Dear Therapists: We Built the Homework You’ve Been Looking For

When I started building this app, I didn't set out to write therapy homework software. I set out to solve a problem in my own kitchen: my partner and I kept having the same fight about who was thinking about what, and no amount of good intentions fixed it.

What fixed it was structure.

So I did what any slightly-obsessed founder does: I read everything. Gottman's research on couple conflict. Sue Johnson on emotional responsiveness. Harriet Lerner on apology. And I noticed something that probably doesn't surprise you: the couples who get better aren't the ones with the best therapists. They're the ones who actually do the homework.

The problem is, homework is hard to remember. It's awkward to start. And without a holding container -- a weekly ritual, a clear framework -- it quietly dies.

We built that container. And we built it for you.

What We're Not Doing

We're not replacing you. We're not diagnosing anything. We're not offering a substitute for the real, relational work that happens in your office.

What we are doing is extending it. We've built a structured weekly check-in -- what we call "The Household Equity Session" -- that's designed to map directly onto the frameworks you already use.

How It Works (And Why It Matters)

Every Sunday night, couples open a PWA -- just a URL they bookmark. No app store, no account creation friction. They spend 20 minutes answering guided prompts about what's working, what's stuck, and what they're each carrying. The app structures the conversation using principles from three evidence-based approaches:

Gottman's State of the Union. Research shows that couples who have regular, predictable check-ins about their relationship -- not crisis-driven -- have measurably better outcomes. We built our weekly structure directly from this. The prompts guide couples toward Gottman's four horsemen antidotes: gentle startup, building culture of appreciation, and turning toward bids for connection. Here's how we designed our weekly check-in.

Emotionally-Focused Therapy's accessibility cycle. Sue Johnson's framework for emotional accessibility -- grounded in Self-Determination Theory's autonomy, competence, and relatedness -- rests on couples being able to name what they need and hear what their partner is actually saying underneath the complaint. Our prompts use a vulnerability-first architecture: "What's one thing you're worried about?" comes before "What would help?"

Nonviolent Communication's clarity. We borrowed the OFNR structure -- observations, feelings, needs, requests -- because couples need a template for how to translate feeling overwhelmed into something speakable. The app scaffolds this without being clinical about it.

The weekly check-in becomes the homework that actually happens because it's easy, specific, and holds space for what matters.

Why PWA (And Why This Matters for Your Practice)

We chose to build this as a progressive web app instead of a traditional app for one reason: friction is death for homework. If you need to say "download this from the app store and create an account," half your clients won't start. If you can say "go to this URL and bookmark it," you'll see actual adoption.

This also means your couples aren't checking in from their phones at 11 PM in bed (where things often get weird). They're sitting down intentionally, together. The medium shapes the conversation.

What Happens Next

During our Alpha phase, this is free for your clients. We'd love you to try it -- assign it as homework this week and see what happens. Give us feedback on whether the prompts actually land, whether the structure maps to what you're already teaching, whether your couples actually show up.

We've read Real's The New Rules of Marriage (2007) and Gottman & Gottman's Fight Right (2024). We know what good homework looks like. But we don't know if our homework lands unless you tell us.

The Bigger Picture

If you've read our piece on the mental load and household equity, you know we're thinking about this differently than most apps. We're not trying to "gamify" your relationship. We're trying to solve what we call the coordination problem -- the thing that every household equity system struggles with. And we think the weekly check-in is the missing piece that actually makes it sustainable.

An Invitation

Try it with one couple this week. Send them the link. See if they come back and say, "Actually, we talked about something real." See if they reference it in session. See if it changes what you're able to focus on in your 50 minutes together -- because now you're not using therapy time to teach communication, you're using it to deepen it.

And send us your feedback. Are the prompts landing? Are couples actually doing this? What are we missing? What's working better than you expected?

You've been assigning homework for years. We just built the structure that makes couples actually do it. We'd love to know if we got close.