Love built out loud, with boundaries that work.

01 · Government ID matched to a live selfie

A state ID, driver's license, or passport is checked against a liveness selfie taken in the moment — not an uploaded photo. The document is verified for authenticity, then the image is deleted; only pass/fail, legal first name, and date of birth are kept.

This is the single step that stops catfishing, stolen photos, and AI-generated profiles. A live face beside a real document is very hard to fake and very easy to check.

02 · Age confirmed from the document, not self-reported

Date of birth comes off the verified ID. Adults only, no exceptions, and age is displayed as the verified number — a profile can never show an age the document does not support.

Age lies are the most common lie on dating platforms and the most dangerous. Taking it out of the user's hands ends the argument permanently.

03 · Name, phone, and email ownership check

Phone and email are confirmed by one-time code and matched to the verified name. Disposable numbers, throwaway inboxes, and one person running several profiles are blocked.

Scams run on volume. Tying one verified human to one account removes the economics of running dozens.

04 · Photo authenticity and reverse-image screening

Profile photos are checked against the verified selfie and screened for reuse elsewhere on the internet and for AI generation. Photos that are not verifiably the same person do not go up.

Nobody should discover at a first meeting that the pictures were somebody else. What you see is who shows up.

05 · Public safety-record screening, disclosed both ways

A check against sex offender registries and violent-offense records before any introduction. Old, non-violent, and recovery-related records do not disqualify anyone — we are looking for danger to a partner, not a past. What is considered is written down, and the person can see and respond to it.

People in recovery deserve a real chance at love. A fair screen names exactly what it excludes instead of quietly excluding everybody with a record.

06 · Verified badge, revocable at any time

A verified badge shows the ID check, age, photo, and contact checks passed and when. It is pulled immediately on impersonation, a safety report, or any mismatch — and no one can buy it.

A badge is only worth something if it can be taken away. Ours is a live status, not a one-time purchase.

07 · Meeting-day confirmation and a safety contact

Before a first in-person meeting, both people re-confirm identity through the app, choose a public place, and can share time, place, and the other person's verified first name with a trusted contact or a DBATR peer who checks in after.

Verification at signup is not verification at the door. The check-in is what turns a policy into actual safety.

08 · Your documents are never shown to anyone you meet

Nobody sees your ID, address, full legal name, or documents — not other members, not partners, not advertisers. Matches see verified status, verified age, and the first name you choose to use.

Verification should not cost you your privacy. Proving you are real to us is not the same as handing your identity to a stranger.

01 · Recent testing, confirmed by you

Before an introduction moves forward, both people confirm they have had a full STI panel — including HIV, syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, and hepatitis — within the last three months, or agree to get one. We help find free and same-day testing.

Testing is normal maintenance, not an accusation. We ask everyone the same question so nobody has to be the one who brings it up alone.

02 · Protection and prevention plan

A short, direct conversation about barrier use, PrEP and PEP access, contraception, and what each person will and will not do. We supply condoms and connect people to PrEP prescribers at no cost.

Most unsafe experiences come from an unspoken assumption, not a disagreement. Saying it out loud once removes the guesswork.

03 · Disclosure of known conditions, on your terms

Anyone living with a known condition — HIV, herpes, HPV, hepatitis — discloses privately to the person they are meeting, before intimacy, with language we help them prepare. We never disclose for you and never store status in a searchable field.

People living with a manageable condition deserve love and privacy at the same time. Undetectable means untransmittable, and stigma is not a screening tool.

04 · Consent that stays live

Consent is checked before, during, and after — and can be withdrawn at any moment without explanation, penalty, or a lost place in the program. Intoxication means consent cannot be given.

A yes given once is not a yes forever. Recovery-informed intimacy means the brakes work every time somebody reaches for them.

05 · Coercion and reproductive-control screening

Intake screens for pressure to stop using protection, tampering with contraception, threats tied to pregnancy, and image-based abuse. Any of these routes to advocacy and safety planning, not to matching.

Reproductive coercion is abuse. It is common, rarely asked about, and it is not a communication problem.

06 · Aftercare and no-blame follow-up

A check-in after any introduction that becomes intimate: testing reminders, PEP within 72 hours if needed, emergency contraception access, and a peer to talk to. No judgment, no file note that follows you.

People make decisions in real life, not in a policy. Aftercare is how a slip stays a health event instead of a shame spiral.

01 · Written, plain-language consent before anything happens

Before an introduction, each person reads and agrees to a one-page, plain-language summary of what we check, what we share with a match, what we keep, and for how long. No dense terms, no buried clauses, and a copy is always downloadable.

Consent is not real if you needed a lawyer to understand it. If it cannot be said in a paragraph, we should not be doing it.

