Can an App save your marriage?

Tim, a property developer in his late forties, was about to go into a meeting when he received a text from his wife of 20 years.

“I really enjoyed our meal together last night,” it said. Tim was puzzled. Thirty seconds later, another “ping.”

“In fact, I really love being married to you.” Unused to hearing compliments from his wife, Tim’s response was that something dreadful had happened. He texted back: “Are you dying?”

Lesley Eccles, CEO and founder of Relish, an app launched in the US last year and in the UK this month, laughs as she relays this story, which she heard in a marketing focus group.

“This just shows how far a marriage can fall,” she says. “It’s been so long since you gave your partner a compliment, they think something terrible has happened when you do.”

Relish is not a dating app, but technology aimed at those already in an established relationship. Eighty-six percent of users have been with their partner for more than two years, and 10 percent for over two decades. “Subscribers are given a scientifically backed relationship training plan, as well as unlimited one-to-one access to a qualified coach,” explains Eccles, 46.

The idea is that you and your partner join up together (though you can do it alone) and work through a series of jolly but informative quizzes and tasks on your mobile phone, such as listing three things you noticed about your partner when you first met them — a trick to rekindle that initial romance.

One quiz teaches “emotionally positive listening“, which includes really taking time to hear what your partner is saying, rather than planning your response in your head, or looking

for a solution.The app also gives pep talks, such as the nugget that “people in long-term relationships are happier than those who aren t as eager to commit.”

Relish was born from Eccles’s’ own experience. She met her husband Nigel 25 years ago at St Andrews University and, in the mid-2010s, they set up FanDuel, a fantasy gaming app [which came to be valued at £1-billion (about R19.4billion) and was the biggest advertiser at the 2015 Super Bowl].

But problems around regulation and competition ensued, and in 2016 the Eccles pair and their three children moved to Westchester, New York, to oversee the company’s merger with Paddy Power and Betfair.

After a few months’ recovery, Eccles found she ached to work on something new.

The stress had seen her turn to “self-help books and Google on how to keep our marriage together, but I wasn’t ready to spend the time or money on couples’ counselling.”

At the same time, her sister and several close friends were going through divorces. Eccles felt that midlifers — with the baggage of children, senior careers, perhaps in new relationships after a marriage split — needed guidance, rather than “looking around and thinking, ‘Is this all I have left?’”

Relish is less about fixing something that’s broken, she says, and more about keeping it healthy in the first place. Or as she puts it: “You don’t hit the gym when you reach 25 stone. You take steps to lose weight before that point.” As for the content itself, “everything has a basis in a study or research“, including elements from John Bowlby, the psychoanalyst behind Attachment Theory, and sex therapist Esther Perel.

The app has six coaches, who promise a texted response within 48 hours — “a bit like a tailored reply from an agony aunt“, says Eccles. “Our coaches will answer your questions, or point you in the direction of relevant activities and lessons elsewhere on the app.”

She insists that Relish is not designed to replace therapy (coaches have been known to refer users if a problem seems too fundamental), but rather to avoid the need for it in the first place. Since its US launch in September last year, Relish’s user base has grown 40 percent month on month.

Midlifers are the fastest-growing users of technology, with three quarters of 55- to 75yearolds owning a smartphone — which they use to spice up their relationship of decades. “Each partner has to ‘show up’ every day as if they are still dating,” says Eccles. “But you both have to be passionate about changing the script of your relationship. Complacency is a killer.” Jamie Mayer and Lucy Robertson, both divorced, have been together for four years. They have seven children between them and live in separate homes in Edinburgh. Jamie, 42, investment manager and former Scotland rugby player on testing the app said: “At first, I was sceptical about Relish. I think I know myself and my partner pretty well: how could an app help our relationship? But having read and used the content, I have completely changed my mind.

“The main issue is that we have seven kids between us —I have two sets of teenage twins! This means that we haven’t (yet) moved in together and our time is stretched. There’s only a 40-minute drive between our homes, yet we often feel disconnected. The app had a task to help with this problem — simply to film a short video of myself telling Lucy: ‘I love you, I’m thinking of you’ and to fire this off to her over WhatsApp.

“Lucy replied with the ‘heart eyes’ emoji. It really warmed my cockles. One of the quizzes revealed that Lucy thinks I spend way too much time on my phone. This was a jumping-off point to us discussing the issue. Last weekend, we had a techfree night where we curled up on the sofa, watched a film and talked about it afterwards.

“We felt really close. The advice may sound obvious, but sometimes you need to hear it from a third person.

“We will definitely stick with the app. Some of the features about sex I found embarrassing,