Soften helps you say what you mean without starting a fight. Send messages that land well. Understand messages you receive. Communicate better with the person you love most.
Free for life for early users. No credit card needed.
Most relationship friction happens in the gap between what we feel and how we express it. Soften helps on both ends of that conversation.
You're frustrated, hurt, or overwhelmed. You have something important to say but you know the way you're about to say it could make things worse. Soften helps you reshape the message so it opens a door instead of closing one.
A message lands and your first reaction is defensive or confused. Soften offers 2–3 gentle interpretations of what might be underneath it — helping you respond to what your partner might actually mean, not just the words on the screen.
If your relationship is in serious crisis, Soften isn't the right place to start. A qualified couples therapist is.
We think of Soften like a physio session between appointments — useful in the day-to-day moments, not a substitute for professional support.
Soften lives in the everyday moments — the text you hesitated to send, the message that landed wrong, the conversation you want to handle better.
Type your message as you normally would — raw, emotional, direct. Don't edit yourself.
What's the emotion behind this? What outcome do you want? What's important to keep? A few questions, never more than needed.
Soften rewrites your message using evidence-based communication principles — keeping your voice and your meaning, just without the sharpest edges.
Soften more. Make it shorter. More direct. A different tone. You stay in control of the final message.
You love each other but sometimes the way you talk to each other doesn't reflect that. Soften helps the message match the feeling.
You already know when a message isn't quite right. Soften gives you somewhere to take that pause — and come back with something better.
Therapy works on the patterns. Soften helps in the moments between sessions — the Tuesday night text, the Saturday morning conversation.
— Research by Dr. John Gottman, The Gottman Institute
Soften is built on Gottman's concept of the softened startup — the finding that how a difficult conversation begins almost entirely determines how it ends.
A harsh startup triggers defensiveness. A softened startup — expressing needs without blame, describing feelings without criticism — opens the door to being heard.
That's not therapy. That's a skill. And Soften helps you practice it in real moments, with real messages, in real time.
Soften gives couples a structured way to communicate in the moments when you're not there — and gives you the visibility to make every session count.
Walk into each session knowing what happened in the week before it
Leave prompts and guidance for your couple between appointments
Free lifetime access for every client you refer — no subscriptions, no expiry
Built on Gottman's softened startup research — evidence-based and well-researched
of Australian workers use their EAP. The rest fall through the gap.
The gap between therapy sessions — when real life keeps happening anyway.
Accuracy with which conversation startup predicts outcome, per Gottman research.
We're in early access and we want real couples using it. Join now and lock in free access permanently — no subscription, no expiry.
No credit card. No catch. Paid plans will launch later — this locks you in at free.
No — and we're clear about that. Soften lives in the everyday moments between sessions, not in crisis support or clinical treatment. Think of it like a physio session you do at home: useful, practical, evidence-based — but not the same as seeing your physio.
Soften is built specifically for relationship communication, grounded in Gottman's softened startup methodology. It asks the right questions to understand what you're actually trying to say — and the result sounds like you, not a generic AI response.
No — one of you can start using Soften immediately. You can invite your partner, but Soften is useful even if it's just one of you using it to communicate more clearly.
Yes, with important context. Your messages are stored securely in our database solely to operate the service. When you use Soften, message content is sent to Anthropic's API (which powers our AI) for processing. Anthropic's policy states they do not use API data to train their models — you can read their privacy policy at anthropic.com. We do not sell your data or share it with any other third parties. You can delete your account and all associated data at any time from Settings.
It's a concept from Dr. John Gottman's research — the finding that how a conversation begins predicts its outcome. A harsh startup (criticism, blame) leads to defensiveness. A softened startup (expressing needs, describing feelings without attacking) leads to connection. Soften helps you do the latter, in real time.
That's the whole point. Soften doesn't replace your voice — it just files down the sharp edges. The meaning, the feeling, the intent all stay yours. You also have full control to adjust the output before you send anything.
Soften is in early access — we're inviting real users before we launch a paid plan. Everyone who joins now locks in free access permanently. When we introduce paid features later, your core access stays free. No expiry, no bait-and-switch.
We offer free lifetime access for clients you refer. Get in touch via this page and we'll set you up with a referral process that works for your practice.