稿指出，72% 的 Z 世代想要结婚，而 18 至 34 岁的单身人士中有四分之一“认同家庭、信仰和社区的传统价值观组合”。

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.

Match 品牌营销总监 Lauren DeFord 在谈到该应用对 Z 世代单身人士的新关注时表示，从专门针对基督徒的约会应用转型，是为了向那些“拥有相同目标，但可能并非以信仰为先”的人敞开大门。

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.

Upward 的扩张代表了约会市场正在发生的变化。参与度的下降和人工智能的引入促使各公司重新评估用户增长。对一些公司来说，这意味着放弃最初的使命。

Upward, which runs on a tiered subscription, works similarly to Tinder. 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.

Upward 采用分级订阅模式，其运作方式与 Tinder 类似。你可以向左或向右滑动个人资料，用户被鼓励在页面上包含一份“信仰声明”，解释他们最看重与上帝关系的哪些方面。

Among its new features are Chivalry Mode, which, if you’re familiar with how Bumble used to operate, persuades men to message first, and Marriage Timeline, which lets daters share when they hope to get married with potential suitors.

其新功能包括“骑士模式”（如果你熟悉 Bumble 过去的运作方式，该模式会引导男性先发送消息）和“婚姻时间表”（让约会者与潜在对象分享他们希望结婚的时间）。

But while a marriage-focused app like Upward may be tapping into a genuine desire for commitment, that doesn’t mean young people are returning to traditional relationship norms en masse, says Daniel Cox, author of Generation Uncoupled: America’s New Gender Divide and the Crisis of Human Connection. In fact, the opposite is happening.

但《脱钩的一代：美国新的性别鸿沟与人类联系危机》一书的作者丹尼尔·考克斯（Daniel Cox）表示，虽然像 Upward 这样以婚姻为导向的应用可能触及了人们对承诺的真实渴望，但这并不意味着年轻人正在大规模回归传统的恋爱规范。事实上，情况恰恰相反。

In his book, Cox argues that Gen Z is entering adulthood with a less clear sense of their “relational priorities,” and a decline in social and civic life has given rise to a “hyperindividualistic culture” that doesn’t always prioritize things like marriage.

考克斯在书中指出，Z 世代在进入成年期时，对“关系优先事项”的认知不够清晰，社会和公民生活的衰落催生了一种“超个人主义文化”，这种文化并不总是将婚姻等事物放在首位。

As a result, fewer Gen Zs are coupling up today. An American Institute for Boys and Men survey found that 44 percent of Gen Z men have had no relationship experience at all during their teen years, double the rate for older men. “This movement makes it a lot harder to … want to sacrifice and to be there for someone,” he says.

因此，今天结成伴侣的 Z 世代越来越少。美国男孩和男性研究所的一项调查发现，44% 的 Z 世代男性在青少年时期没有任何恋爱经历，这一比例是年长男性的两倍。他说：“这种趋势使得人们更难……想要去牺牲并陪伴某人。”

Upward’s relaunch framed the app as the “home of modern courtship,” including video testimonials of singles who’d found love on the app. But aesthetically, there wasn’t anything “modern” about its promotional rollout.

Upward 的重新发布将该应用定位为“现代求爱之家”，其中包括在应用中找到真爱的单身人士的视频感言。但在美学上，其宣传推广并没有任何“现代”之处。

In one video, newly married Zach donned a cowboy hat and blue jeans, doing all the things men should presumably do for their significant others: gift them flowers, carry her through a meadow, open the car door. A bold text overlay on the video read “chivalrymaxxing.”

在一段视频中，新婚的扎克戴着牛仔帽，穿着蓝色牛仔裤，做着人们认为男性应该为另一半做的一切：送花、抱着她在草地上走、开车门。视频上覆盖的粗体文字写着“骑士精神最大化”。

According to the company, branding was inspired by an “Americana” theme, and its “Wanted: For Life” campaign draws on Western-style imagery.

据该公司称，品牌推广灵感来源于“美国风情”主题，其“通缉：终身伴侣”活动借鉴了西部风格的意象。

Cox, who is the director of the Survey Center on American Life, is convinced that the trad trend is “a reaction to the lack of cultural norms around courtship. People are wanting something over nothing,” he says, adding that daters are desperate for “a script” with direction and defined roles, given how nontraditional approaches to partnership, such as polyamory and relationship anarchy, are increasing among young people.

美国生活调查中心主任考克斯确信，这种传统趋势是“对求爱文化规范缺失的一种反应。人们宁愿要点什么，也不愿什么都没有，”他说。他补充道，鉴于多角恋和关系无政府主义等非传统伴侣关系在年轻人中日益增多，约会者迫切需要一份带有方向和明确角色的“剧本”。

“And something that’s nice about the trad script is it’s very clear. Though I don’t think it’s close to ideal for a lot of young people.”

“传统剧本的好处在于它非常清晰。尽管我认为这对许多年轻人来说并不理想。”

A 2023 Pew Research survey found that only 23 percent of adults considered being married “extremely” or “very important” to living a fulfilling life, compared with 61 percent who said the same about having close friends.

皮尤研究中心 2023 年的一项调查发现，只有 23% 的成年人认为结婚对过上充实的生活“极其”或“非常”重要，而 61% 的人认为拥有亲密朋友同样重要。

In the last 30 years, the percentage of high school seniors who said they were likely to marry someday had fallen from 80 percent in 1993 to 67 percent in 2023, according to Pew. The decline was driven mostly by changing views among young women who, despite the portion of married adults slightly increasing from 50 percent to 51 percent between 2019 to 2023, remain more likely than men to be unpartnered.

据皮尤研究中心统计，在过去 30 年里，表示未来可能会结婚的高中生比例从 1993 年的 80% 下降到了 2023 年的 67%。这种下降主要是由于年轻女性观念的改变所致，尽管 2019 年至 2023 年间已婚成年人的比例从 50% 小幅上升至 51%，但女性仍比男性更有可能处于单身状态。

The trend is likely to continue in that direction. “There’s increasingly a belief among young women that marriage makes them less happy,” Cox says. “So it’s not only that they have less of a desire to get married. There’s a concern that if they get married, they won’t be as happy as if they are single. That seems like a view that is potentially not going to change.”

这种趋势很可能会继续下去。考克斯说：“年轻女性中越来越多人认为婚姻会让她们变得不那么快乐。所以，这不仅是她们结婚的愿望降低了，还存在一种担忧，即如果她们结婚，就不会像单身时那样快乐。这似乎是一种可能不会改变的观点。”

Upward, which declined to share information regarding the number of active users on the platform, is betting that it will.

Upward 拒绝透露该平台的活跃用户数量，但它正押注于这种观点会发生改变。

When setting up her account, Pulliam was baffled to find out that Upward let users list their body type, ranging from “fit” and “curvy” to “chubby,” a feature typically reser

在设置账户时，Pulliam 感到困惑，她发现 Upward 允许用户列出自己的体型，从“健美”、“丰满”到“圆润”不等，这通常是……的功能。