02 · You choose what gets shared, field by field

Sharing is opt-in per item — first name, city, photos, recovery time, sobriety status, health disclosures, children, work. Nothing is shared with a match because it exists in your file; it is shared because you released it.

One blanket yes at signup is how private things leak. Field-level choice keeps the decision with the person it belongs to.

03 · Honest disclosures, both directions, before a first meeting

Both people disclose the things a partner has a right to know before meeting: relationship status and whether anyone else believes they are exclusive, whether they live with a partner, active legal matters that affect safety, and anything they have asked us to verify. We help write it; we never write it for you.

Most heartbreak on dating platforms is not a mismatch, it is a fact someone withheld. Saying it early costs a conversation instead of a year.

04 · Recovery and health details stay yours to tell

Recovery status, diagnoses, medications, and health conditions are never auto-shown, never searchable, and never used for ranking. You decide who hears it, when, and in what words.

Being in recovery is not a disclosure the platform gets to make. Ownership of your own story is the whole point.

05 · Consent can be withdrawn at any moment, with no cost

Any consent — to sharing, to a match, to contact, to a scheduled meeting — can be pulled instantly in the app or by text, with no reason required, no penalty, and no effect on any care or service you receive from DBATR.

If saying no costs you something, it was never a free yes. Withdrawal has to be as easy as agreeing was.

06 · Photos, messages, and recordings are never shared onward

No screenshots, forwarding, or reuse of anyone's photos, messages, or voice — by matches or by us. Sharing intimate images without consent gets an immediate permanent removal and, where the person wants it, help filing a report and takedown requests.

Image-based abuse is one of the fastest-growing harms in dating. The rule has to be absolute or it does not work.

07 · A consent record you can read and reset

Every consent, disclosure, and withdrawal is logged with a date and shown back to you in one screen. You can revoke any of it, ask what a match was told, or delete your account and its data outright.

People should be able to see exactly what they agreed to instead of trusting a memory of a checkbox.

08 · No consent while in crisis or under the influence

Agreements to introductions, disclosures, or meetings are not accepted during an active crisis, an intoxicated session, or within a safety hold. We pause, connect support, and revisit when the person is steady.

A signature obtained on someone's worst night is not consent. Recovery-informed means the pause is built in, not requested.

01 · Desire is a conversation, not a guessing game

Before anything physical, both people get language for their passion preferences — what they want, what they are curious about, and what is off the table — written privately first, then shared only as far as each person chooses. We provide the prompts; nobody is required to answer any of them.

Most people have never been asked what they actually like. Guessing is how boundaries get crossed by accident.

02 · Yes, no, and not yet are all complete answers

Three lists, kept by each person and revisable any day: what I want, what I will not do, and what I am curious about but not ready for. A 'not yet' is honored exactly like a 'no' until the person moves it themselves.

Curiosity gets weaponized when 'maybe someday' is treated as permission. Naming the middle category protects it.

03 · Enthusiastic and ongoing, checked in the moment

Consent is specific to the act, the day, and the person — never inherited from last time, a relationship label, or a message sent earlier. Silence, freezing, going along, and being asleep or intoxicated are not consent.

Compliance and consent look similar from the outside. Only one of them is something both people will feel good about tomorrow.

04 · A pause word that always works

Both people agree on a plain word that stops everything immediately, no explanation and no negotiation afterward. Using it is never treated as rejection, and anyone who argues with it has ended the encounter themselves.

Exploration is only safe when stopping is easier than continuing. The brake has to be trusted before the pace can go up.

05 · Go slower than you think you need to

New territory moves one step at a time, with a conversation between steps rather than a single long escalation. Alcohol and substances are out for anything new — first times happen sober, on purpose.

Almost every regret people bring us started with speed, not with the act itself. Slow is what makes it reversible.

06 · Pressure, obligation, and trades are not exploration

Persuading, sulking, threatening to leave, invoking a partner's needs, or tying money, housing, or recovery support to sex is coercion. Intake screens for it, and it routes to advocacy — not to matching.

If a yes is bought or worn down, it is not a yes. Naming the tactics helps people recognize what happened to them.

07 · Aftercare and an honest debrief

A short check-in afterward: what felt good, what to change, what not to repeat — and, when someone wants it, a peer to talk to. Nothing said in a debrief becomes a file note or a factor in anyone's care.

Talking after is where people learn to be good partners. It also catches a boundary that got crossed while it is still repairable.

08 · Privacy by default, forever

What two adults consent to is theirs. Preferences, curiosities, and anything shared in these conversations are never stored in a searchable field, never used for matching or ranking, never shown to staff, and never a factor in any service DBATR provides.

People only tell the truth about desire when it cannot be used against them later. Privacy is what makes honesty possible.

