Haley McIlroy and her roommate, Mia Larsen, found the dating scene in Provo, Utah, to be rather disappointing for them, that is, until they decided to download Mutual.
"I decided that we're gonna do something about this,” McIlroy said. “We're gonna get on a dating app, we're gonna go out there and 'taste all the flavors' as my dad used to say, and see what comes out of it."
Their Provo YSA ward, which consists of 80% women according to Larsen, and limited male peers in their majors, made the roommates realize they needed to try a new tactic.
"I'm not going to meet anyone in my classes,” said Larsen. “I'm not going to meet anyone in my ward, so I was like, okay. It's not gonna happen naturally. I got to at least put forth some effort."
The roommates made it a game and would go through it together, leaving sticky notes if one wasn’t home.
"Every night we'd get home and say, 'Have you done your swipes yet?'" McIlroy said.
The roommates took different approaches; Larsen went on a few dates a week, and McIlroy went on seven to twelve dates a week.
"Every time I matched with someone, I'd skip the small talk because I'm not really a small talk kind of person either, and I'd message them, ‘Hey, I'm free on Thursday at noon, do you want to have lunch?’” McIlroy said.
Larsen met her now fiancé after a handful of dates and a few weeks on the app.
"It wasn't anything crazy on the first date,” Larsen said. “It was him picking me up from getting my wisdom teeth out a week later that really started everything."
McIlroy, who committed to much more frequent dates, found her husband after 40 first dates with random strangers.
"My mom likes to call it 40 first dates,” McIlroy said. “But it was probably in the ballpark of 40-50 first dates in that month and a half that I downloaded Mutual until I started dating my fiancé."
McIlroy went on so many dates that she found she wasn’t having to buy groceries. Once she met Joshua, her now fiancé, her dating extravaganza slowed to a halt.
"My roommates asked, 'How did the date go? I mean, if you were out that late.' and I was like ‘I'm gonna marry this guy,’ and I canceled all my other dates,” McIlroy said.
The roommates laugh at how a simple conversation about their lack of dates was the conversation that helped them meet their future husbands.
“It was really fun getting to do it with Mia, personally, because I felt like I had a support system and being able to come home and kind of commiserate over the bad dates and be really excited about the good ones,” McIlroy said.