How Maine Veneracion Found Love Through A Dating App

In today’s dating scene, how does one find love? In this iteration of Vogue Voices, Maine Veneracion writes about the new rules of attraction.

This essay is a part of the series Vogue Voices, Vogue Philippines’ biweekly series of personal essays on memory, culture, moments, identity, family, and community.

Imagine this: It’s 2017, and you’re on a coffee break with your officemates when a friend walks up, phone in hand, agonizing over a reply to a guy he met on a dating app. “Does ‘yesss’ with three S’s sound too desperate? Should I just do one S? Or is that too serious?”

I, of course, offered my expert advice: “Go with two: ‘yess.’ It’s casual, but not too casual.”

These were the kinds of micro-decisions we obsessed over when swiping and dating. In the carefully-designed world of online dating, every interaction felt like a calculated move. Which profile picture should you use? What should I put in my bio? Who should you swipe on? And yet, amid all these choices, one seemingly small decision (swiping right on a medical student who lived less than two kilometers away) turned out to be the best one I ever made.

At the time, I was working as a creative director and online editor for a youth publication. Despite constantly being at events, dating never really crossed my mind. Plus, I had a rule: “Don’t date people in the same industry.” Why? Because when things go downhill, it gets messy and I’d rather expand my network than burn bridges.

Photographed by Atlas Studios

(Side note: If you strip it down to the basics, a dating app is basically LinkedIn but with better lighting. Approach it with that mindset, and you might just walk away unscathed. Hopefully.)

Before I matched with my now-husband, I had plenty of matches, and my secret is… I didn’t overthink it.

Going into online dating, I didn’t have a lot of guy friends, so I treated it as a way to meet new people and have interesting conversations. No pressure, just seeing where things would go. My criteria were simple: If they didn’t look creepy in their photos and their bio didn’t make me cringe, I swiped right.

So when I started talking to this med student who said his favorite movie was Midnight in Paris (but made sure to mention he’s still critical of Woody Allen) instead of Fight Club (which, for some reason, was the default answer for 80 percent of my matches), and that his favorite book was When Breath Becomes Air (a nice change, considering 90% of my matches didn’t even read books), I knew I had to meet this guy in real life.

In an unassuming bar in Katipunan, over a few drinks, we talked the night away. He couldn’t stay long, he had hospital duty early the next morning. I had a feeling he was hoping for a one-night stand, but I told him outright, “I don’t do hookups.” Maybe that was the magic phrase, because instead of ending the night there, we kept seeing each other for the next four weeks, right up until the start of his internship.

That was our deadline. He warned me that once his internship began, we wouldn’t see much of each other because of his hospital shifts. I said, “Sure, that’s okay.” But then, he asked if we could make things official. I wouldn’t say no to the most gentle, soft-spoken, and emotionally intelligent guy I have met on the app or even in real life so I said, “Of course.”

Let’s be real: dating apps aren’t just for love. Plenty of people are there for hookups and casual relationships, and that’s perfectly fine. When my husband and I matched, he was fresh from a long-term relationship and he was there to casually date.

But in our case, we just took advantage of what the algorithm has set up. Whenever we disagreed, we figured it out. If we were too busy to text at the end of the day, we’d just pick up the conversation the next day, no guilt, no drama. If our schedules didn’t align this week, we simply made plans for the next.

Photographed by Atlas Studios

This shifted my entire perspective on love. It wasn’t just about passion or fate. It was about shared values, communication, and compatibility. Attraction can only take you so far; the real work begins in the small, everyday decisions you make outside the app. Love, I realized, isn’t some magical, fleeting spark. It’s a conscious decision, made over and over again.

Online dating, though, has changed so much since 2017. The algorithms have evolved, user behavior has shifted, and the entire swiping culture feels different. A lot of my friends complain about dating fatigue, saying the well is running dry. Sometimes, I swipe on their apps just to see what’s going on, and honestly? It’s wild.

The UI has been redesigned to front-load information. Before you even say hi, you already know that Person A loves dogs, wants three kids, but doesn’t believe in marriage. Meanwhile, Person B doesn’t drink, smokes occasionally, and does want to get married.

I get why people find it harder to connect. The apps have optimized swiping so much that they’ve stripped away the organic discovery that makes dating exciting. Instead of learning about each other through conversation, you’re skimming through pre-filled resumés of personal preferences. The setup has changed, but the core truth remains: Love isn’t found online, it’s built in the choices you make after the match.

My husband and I have been married for three years now, raising a toddler in GenSan, a place I never imagined calling home. It took a whole lot of love to make that decision and leave behind the life and career I built in Manila. And honestly, when I first swiped right on that med student, this wasn’t the future I had in mind. But every decision, every small choice we made along the way, led us here and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Maine Veneracion is currently the design director for The Sandbox Collective and the creative director for Studio Millimetrs. She also co-hosts Therapop, a podcast exploring the intersection of pop culture and psychology with her husband.

Photography and Creative Direction by Jann Pascua. Styling by David Milan. Make-up by Janica Cleto. Hair by JA Feliciano. Production Design by Justine Arcega-Bumanlag. Produced by Robert Bradly Hao. Multimedia Artist: Andie Quintos. Project implemented by Ian Urmaza and Leahkim Orsolino. Talent: Cath Ibay.