01 · Romance is the point, not the packaging

We teach people to court each other on purpose — attention, effort, small planned surprises, showing up when it is inconvenient. Not as a phase before the real thing, but as the practice that keeps a relationship alive for forty years.

Two people can be safe, verified, and honest with each other and still be lonely. Safety is the floor. Romance is what people actually came for.

02 · Nobody is a means to an end

The whole model is oriented around giving, not extracting — learning what delights the other person and doing it because it delights them. Using someone for status, validation, sex, money, or a place to stay is not a relationship, and we name it plainly.

Using each other is the quiet default a lot of people were raised inside. Naming it is how somebody chooses differently.

03 · Learn their language, not the generic one

Words, time, touch, help, and gifts land differently for different people. Each person maps what actually reaches them and shares it, so effort stops being wasted on the wrong gesture.

Most people are already trying hard. They are just trying in a language their partner does not read.

04 · Pleasure is a skill, and both people deserve it

Real, mutual pleasure — emotional and physical — is taught as something learnable: paying attention, asking, slowing down, generous curiosity, and the confidence to say what you like. Nobody's satisfaction is optional or secondary.

Pleasure gets treated as luck or as one person's job. It is neither. It is attention, and attention can be learned.

05 · Free romance, on purpose

Date ideas, letters, walks, cooking, music, dancing at home, letters written by hand — the best of it costs nothing. We publish real plans for people with no money, no car, kids at home, or a night-shift schedule.

If romance requires a credit card, we have written off most families. The greatest of it never needed one.

06 · Keep it alive through the hard years

Rituals that survive newborns, night shifts, treatment, grief, and money stress: a standing weekly hour, a daily six-second reset, one thing you still do only for each other. Small and repeated beats grand and rare.

Relationships rarely end in a fight. They fade in the years when everyone was busy and nobody planned anything.

07 · Passion and respect are not a trade-off

Desire never requires anyone to be diminished. Intensity that runs on jealousy, control, or humiliation is not passion — it is a warning sign, and we say so instead of romanticizing it.

A whole culture sold people the idea that love should hurt to be real. It should not, and believing that is what keeps people in the wrong room.

08 · The best and greatest, for everyone

Everything we teach about romance and pleasure goes to everybody — old, disabled, single parents, people in recovery, people in prison coming home, people who have never once been treated well. No tiers, no premium version, nothing held back.

Being loved well has been treated as a luxury for the lucky. It is not. It belongs to all of us.

01 · The Kama Sutra, read properly

Most of the actual text is about courtship, conversation, generosity, living well together, and paying attention to a partner's pleasure. We teach it as the relationship manual it is, flag the parts that do not survive modern consent standards, and say so out loud.

Source: Vatsyayana's Kamasutra in the modern scholarly translations — Wendy Doniger and Sudhir Kakar (Oxford) and A.N.D. Haksar's complete English edition — not the illustrated gift-shop versions.

02 · The wider classical canon

Comparative reading so nobody thinks one culture invented desire. Historical context included, including where these texts treated women as property — we do not launder that.

Source: The Ananga Ranga, The Perfumed Garden, Ovid's Ars Amatoria, and the Taoist and Tantric traditions on breath, patience, and attention.

03 · What the science actually says

Why desire often follows arousal instead of leading it, why 'spontaneous' desire is not the standard, what actually changes after kids, medication, menopause, trauma, or recovery — and what to do about each.

Source: Emily Nagoski's responsive-desire and dual-control research, Lori Brotto on mindfulness and arousal, Peggy Kleinplatz on what people in long, extraordinary relationships actually do, and the pelvic-health and pain literature.

04 · Bringing your best to each other

Practical skill: asking well, slowing down, generous attention, giving feedback without wounding, and building an experience for your partner on purpose. Skill is the difference between two people present and two people performing.

Source: Ian Kerner and Emily Jamea on technique and attention, the Gottman work on friendship and repair, Esther Perel on desire inside long commitment.

05 · Passion preferences, explored safely

A private, judgment-free way to name what you are curious about, share only what you choose, negotiate it explicitly, try it slow and sober, and debrief afterward. Nothing coerced, nothing recorded, nothing ranked.

Source: Consent frameworks from clinical sexual-health practice, plus our own pause-word and pacing standard.

06 · Where the classics were wrong

Every classical text has passages built on coercion, ownership, or a wife's obligation. We teach those pages as history, not instruction, and replace them with enthusiastic, revocable, in-the-moment consent.

Source: Modern consent law, trauma-informed care, and survivor-led critique.

07 · Free, self-paced, and private

Short lessons you can take alone or as a couple, with printable versions for people without reliable internet and audio for people who read hard. Progress is never published and never used for matching.

Source: DBATR coursework, no cost, no account required to read.