The Scoop: Official is an app for couples who want to deepen their bonds from the comfort of their cellphones. In our conversation with Zac Stern, the founder and former CEO of Official, he emphasized how the app’s unique features help established relationships thrive. We could all improve our communication skills, and with Official, we can do so while simultaneously spicing up our love lives.
The best first dates sparkle with promise. And when you and your date hit it off, the honeymoon phase that follows is equally thrilling. But as a self-proclaimed realist, I tend to focus on the what-ifs.
When something is going too well, I can’t help but ask myself, “What if this all goes wrong?” I think about the honeymoon phase as if it always needs to end, but this may not be true.
The app Official just might keep you and your partner in the lovely honeymoon phase indefinitely.
We talked to the founder of Official, Zac Stern, who encourages people to download Official when their relationship is already established — when you and your partner are “official,” in other words.
Zac doesn’t want users to think Official is a dating app. In fact, it couldn’t be more different. “A traditional dating app is designed to allow you to find another person through swiping, liking, or a mechanism that helps you connect with someone. We come in after that,” he told us.
As you get to know your partner (and their quirks), Official can help smooth over rocky moments and keep the honeymoon phase alive. The app’s unique features are tailored for couples who are dedicated to growing alongside each other, instead of apart.
When each partner is willing to put in the effort, there’s no reason the honeymoon phase ever has to end — especially when you have Official’s beneficial features at your fingertips.
Show Your Vulnerable Side With The Daily Question
Official’s goal is to give couples a simple, accessible way to thrive. “We just want to help you continue to be with (your partner) and help that relationship grow,” Zac told us. To do this, Official uses a host of unique features that reveal hidden needs and quirks in your relationship.
The Daily Question is one of Official’s most helpful features. “It’s a question that we ask you and your partner every day,” Zac explained. “It changes everyday. You both have to answer to actually get to see each other’s response.”
This encourages joint participation, so both you and your partner can reap the daily question’s potential benefits: mutual vulnerability, trust, and communication, to name a few.
As Zac explained, the cadence of the daily question is subject to change. Some days are silly and lighthearted — “Do you believe in aliens?” — and others require more thought-out and emotional answers. “Tell me about a time from your childhood when you felt loved,” Zac gave as an example.
As Zac told us, the point is to “build emotional intimacy.” After all, if you can’t share your honest feelings with your partner, how can you share a life together?
Logically, I know this is true. But this doesn’t make expressing my feelings, especially unpleasant ones, like anger and frustration, any easier. With Official, you can set your mood in the app so your partner knows how you’re feeling before they even send you a message.
Take it from me: Snapping at your partner is understandable, but unhelpful in the long run. It can lead to more confusion and misunderstandings.
When you log your current mood in Official, your partner will know how you’re feeling before they even reach out to you. “We built the mood feature so you can say how you’re feeling without having to say it,” Zac told us.
It’s important to note the app’s memory-keeping function, which gives it an Instagram-like edge. You can post photos of you and your partner that are special to your relationship, and in a more private setting than other social media apps.
“I wanted something that helped me remember the most important times in my relationship,” Zan shared. “And also a place for me to put them and make it more of a shared photo album, rather than just posting them on another social media site.”
You can record the highs, lows, ebbs, and flows of your relationship on Official, which keeps you and your partner more connected than ever.
Improve Communication Skills With a Single Button
You may have noticed a running theme on Official: communication. After all, it’s easy to get tongue-tied when you try to talk to your partner about serious matters.
Your past traumas, your thoughts on children, your deepest desires; these are all topics that you may want to bring up with your partner, if only you could find the right words.
“We’re trying to help people avoid awkward conversations,” Zac told us.
You can check in with your partner, send love, and let them know when you’re feeling romantic, all with the click of a single button. And when difficult but necessary conversations need to happen, Official can help with those, too.
For example, I often feel ashamed whenever I feel clingy or lonely. In reality, it’s only natural for me to miss my partner from time to time. This is especially true if you’re in a long-distance relationship or if you work long hours. If you empathize with this, Official can communicate as such to your partner.
“We have these little buttons in the app where you can literally click ‘I need attention’ as many times as you want,” Zac told us. Your partner will receive a notification whenever you click the button.
Official’s unique communication features keep couples connected, even when they’re apart. As Zac explained, “We have a lot of (users) who are long distance in the military, and (the daily questions) are one of the main ways they’re using the app to communicate.”
The app has also been a healthy crutch for people who struggle with relationship-related anxiety. Zac is hopeful that Official will offer more personalized content in the future. “We’re starting to look at, ‘How do we make it more personalized for you and your relationship depending on how long you’ve been together? What type of relationship do you have? Is it long distance? Do you live together?”
The more personalized the app, the more specific its advice can be. This will especially come in handy when you and your partner want to spice things up.
Official Can Spice Up Date Night
Vibrators, experimental sex positions, and imaginative kinks – oh, my! Spicy topics, indeed. Official helps take away any hesitancy you or your partner may feel about discussing these topics.
With Official as a go-between, you can focus on deepening your physical intimacy with your partner. After all, physical intimacy is often closely tied to our emotions. The app strengthens both by asking you and your partner to gauge your comfort levels with different sexual scenarios.
“We take something from couples therapy called ‘yes, no, maybe.’ We let you swipe left (‘no’), up (‘maybe’), and right (‘yes’) on different sex toys, positions, and kinks,” Zac told us. The app will tell you when you and your partner both said yes or maybe to a hypothetical toy, position, or kink.
Everyone deserves to feel comfortable talking about sex with their partner. And if you’re reading this and thinking, “I’m actually more than comfortable with my sexy side, DatingNews!”, then just know that Official’s Sweet & Spicy feature can help even the sexually adventurous among us discover new kinks and bedtime fun.
If you’re anything like me, spontaneity doesn’t come easily. Thankfully, Official can do all the heavy lifting. “We have a digital version of sex dice as well as a random sex position generator to really make it more spontaneous,” Zac explained.
For date nights, Official helps get you and your partner on the same page, culinarily speaking. “You put in different types of cuisines and it randomly selects one for you,” Zac said of a feature called The Dinner.
If conversation ebbs throughout the night — or, more likely, you and your partner simply want a fun topic to talk about — Zac recommended taking the conversation starter feature for a spin.
The point is to let Official guide you through the rockier moments of a long-term relationship — of which, there will be a few, since we’re all human and we all make human mistakes.
This is why Zac emphasized his goal of providing even more fun, helpful features for users. “We’re looking at making the app stronger with even more intricate abilities that (help you) develop your relationship further,” Zac said.
