By Ashley Edwards Walker
In the summer of 2021, when Nma-Nancy found herself suddenly single again after her one-year relationship ended, she was at a loss for how to move forward. “I got dumped by someone who I felt was one of my soulmates,” she explains. “I’ve been broken up with before, but this heartbreak definitely hit deeper. I didn’t know how I’d move on from someone I had such a close connection with.” It wasn’t just that Nma-Nancy had to learn to be single again. It was that her confidence in herself and her ability to find love again was shaken. “We’d had this instant connection,” she says of her ex. “After that, I just felt like it was gonna be almost impossible to find another connection like that. Falling in love with someone doesn’t happen often.”
Luckily, Nma-Nancy had a solid circle of friends and family to lean on to help her get through the difficult two months that followed her breakup. Eventually, she says, “I got fed up with moping around.” Her friends encouraged her to give dating another shot and, finally, Nma-Nancy agreed. Nervous about dipping her toe back into the dating pool, she turned to Bumble for help. “You know everyone on there is there to meet someone, so it’s not as awkward as trying to meet someone in person,” she explains of her decision to use the app.
In fact, it wasn’t Nma-Nancy’s first time using Bumble. She had first downloaded the app in 2018, only deleting it after meeting her former partner IRL and beginning their relationship. When she redownloaded the app in fall 2021, she was thoughtful about what she shared on her profile. If she was putting herself out there again, she decided, she was going to show the same authenticity she was looking for from any potential matches.
Within the month, Nma-Nancy matched with someone who seemed to have potential. “He was attractive,” she says. But she was also drawn to the fact that he was interested in tech, the same industry that she herself works in. “That’s not that common in Atlanta since we’re not really a tech hub,” she explains. She and her match exchanged hellos and quickly made plans for a first date. Leading up to their first meeting, “I was super nervous,” says Nma-Nancy. “I hadn’t been on a date in so long and my confidence was wavering.” She agonized over what to talk about and wondered, “Am I even fun anymore? Do I still have a personality?”
By the time the big date came around, Nma-Nancy’s nerves were so intense, her hand was shaking when she first picked up her water glass. But as the date went on and the conversation started to flow, “I started to relax a bit and I really enjoyed their company,” she says. Nma-Nancy says one thing that helped was having a few go-to conversation topics from the information they’d read on each other’s Bumble profiles. In addition to discussing Atlanta’s tech industry, Nma-Nancy and her date talked about baseball, another interest he’d mentioned on the app. Afterward, she walked away feeling like, “‘Okay, yeah, I can do this again,’” she says. “It was actually a pretty good date. I kind of wanted to see that person again, and I wanted to see what else was out there.’”
Since then, Nma-Nancy has continued to explore dating. She’s had five other matches who have translated to “multiple” dates each, and she continues to meet new people. She credits Bumble with helping her regain the confidence she needed to enjoy the process. “I was so scared to put myself back out there,” she says. “But Bumble helped me gain some of my confidence back. Now I have more dates planned, and each day I’m more optimistic that I’ll find another one of my soulmates and fall in love again.”