The next three months were especially rough. David quit his job at the company since it was too demanding as that he could take care of his marriage and his job at the same time. But he had to stay for three months to introduce his successor to his team and to show him what they were working on. In his free time he either thought about how to approach this situation at best or spend his time with Marie which was difficult since she had work to do herself as well and so the times just for the two of them was fairly limited.
David looked up statistics about marriages and found one that said that more than 68% of all marriags got divorced today. There was a multitude of reasons but most of them boiled down to that the couple lost the spark and that the marriage became dull. The question that came up in his head was one he remembers until today when he thinks back to how this crazy journey started. How can you keep a marriage interesting even after 5, 10, 20 or more years. What can people do to stay interested in their partner?
At the end of the first three months, he figured out two factors that were the most crucial ones for his solution. One, time management. When both partners were working or when children got into a marriage, the time that the partner have for each other gets reduced drastically. On top of that, the time each partner has available on their own for their hobbies or to just relax was equally important but it worked against the already limited time available to spend with your partner.
The second one was rather interesting. How to stay interested in your partner? Reading thousands of articles and studies David figured out, that even though most people think they know everything about their partner, this couldn't be further from the truth. There were a lot of ideas and desires people kept to themselves and never communicated to their partner out of fear how the partner might react to that or out of a feeling of shame for a specific desire. That ranged from usual stuff like the wish to once climb a mountain or to try smoking weed to rather unusual stuff like living isolated with the partner for one week on a island or to go skydiving. And those things didn't even cover the sexual aspects where it happened more often that people kept a certain desire or fetish for themselves out of fear of the reaction of their partner. Where the fear of each human began, depended on their cultural background, their religious background, their upbringing and more factors. But the main question for David was, if there was a way to bring himself or Marie to open up about their desires.
When he finally was free of his job, he began to work on his project in the basement of their house. Each day he worked for several hours and looked up more studies and articles than he had ever done in his life before. He felt guilty each time he realised that this project also kept him from spending time with Marie but he believed her that she would give him one year and he wanted to use the time as an investment into their future.
After ten months, he finished his prototype and ran a few simulations which were good enough for him to tell Marie about it. In the evening when he cooked their meal, a new found hobby of his, Marie joined him in the kitchen and stopped her movement when she saw the look on his face.
''You look different.'' she said. He smiled as he looked back at her. ''I made it.'' he said proudly and saw that Marie didn't understood what he meant. As soon as the dishes were placed on the table, David grabbed a bottle of wine and two glasses.
Marie still had no idea what he meant but it was some time since she saw him in such good spirits and it was infectious, so she couldn't help but to smile when she received the glass of wine. Clinking their glasses, they took a sip each and started to eat their food. During the food David then finally began to speak.
''I want to try something out with you. I asked you to give me some time to find a solution for our situation and I think I got something that is worth to give it a try.'' As soon as he mentioned that he found a solution for their situation, he had Maries full attention as he continued to tell her of what he had done.
''I designed an app that we can download to our smartphones. The app needs access to all of our data on the phone, including the calender, browser history and everything else.'' He saw that Marie looked away for a moment and expected that reaction.
''Don't worry, I set the data safety standards very high. The app will not share any of that with anyone, me included. I respect you way too much as that I would ever invade your privacy my love.'' Marie believed him and she had sworn to do whatever she can to help him to find a solution. So if he asks her to trust him, then she will do that. ''Okay, I trust you David. What will this app do?'' she asked him.
''I will explain that later, let me tell you first what we need to do. When we start the app for the first time, we have to put in some informations. Countries we like and don't like, activities, sexual preferences, fetishes and so on. Please remember, the app will keep all these informations to itself, no one except you will ever know what informations you gave the app. In addition you don't have to answer each and every question completely. We can add things that we have forgotten or that we are interested in later as well. But the more informations we give the app, the better it can work. What the app will do then is to compare the answers we gave and look for similarities. Not just direct similarities but also indirect similarities, things that are not the same but go well with each other. I programmed the app so that it can access shops and send us emails. In addition it has a credit card system where we can place money that the app can use to buy things that we could use or to buy tickets for certain activities. The app will then check our calenders and look, when we have time available and compare that to how much time a certain activity usually takes. For example, if we have a free evening and there is a concert for a band that we both like, then the app could buy tickets if we placed enough money. We will then either receive mails from the app or get deliveries to our house with instructions on what we should do. Until then we will only get a warning that the app blocked a certain time at our calenders for a upcoming acitivity.''
Marie thought for a bit about what David had explained to her and struggled a bit to believe that an app could bring their marriage back on track ... but on the other hand did she know that David wouldn't invent this if he didn't believed that it could work out. ''Okay, how do I get this app on my phone?'' she asked and when David heard that, he had a big smile on his face.
A few moments later they both had the app on their phone.
''I think it would be best if we take our time to answer the questions of the app and that we do it separately. If we get that done today, then the app will check our datas during the night and starting tomorrow, it will begin to work.'' Marie gave David a kiss before she went to the couch in the living room and started the app. David returned to the basement and as soon as he sat on the table, he started the app as well.
Upon starting the app, Marie was greeted by the app and it began right away to ask questions. When she then wanted to answer, a menu opened up where she could click on what she wanted to answer. It functioned like a messaging app, where one writes 'he' and the app proposes the word 'hello' right away. If the right term then came up, she just had to push the right term on the choice of words and it was added to her informations. And so the big round of questions began.
'What is your name?'
'What activities do you or would you like to do?'
'What sexual activities do you like?'
'What sexual activities have you never done but would like to try out?'
'Do you prefer warm, mild or cold climates?'
'What are things / activities / sexual things you never want to do be it out of disinterest, fear or any other reason?'
'What are things and activities that you miss in your marriage?'
'What do you like to do preferably without of your partner?'
'What are activities that you already enjoy to do with your partner.'
'What do you fear?'
A lot of more questions came up and it took Marie nearly three hours until she was done and shut down her smartphone.
Marie and David took the whole evening to answer each and every question and gave the app a lot of informations. Sometimes they hesitated to give a certain answer since it seemed so ridiculous to them but David reminded himself that he had the app programmed in the most safe way and Marie decided to trust David. When they were done, they closed the app and both went to bed. Unlike the other times when they went to bed together, they now couldn't wait for the next days to happen and were looking forward to find out, if David's app would live up to it's expectations.
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