Can This App Save Your Marriage?

Here’s the secret to a happy marriage: answer the call. No, not a literal call. (Though if your spouse calls, maybe pick that up too.)

According to Liz Colizza, psychotherapist and cofounder of marriage-counseling app Lasting, couples make dozens of “calls” each day—tiny attempts to connect, through anything from asking how you look in a pair of jeans to requesting a foot rub.

What you’re really asking is something more profound, she says: “Will you be there for me?” These little everyday moments, as she puts it, “build this foundation of answering that question for you and your partner.”

According to the work of renowned marriage researcher John Gottman, couples in successful marriages answer about 86 percent of those calls. And if you don’t answer them, in a 50-year marriage that adds up to half a million missed connections. Or, you know, a marriage that does not last 50 years.

Colizza realizes the barrier to entering therapy is high, which is why she has found most couples go, on average, six years after they should. Lasting, a partnership between Colizza and The Knot entrepreneur Steven Dziedzic, eases the stigma of counseling. 

“If I heard someone say, ‘Therapy is for crazy people and I’m not crazy,’ I’d say, ‘This is a way to learn the skills and to interact with your partner,’” Colizza says. “Counseling is great at setting people up to succeed at having healthy relationships.”

In other words, think of your marriage the way you think about your car. If you need to rotate the tires or get a new brake pad put in, it’s OK to have a professional step in to keep the car from eventually breaking down. In the process, you may even learn some auto maintenance skills of your own.

Lasting’s app is simple and welcoming. After a quick questionnaire about how satisfied you are in areas like communication, effort, and, yes, sex, Lasting offers a nonjudgmental assessment of your relationship health. That can range from something along the lines of “in need of a tune-up” (for couples looking to enhance a fairly stable relationship) to “let’s call a tow truck” (for those dealing with crises like infidelity or grief). Then the app recommends short courses based on the areas that could use attention.

Each partner completes the interactive programs separately. After you finish the multiple-choice and short written sections, your partner can read your answers to questions like “Describe a time this week when you answered your partner’s emotional call.” 

While counseling via an app might feel remote or robotic, the technology can actually encourage intimacy and lower stress: Instead of having to talk about issues in person, you’re writing them down for yourself, then sharing them with your partner. This allows you to consider what you want to say in a less emotionally charged environment, while examining your own role in conflicts.

And, yes, Colizza can testify that even therapists make and receive emotional calls. Fourteen years and three kids after marrying her husband, Colizza says her most frequent emotional call is her husband offering assistance. “When he gets home from work,” she says, “I want him to come in and give me a kiss and say hi and then say, ‘What can I do to help.’ Don’t ask me about my day yet, because I can’t give it to you. Ask what you can do.”

Lasting: Marriage & Couples

Guided Relationship Counseling

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