In the summer of 2020-21, Melissa was 35 and single. She felt it was high time to meet someone and settle down but before that, she decided to have one last hurrah.
She had heard that Paul Mescal, the Irish actor who rose to fame in the early lockdown hit Normal People, was in Gadigal/Sydney and her friends had spotted him on the dating apps.
She told the ABC podcast Days Like These that her thinking was: "I'm going to try and hook up with Paul Mescal. That's my 2021 goal."
The only catch? He was 24 years old and her age range on the dating apps wasn't set that low. She'd given up on dating people in their 20s.
Despite her misgivings, she lowered her age range and started swiping.
"All these hot guys popped up … [turns out] there's more under 30 year olds that want to date a 35-year-old woman out there [than I'd thought]."
And while she may not have met Mescal, she did meet Tom, 25, who she's been with ever since.
"It's really easy when you've been dating or you've been single for a long time to get a really narrow view of what would work for you," Melissa says.
"It's so beneficial to widen [your dating pool] … because you really can find love in so many different places, with so many different people. And that's what happened to me."
Melissa's story and others are proof that it's worth expanding your romantic horizons. She, along with others featured in the story, are referred to by first name only for privacy reasons.
Local limitations
Isabel was 34 and had been single for three years, but, like Melissa, was eager to settle down and have kids.
"I didn't have high expectations of the apps because I had been using them on and off and I had gone on dates here and there, but was disappointed," she recalls.
This was in the early days of Tinder and the inner-Naarm/Melbourne local soon found she'd gone through all the possible matches in her area.
"I had a shorter [geographical] radius at first, but expanded it out of curiosity just to see what my options were."
Still no luck. Then Isabel was staying in Djilang/Geelong, near Victoria's Great Ocean Road. She was there for work, but couldn't resist a bit of swiping.
"I had preconceived ideas about who would be down there — that they would be surfie guys who wouldn't share my interests — so I wasn't looking to meet anyone, it was just for the fun of swiping."
But she matched with Nick, 28, having recently lowered her age range from 30 to 28. He didn't look like a "surfie guy".
Unlike the local men who professed to be into Isabel but rarely made time for her, Nick would drive for an hour just for a dinner date, or get up at 5am to get back home for work.
That was 2015. Isabel and Nick now live in a Melbourne outer suburb, with their five-year-old.
Isabel says before she met Nick, she had a clear list of what her dream partner would be like.
"My list was about things I wanted him to care about or have in common, as people. What didn't matter was his age or where he lived or even his job … his height or cultural background," she says.
Her tip for those on the apps: "Be open to different kinds of people, but be true to the kind of person you want to build a life with."
Bridging scary gaps
At 28, Naarm/Melbourne-based Kat had just gotten out of a seven-year relationship and was approaching dating apps for the first time, with trepidation.
She had only ever dated men but thought she was interested in women too.
"The apps were a good way of dipping my toe in the water a bit, it felt like a low risk [way] of entering into that world and into dating in general," says Kat.
"It wasn't as intimidating as going into a bar and hitting on a woman, I could just look at the kind of women out there."
Kat said she had a level of "queer imposter syndrome, as a straight-presenting, femme, non-stereotypical lesbian" and that using the apps helped her see the broad range of people in the queer community and find the women she was attracted to.
"I also don't have a good 'gaydar' so it helped me figure out who was queer," she says.
She met the first woman she ever kissed on an app, and the first woman she ever slept with. She now identifies as pansexual.
While Kat's current girlfriend was a friend of a friend, it was spotting her on an app that got things started.
"If meeting people in real life was the only way, I quite possibly would've continued just dating men. I feel like [the apps] helped me bridge that scary gap and … then once you do it it's like 'Oh this is what I've been looking for all these years'."
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