3 apps that help you connect with your love
As Valentine’s Day draws near, you may be looking for more out of your romantic relationship than a box of chocolates.
Whether you are in the early stages of infatuation or much farther down the road, apps can help your bond grow stronger.
Here are three apps that will help you connect with the one you love.
Love Nudge app
There’s no doubt you’ve heard people talk about their love language. This trademarked idea helps people learn what makes them (and their significant other) feel loved. Gifts, physical touch, acts of service, words of affirmation and quality time are different categories people can rank to understand themselves a bit better.
The Love Nudge app, which is affiliated with the love language system, calls itself “the personal assistant for your relationship” on its website and aims to help you build healthy relationship habits. Download the app and take the Love Language quiz to learn how you prefer to give and receive love. Link to your partner and have them do the same.
Once you both take the quiz, you will see the breakdown of how the five different love languages appeal to you, and you will also see the level of importance your partner places on the different categories. From there, couples can set goals to help them speak each other’s love language more consistently.
The app has loads of suggestions in each of the categories or partners can use the “nudge” feature to make their own suggestions. The app tracks your progress on your love language-related goals, and you can even receive push notifications to remind you to follow through.
You can tell the app each day how loved you feel and your partner can pull up the results. Couples can see at a glance if they need to try a bit harder, are doing just fine or are knocking it out of the park.
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Gottman Card Decks app
The Gottman Institute has a goal to “help create and maintain greater love and health in relationships,” according to its website, and says its scientifically sound approach to marriage can help strengthen any weak areas. The Gottman Card Decks app is the digital version of its physical flashcards that offer questions, statements and ideas for couples to use as springboards to conversation and connection.
The app has more than 1,000 flashcards in 14 areas. For instance, “Love Maps” includes fairly basic questions that help you know more about your partner like, “Where was your partner born?” or “When is your partner’s birthday?”
Another deck, “Opportunity,” is meant to help couples “recognize and act on the small, everyday moments that build intimacy in meaningful ways.” One card suggests finding out your partner’s favorite movies and watching them together; another offers the idea of planning a candlelight dinner.
Other decks are titled “Rituals of Connection,” “Sex Questions” and “Great Listening.” The “Give Appreciation” deck simply includes phrases to use to say thanks to your partner. It suggests people who have a hard time expressing themselves out loud could show their partner their phone screen to show their thanks.
Heart Is In app
For couples who want a visual reminder of their love, the Heart Is In app helps you say “I love you” without words. More than 75,000 couples are using this app to send love taps to one another.
The concept is simple: The couple basically plays catch on their phones with a heart. One person taps a heart on the screen, which sends it to their partner’s phone screen. You won’t see the heart again until your partner taps the heart on their phone. The heart display changes based on the number of times it’s sent back and forth. The app tracks how often and how many times the heart is passed back and forth between the couple.
To use the app, you’ll need to send an invitation code to your partner to get started. One reviewer described Heart Is In as “a great way to let the other know we’re thinking about each other.”
