Woman moves to Australia 4 months after dating app match

Just months after matching with an Aussie on Hinge, a US woman packed up her life and moved to Sydney to pursue love.

An American woman who moved to Australia for a man she’d known just a few months has revealed how a bad break-up caused her to transform her life.

Devynn Madrid was 22 she started dating a man seven years her senior – and while things started out well, their relationship quickly became a lesson in what love should not be.

After their romance crashed and burned, Ms Madrid realised the “red flags” she initially missed, revealing how she eventually found true love with an Sydney man – despite living in LA.

“I was very young and naive,” Devynn, who is originally from Laguna Beach, California, told news.com.au.

“Looking back, the red flags were there from the start, but I was in a place where I just didn’t care”.

The relationship was punctuated with troubling behaviour, and isolated from her support system, leaving Ms Madrid trapped in a cycle of self-doubt.

“The only person I could talk to about it was the one causing the pain,” she said.

A turning point came when her mum told her that the boyfriend had asked to propose using her late grandmother’s wedding ring.

Without hesitation, she blurted out: “No!”

This visceral reaction led her to break-up with him, which Ms Madrid admitted was hard but ultimately the right thing to do.

“I felt like I’d been out of the relationship a year prior,” she shared. “It was like a cannon moment where I finally felt independent.”

In the months that followed, she started what she called “dating herself”.

She dined alone at restaurants, attended concerts solo, and learned to enjoy her own company.

“I wanted to be comfortable going to social events alone,” she explained. “It was liberating.”

Devynn in her hometown of California. Picture: Instagram/@devynnmadrid111

When Ms Madrid was ready to start dating again, she vowed never to settle for someone who didn’t tick all her boxes again.

One evening, after a wine-fuelled hangout with her roommate over dating app profiles, she matched with Ben, a handsome Australian living in Sydney.

He worked for an American-based company and was coming to LA for a work event in a few weeks, so he changed his location settings in the lead-up.

“I thought it was quite funny he did that,” she said, laughing.

However, after chatting with him, she realised he was genuine and someone who she could potentially see herself with.

“In true Aussie fashion, he started sending voice notes right away. No one does that in the States – it completely threw me off,” she added.

Their casual messaging soon turned into nightly FaceTime calls across time zones and by the time Ben flew to Los Angeles two weeks later, it was clear they already had a strong connection.

“Meeting Ben at the airport felt surreal. It was like walking into a house and instantly knowing you were home,” she recalled.

Devynn pictured with her partner Ben. Picture: Supplied

Their whirlwind two weeks together included road trips to Joshua Tree and Santa Barbara, wine tastings under California’s sun, and late-night conversations by Airbnb fires.

Ms Madrid described it as “gut-wrenching” when he left, but they “both knew this was only the beginning”.

Two weeks later, thanks to her generous pilot friend who gifted her standby flight tickets, she boarded a plane to Sydney and spent a month in Australia.

“During a camping trip here, I looked at him and realised there was no version of my life where he wasn’t part of it,” she said.

When she returned to the US, all she could think about was how she could get back to him.

They did long-distance for a while and then four months after matching with him on Hinge, she made the leap: packing up her life in California to move to Sydney.

Just four months after matching with an Aussie man on Hinge, she moved to Sydney. Picture: Supplied

Now 27 and nearly a year into her new chapter in Sydney, she says life feels almost too good to be true.

She’s built a community of friends, loves her job and the work-life balance that living in the Northern Beaches brings.

She’s created new traditions with Ben, like weekly dates and a ‘Sunday Sauce’ night, where they cook Italian together, stating “life just feels easy”.

The US expat says her life has had a massive ‘glow up’ since living Down Under. Picture: Instagram/@devynnmadrid111

Reflecting on how far she’s come since her past relationship, she said it’s been a complete transformation.

“I felt like I lost my spark,” she shared.

The constant anxiety that once plagued her is gone, and even a patch of grey hair caused by stress has disappeared.

“I feel free to speak my mind, I feel free to do whatever my heart tells me to do, I eat better and I think clearer,” she explained.

“I feel like I’ve stepped into a version of myself that my younger self would have thought was unattainable”.

She says life now ‘feels easy’. Picture: Supplied

When asked what advice she’d give to women stuck in unhappy relationships, she said: “You’ve survived hard things before – you’ll survive this too.”

And perhaps most importantly: don’t let shame keep you silent.

“Lean on friends or any support system you have, if you can,” she urged.

“Don’t feel embarrassed to speak up.”

Originally published as Woman moves to Australia 4 months after dating app match