A New York Times article looks at the apps trying to help couples make up, rather than match up.
Apps like Couple Counseling & Chatting, Romantimatic and Embre, provide a tool for couples to enhance communication, work through problems, and deal with anger issues.
Couple Counseling & Chatting was launched by therapist Marigrace Randazzo-Ratliff, and has around 17,000 downloads.
She said: “I wanted to teach people about conflict and conflict resolution.
“There are stressors in life, bad habits from your past, different things that hang you up – and we take all our stress out on our spouse, unfortunately. The point is to get calm so you can show you’re on the same team.”
The article quotes the recent Pew Internet report which found that the internet has both helped couples feel closer together, and made them more distracted.
Of married or partnered adults, 21% said online exchanges or texts had made them feel closer together.
However 25% of all couples felt their partner was distracted by their phone when together.
As Dr Daniel Bober, psychiatrist and assistant clinical professor at the Yale School of Medicine, said: “It’s ironic that people are using an app for conflict resolution, because part of the nature of conflict resolution is communication, and so much of communication between human beings is nonverbal.”
However such relationship apps are presumably a way of dealing with issues, with a view to working them over face-to-face.
A few weeks ago, we reported on a similar app One Love My Plan, which offers advice to young women in abusive relationships.
Read The New York Times article here.