Taylor

Relish has just sparked everything. From the first lesson, we’ve felt such a shift in our relationship. We get pulled in such different directions in our daily life that many days will go by without us prioritizing our relationship… and that’s okay, I think that’s just how it goes. But we have an app whose job it is to remind us about our relationship, to check in, to communicate, to try something new, to be more mindful, to be more grateful – is absolutely amazing.

Relish has just sparked everything. From the first lesson, we’ve felt such a shift in our relationship.

My partner works a lot of hours and we have young kids so I stay at home with them. Especially with my job being motherhood and my office being our home… I feel like it’s so easy to get stuck in daily life. I got so much from the lesson about recognizing and verbally expressing gratitude when Micah did things around the house. I almost never do that because I feel like anything he does is just a drop in the bucket compared to me, since I do 99% of the housework because I’m home all day. But I did it one night, I was washing dishes and he took out the trash, replaced the bag, and then turned off all the lights downstairs – and I thanked him for that. At first, he looked confused! He goes: “What?” And I said: “No I just mean I really appreciate that, thank you!” And he thought I was kidding. But later I realized that he paid more attention to the things that I did, like the next night he looked at me when we were sitting down to dinner and said: “Thank you for cooking dinner tonight.” Before we even ate it! It wasn’t a compliment on the cooking… it was a display of gratitude for the effort. That doesn’t sound like much, it’s such a small difference, but it meant the world to me.

Relish has pushed me outside my comfort zone. I’ve never tried therapy or really ever read self-help stuff, so I’m a total amateur. Therefore, anything they suggest typically makes me uncomfortable. But getting comfortable being uncomfortable has been a great challenge for me. Every lesson I get makes me want to work for my relationship. It’s like if this was a fitness app, the lessons are the equivalent of like, motivational videos. I just feel like I can do anything, I feel the support from the app and the community, and I feel more confident in my ability to improve myself and my marriage.

The personalization just feels so deep. I’m really getting the lessons I need the most, and I can see myself in every one. When I got the admiration lesson, where I had to give Micah a heartfelt compliment – I actually thought about it all day. I take the lessons so seriously, even though the app itself is really light and hopeful and funny, I take all my homework so seriously. When he finally got home and after the kids were in bed, I told him that I really admired his patience. I told him that I had always envied how patient he could be with our kids and me and everyone in his life and it was such a great characteristic. He was quiet for a few moments and then he said: “That made my whole day.”

Last Christmas, I was looking for gifts for him for months, but I couldn’t think of the perfect gift. He’s not really into ‘toys,’ like video games or whatever, and he doesn’t need much. He’s pretty low-maintenance, but I wanted to get him something special. Well, it was mid-December and I was panicking when Relish sent me an article about how ‘the best gifts aren’t things’ or something and it had all these ideas for gestures and DIY gifts based on attachment type. I ended up getting a great idea and making him a scrapbook entitled “Why I Love You” and it was so romantic and so not ‘me’ but he loved it. It made our whole Christmas morning with our kids so special. It’s just those little things, where Relish makes me go the extra mile, that make us feel closer than ever before.