Emily

Emily and her partner don’t have children or over-booked schedules, but they have noticed that their sex life had taken a hit. She wanted more sex but felt it was too sensitive a topic to bring up, so they just resorted to arguing about how often they were - or more specifically, were not - having it…

Before Relish I was doing work on my relationship but everything I was learning about our dynamic made me feel much more like ‘Oh my god the world is ending.’ I was so emotional that every time we had a fight I thought we were over and now I know if we fight it’s totally okay. I think a lot of that has to do with Relish.

I’m definitely a person who struggles with anxiety in relationships and I now know I definitely have some insecure attachment issues going on. When we found out our attachment types, we were on completely different sides of the spectrum. Sean is a securely attached person, a Labrador, and I’m a Rabbit. Just to recognize that has been helpful and it’s opened a lot of conversations we never would have had otherwise.

There have been so many lessons that have changed or improved our relationship that it’s hard to think of just one, but there’s one about not waiting to celebrate big milestones in life and just really toasting to the small moments. I just started doing it where one day I asked him what the best part of his day was and we did a mini-celebration about it. I started it initially, but now he’ll continue it and now not a day goes by without us celebrating a ‘small victory’ which has been really cool and has become such a positive habit for us. Another one was about reframing, which is an issue I really struggle with, and I had to journal about three of Sean’s bad habits and then delete them, and replace them with three of his good habits that I don’t focus as much on. After I did it I instantly felt better and we had such a nice conversation about looking for the good instead of focusing on the bad.

I’ve noticed a definite change in our communication since we started using Relish. Also, it makes us keep our relationship top-of-mind so we’re really always thinking about it and always thinking about each other. Just like if you were going on a diet, this will keep you accountable for your progress and how close you are to reaching your goal. Those lessons don’t just have an immediate impact, they stay with me, and sometimes I’ll go back to old lessons or the next time something comes up I just react in a completely different way because I’m still thinking about what I’ve learned.

Relish is basically self-paced couples therapy.

Relish is basically self-paced couples therapy. I do it when I want, I do more when I have more time and I do less when I have less time but either way, I keep getting reminders and lessons and activities and journal entries that help me stay present and mindful. I have also loved interacting with my coach. She gives me specialized lessons every time I reach out to her and now I always do our check-ins because I know I’ll talk to our coach and something helpful will come out of it. Like, once she gave me one about Fun & Friendship and the activity was to find things to laugh about with Sean (it gave me a bunch of joke ideas and other stuff) and it made such a difference immediately! We immediately felt lighter and happier and all because I told my coach about what was going on with us.

At the end of the day, apps are second nature to us. We met on Bumble, we use Relish to keep us together. The most surprising thing is how into it Sean has been. He’ll say things like “The other day Relish gave me this lesson and I wanted to tell you…” and he brings it up out of nowhere and we have these deep conversations. It has helped us so much with our tough conversations by giving us the template to have them in a healthy way. We also love the quizzes! They’re so surprising – like you think you know what your partner will be but until you take the quiz you genuinely don’t. Some things we’re completely aligned on and others we’re not at all but it’s so great to have access to that information and not to just keep thinking you know everything about each other. I give glowing recommendations to everyone I know and no matter where they are in their relationship I’m just like: “You need this!”