You tell the truth. We keep almost none of it.
That is the whole exchange, and it is worth nothing unless we say how it works. So here is how it works — every stage, in order, with the mechanism named.
While the intake is happening
Your answers are held. They have to be. The intake reads across everything you have said so far — that is how it asks a better next question, notices when two answers do not sit together, and gives you the whole thing back to read before a word is written about you. An intake that forgot the first round by the third would be a form with a microphone attached.
The recording does not wait for the end. Each answer is written out, you confirm what it says, and the audio file is deleted at that moment — usually a minute or two after you spoke. What is left is the text, and that is held until you approve your profile.
Nobody reads it in the meantime. No one browses answers as a matter of routine, and there is no screen anywhere in this service that shows one person what another person said.
When you approve your profile
We write your profile from what you told us. You read it, change it, argue with it, and nothing goes anywhere until you say it is right. Approving it is the moment the rest takes effect.
At that moment the raw answers are destroyed. Recordings and transcripts both. Not archived, not anonymized, not moved somewhere colder — deleted, including the copies held by the company that did the transcription, which we call and confirm. After that, nothing you said is retrievable in your own words by anyone, and that includes the person who runs this service.
You get a receipt for it: what was deleted, how many objects, and when. The receipt can also say no. If any part of the destruction did not finish, it says so and the job is run again until it has — we would rather show you an unfinished receipt than a tidy one that is not true.
The three things that survive
Three things outlast the intake, and it is worth being exact about who can see each one.
The profile you approved
What the matchmaker reads, and what someone you are introduced to is shown. You approved every word of it, and there is no second version behind it.
A short note for the matchmaker
Written by machine, and read by one person when deciding whether to accept you and how to make an introduction. It says how the intake went — how complete it was, how candid — and it carries the dealbreakers you approved, in the words we wrote back to you and the level you chose. It carries nothing else you disclosed: not what you’re afraid of, and none of your own sentences.
The private half, which is conclusions about you
This is the honest complication, and we would rather name it than let you find it. The computer keeps its own conclusions, drawn from everything you said, including the hardest parts. It is the half that does the matching work. No person reads it in the ordinary course of things; the owner can reach it only through a deliberate action that is logged every time, for a safety matter or a broken introduction.
What makes it a promise rather than a loophole is that it holds no quotations. A conclusion may say what your words taught us; it may not keep your words. That is checked mechanically, not merely intended: any run of ten consecutive words shared with what you actually said is refused, and the check runs while the transcript still exists, which is the only window in which it can.
If you never finish
An intake left half-done is the one way this promise could quietly fail: no approval, so no destruction, and your answers sitting there indefinitely. So it is not left to you. After thirty days without a word we write to say what is still held. At forty-five we destroy the raw answers ourselves, the same way approval would have. Your account stays; the recordings and transcripts do not.
The same thing happens if we decline you. There is no version of this where a decision goes against you and we keep what you said anyway.
What we ask you to hold us to
Nothing you said is retrievable in your own words once you approve. Nothing you disclosed appears in the note a person reads. What you approve is what a person sees. And every promise on this page is a mechanism, which means each one can be checked rather than believed.
Anything unclear, or anything you would like us to say more precisely: hello@trothwell.com
There is no sound in these. The words are on the screen, and written out again underneath each one.
The intake
The intake is the most important part of this. We ask who you are and what you actually want — not the version that sounds best, the real one. And there is nobody on the other end of it: a computer asks the questions and a computer listens to the answers, which is not a compromise but the whole point. Your secrets, the things you are least proud of, the parts you would not raise at a party — you can say all of it without anyone sitting there hearing you say it. So there are no wrong answers here. There is only one wrong thing you can do, which is tell us something untrue, because everything that happens afterward is built out of what you said. The truer the picture, the better the introduction.
Your profile
When the intake is finished, we write your profile from what you said. You read it, change it, cut it, argue with it — nothing goes anywhere until you say it is right, and nobody sees a version you did not approve. Approving it is the moment the rest takes effect. Three things survive that moment. The profile you approved, which is what a match is shown. A short note for the matchmaker: how complete and how candid the intake was, and how to frame an introduction — it holds nothing you disclosed and none of your words. And the computer’s own conclusions, which do the actual matching and which no person reads. Your recording and your transcript are not on that list. They are not archived. They are not anonymized. They are deleted.
What we ask in return
By now you have probably noticed the theme. Troth and truth are the same old word, split in two a long time ago. Truth kept the half about what is so; troth kept the half about what is promised — faithfulness, a covenant, your given word. It survives in one place most people still say: betrothed. So here is what we ask. Say the true thing, including the unflattering one, and give us complete information. A truer, fuller picture makes a better profile. A better profile makes a better introduction. And when you decline someone, tell us why. You do not owe it and you never will, but it is the single most useful thing you can give us. Everyone here was asked the same thing. It only works if everyone is honest.
The search
From here, there is nothing for you to do. This is where we take over. The search does not stop and it does not expire. As new people join the service, we look for new matches — for them, and for everyone already here. A quiet month is not the search ending; it means we have not found a promising match yet, and we would rather send you nothing than waste your time. Every introduction that is declined, and every one that goes well, teaches us something about what to look for — which is why we ask you why. And when we do find a match, it will be one person, and we will tell you why we think they are worth your evening.