Two Doves Bahá'í Dating — Its Legacy, and Where to Find Active Members Today
Two Doves (twodoves.net) launched in December 2005 as an independent Bahá'í singles and matchmaking site. Over nearly two decades it connected Bahá'ís across continents — people who found each other through the platform, married, and built families. It offered something the Faith has no formal institutional equivalent of: a dedicated place for single Bahá'ís to reach beyond their local community to the global one.
The site took its name from a phrase in 'Abdu'l-Bahá's writings on marriage — the vision of a couple abiding together as two doves. That framing shaped what Two Doves tried to be: a place where the purpose was marriage and the standard was character.
Profile submission on twodoves.net closed in late 2023. People arriving today find the site in maintenance mode.
This page covers what Two Doves built, what made it work, and where to find an active Bahá'í matchmaking community today. It also includes an expanded version of the character-investigation questions that became one of Two Doves' most-used resources — reproduced here for use with any platform or meeting process.
What Two Doves established
Two Doves ran on a model that has since been confirmed to work: free to create a profile and browse, paid membership to initiate contact. It screened profiles. It provided safety guidance, scam warnings, and links to marriage preparation resources. It featured testimonials — not promotional copy, but actual accounts from couples who met through the site.
The result was a service with genuine community credibility. When Bahá'ís searched for a Bahá'í spouse online, Two Doves was the answer for twenty years. Its domain age, its backlinks from Bahá'í forums and community discussions, and its focused useful content gave it strong search visibility that persists in results today.
One of its most-shared pages was a categorized list of questions for investigating a potential partner's character — inspired by 'Abdu'l-Bahá's counsel on becoming "thoroughly acquainted with the character of the other." That list became reference material people returned to independent of the site's matchmaking function. An expanded version appears below.
Ashna — the active Bahá'í dating and marriage site
Ashna is a Bahá'í dating and marriage site, currently active, with members across more than twenty countries across North America, Europe, West Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific. It has grown since launch through community referral.
Matching on Ashna works through values and character similarity. Members answer five questions covering faith in practice, approach to service, and what they want to build in a marriage. An AI generates a written portrait from those answers — specific to each person, not a generic profile summary — reflecting how they actually live and understand the Faith.
- Each portrait is converted into a values embedding and ranked against every opposite-gender profile on the site.
- Matches appear ordered by closeness of character and faith in practice, from most to least similar.
- Each match shows the other person's written portrait and location — enough to judge genuine interest before reaching out.
Members also appear on a constellation map at ashna.date/map — a visualization of the full community where proximity reflects similarity of values. It updates as new members join.
Browsing is free. Membership to initiate contact costs $29 for six months or $39 for twelve months — a one-time payment. The first 100 members to create a profile receive twelve months free. If that offer remains open, the cost of getting started is zero.
For a fuller overview, see the Bahá'í dating guide.
Questions for investigating character
The following questions draw on the categories Two Doves originally published, expanded and updated. They are a resource for the character-investigation process that 'Abdu'l-Bahá describes as essential — useful at appropriate stages of getting to know someone, whether through an online platform, through personal networks, or through community introductions. Start with lighter categories; go deeper as trust develops.
Personality and communication
- How do you handle disagreement or frustration? What does that look like in practice?
- How do you prefer to communicate when something is difficult — in the moment, or after time to think?
- How do you recharge — with people, or with time alone?
- What do people who know you well say about you that you think is accurate?
Faith in practice
- What does your daily spiritual life look like — prayer, study, reflection?
- How does the Faith shape decisions in your day-to-day life, not just the major ones?
- What kinds of service have meant the most to you, and why?
- What does a Bahá'í home mean to you in practice?
- Is pioneering or serving in a specific place something you feel drawn to?
Marriage vision and partnership
- What does a good marriage look like to you? What does it make possible that neither person could build alone?
- How do you think about decision-making in a partnership?
- What are your priorities in terms of how you spend time — family, career, service, personal pursuits?
- What does "improving each other's spiritual life" mean to you day-to-day?
Children and family life
- Do you want children? How many, and with what kind of timing?
- What values do you most want to pass on?
- How do you think about discipline and how children learn boundaries?
- How involved do you expect extended family to be?
Personal history
- What shaped how you think about relationships — what you saw growing up, or experiences you've had?
- What have previous relationships taught you about yourself?
- Is there anything about your health — physical or mental — that would affect a marriage and that you'd want a partner to understand?
- Are there financial habits or obligations that would be part of a shared life?
Lifestyle and practical compatibility
- How flexible are you about location? Are there places you're committed to staying or unwilling to move to?
- What does your relationship with money look like — spending, saving, generosity?
- How do you think about simplicity of life relative to material comfort?
- What do you do with free time when you have it entirely to yourself?
Observation over time — how someone treats others, how they behave under pressure, how consistent their words and actions are — carries at least as much weight as any answer to a direct question.
Safety and scam awareness
Online matchmaking in any niche attracts people who misrepresent themselves, including bad actors running romance scams. The Bahá'í community is not exempt. Two Doves devoted an entire page to scam awareness; the patterns it described remain current.
Protect your information early. Keep full name, phone number, home address, and workplace out of early conversations.
Common red flags. Profiles that use very emotional language quickly, personas that are far away or in circumstances that prevent meeting (military deployments, international work assignments), poor or inconsistent knowledge of the Faith, pressure to move off-platform fast, and any request for money — including framed as a loan or emergency. No genuine match will pressure urgency around financial matters.
Verify through overlapping networks. The Bahá'í community is globally connected but numerically small. Seeking a reference through mutual contacts — someone who knows the person from community life — is a reasonable step before making serious commitments.
Trust inconsistency as a signal. Scam profiles often have inconsistencies across conversations — dates, details, photos that do not match. Reverse image search on profile photos is a practical tool.
Marriage preparation resources
Finding a compatible person is one step. Several resources exist for preparing for marriage together:
- Wilmette Institute — online course on Bahá'í marriage and family life, covering the Writings on marriage, consultation, and building a household oriented around spiritual purpose.
- bahaimarriage.net (Marriage Transformation Project) — resources on marriage preparation and relationship skills from a Bahá'í perspective.
- bahai.org — primary source for the Writings on marriage, family, and courtship.