Jamie & Jack

One thing we immediately found out is that we have different love languages. It gave us an explanation for why we sometimes struggle to understand each other and how we both go about showing love. In the past, that misunderstanding had been a touchy point for us but now that Relish gave us insight into where we’re both coming from – and how to show each other love – it’s not a point of contention anymore. The other lightbulb moment from our first week was learning our attachment styles, or our animals… we’ve never even heard of that before! Just from the descriptions I thought I was a rabbit, and I wasn’t sure what Jack would be. But it turns out he’s the rabbit and I’m a cockatoo, which gave us so much information into the way we both relate to each other and what we need to make us feel secure.

It seems like the lessons we get are really personalized to us – like we got one that told us to ask each other what our financial goals were and why it was important and I never would have thought of that. But now that we’re living together and building this long-term relationship I think it’s important for us to talk about finances. And in a healthy way, not in a stressed-out way. They also have really cool date night ideas and one week I got one that said to go for a walk before or after dinner, it’s just something really simple but Jack and I never think to do it on our own. So that night after dinner we walked down to the pier and we caught the sunset together and it was just really awesome. Even the very first lesson, just about writing down the top three things you first thought about each other – I loved that one! It’s something we never would have brought up in normal conversation but instantly we transported back to our first meeting and talked about our first impressions and it was just so special.

We had talked about finding a therapist out here but it’s just so expensive and we both travel a lot for work so it didn’t work with our schedules. Plus I feel like with therapy there is a lot of talking and not as much doing – I feel like with Relish it has real coaches you can talk to, plus personalized lessons, plus really cool date night ideas, plus this area called Connect where you see issues that other couples have had and maybe they have solutions. I just think it’s a really good way to connect with the community going through the same things.

It’s such a good tool and I’m so glad I found it in the App store. It’s just really eye-opening. It helps even if your relationship is good, it’s just made that much better by daily activities and reminders to be more mindful. I feel like it’s easy to get stuck in a rut and just keep moving forward and focusing on the next day but when you find a tool like this, it feels very grounding. Every week I get a personalized plan that I work through for the next several days, and it makes me so much more thoughtful of Jack and it makes me think of my relationship at least 3 or 4 times everyday, no matter how busy we get.

 

It’s just really simple, it’s way, way cheaper than therapy, and it changes your behavior. There’s no reason not to do it.

 

Relish has just made me more compassionate and empathetic. It’s also made me a way better communicator in a short period of time. I think I’ve just grown a lot in general by listening to what he has to say and not just feeling like my opinion is the only one that matters. It’s also so modern and funny, it has all these great gifs and interactive images and it’s really different from what our idea of “traditional therapy” was. It’s just really simple, it’s way, way cheaper than therapy, and it changes your behavior. There’s no reason not to do it.