Stronger Together

Welcome to Sync & Thrive. You design everything else together. Why not your health? Every Friday, we share how to move, connect, nourish, and recover as a team. New here? Subscribe.

👋 Happy Friday, Ladies and Gents,

There is a lot of advice out there on how to live, love, and win. Most of it wasn’t written with the two of you in mind.

This week is about using what works for the two of you. That means moving in a way that feels good, listening when your partner needs it most, knowing your strengths and weaknesses, and deciding for yourselves what winning looks like.

We hope something in here starts a conversation at your table this weekend.

J+A

Wispr Flow turns your voice into clean, professional text you can send the moment you stop talking. No rough transcription you have to clean up. Actual polished text, ready for email, Slack, or any app.

Speak the way you think. Go on tangents. Change your mind mid-sentence. Flow strips the filler, fixes the grammar, and gives you text that reads like you spent five minutes writing it.

Start flowing free

Somatic movement asks you to notice how your body feels instead of how hard it works.

Most workouts measure output in miles, reps, and minutes.

Somatic movement flips the focus. You pay attention to what you feel inside your body as you move, from the way your ribs shift when you breathe to the tension sitting in your shoulders.

The best-known approach is the Feldenkrais Method. Moshe Feldenkrais, a physicist, spent decades studying how people learn to move. His lessons use small, slow movements like rolling, reaching, bending, and twisting to help you notice your habits and find easier ways to move. You can join a group class, called Awareness Through Movement, or book a private, hands-on session, called Functional Integration.

And it does more than feel good. In a review of 16 trials, older adults who practiced Feldenkrais improved their balance, walking, mobility, and quality of life in three of four studies. People with neck, upper back, or shoulder pain saw their pain and balance improve, too.

It may feel a little silly at first. That’s fine, because you don’t need a class or any special skill to start. Almost any movement can become somatic when you slow down and pay attention, so try one of these:

Try it together: Pick one song tonight, turn the lights down, and dance in the kitchen. Pay attention to how your body feels instead of how you look.

When your partner talks about a loss, your job is to listen.

Every one of us carries a loss. It might be a parent, a friend, a dream that didn’t work out, or a diagnosis that changed the plan. Talking about a loss is hard, and we often avoid it, even with the people closest to us. The one sharing may hold back out of fear of feeling vulnerable, getting too upset, or making their partner uncomfortable. Their partner may not ask because they’re afraid they won’t comfort them well enough, or that they’ll make the pain worse.

So what happens when couples talk about it?

Researchers at the University of Southern California asked 114 young couples to find out. Each partner shared a loss the other knew little about, like the death of a family member, an illness, or a goal they had to give up. The listener had one job: understand and ask questions. Nobody was there to solve anything.

Talking about loss brought couples closer than talking about changes they wanted in their relationship. That held for the person sharing and the person listening. Their bodies told a story, too. Women who shared a loss saw their stress response drop as they talked, while listeners saw theirs climb. When both partners calmed down together, they felt the closest of all.

The couples were in their early twenties, and the talks were short, so the study can’t speak to the long run. One man summed up his experience afterward: “This cracked the door open for us. We needed that.”

We believe listening is one of the hardest things a partner can do. Most of us live with a phone in our hand, and it pulls our attention away from the person in front of us. Listening takes work, and it starts with a few simple moves:

Try it together: Pick a quiet night this week. Each of you shares one loss the other knows little about. When it’s your turn to listen, make eye contact and ask questions instead of offering fixes.

Know your superpower and let your partner fill the gaps.

Do you know your partner’s superpower? Most of us can name our partner’s bad habits faster than their strengths. Author Derrick Levasseur believes we should stop copying what works for everyone else and start using “what’s successful to us.”

That starts with knowing your own superpower and your partner’s.

My superpower is connecting with people. I love meeting someone new, and with a few questions and a little observation, I get a beat on them fast.

Aaron’s superpower is curiosity. He questions how things are done, digs for better answers, and builds what he can’t find. That’s how he built our website, the Sync Quiz™, and the Couples Dashboard.

We believe a spouse should pick up where the other is lacking, and the other way around. When I’ve been hyperfocused too long or I’m getting too serious, Aaron pulls me out of it. He gets me moving and out of the house. I keep him organized and help him tackle what matters most first.

That only works when you’re both honest. A true partner respectfully tells you what you don’t want to hear, and you do the same in return. Tell your partner where you struggle, like getting overwhelmed or putting things off, so their strength can step in and turn it into an advantage for both of you.

None of this works without loyalty, and loyalty is built on trust, the foundation of every marriage. Nothing feels better than knowing you have someone by your side, a loving, faithful, trusted friend who will see things through, thick or thin. Loyalty is a treasure.

Being true to yourself and to your mate means knowing your superpower and owning it. Your superpower is what your partner leans on when they need backup. When you each bring your strength, neither of you carries the hard parts alone, and you get to show up as the best version of yourself for the person you love.

Try it together: Each of you name your own superpower. Then name your partner’s. Talk about where each of you struggles, and decide how you’ll back each other up.

Two unspoken rules of life that school never taught us.

“Insist on yourself; never imitate.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do you remember saying “it isn’t fair” as a kid? I said it all the time. Eventually, I learned that life moves forward when you stop waiting for fair and start making your own rules.

Rule one: You define what winning looks like.

Society hands you a template for success, complete with the grades, the career, the house, and the status. It can look like the only route. But when you follow a path someone else designed, you end up chasing a finish line you never chose. You can’t win a game when you don’t know where your finish line is.

In 2024, I was laid off for the first time in my career. I had spent close to 20 years in project and account management, and that chapter ended without me choosing it. It felt like I had no control, but I did. I chose what came next, and that ending became the beginning of Sync & Thrive.

The same is true in a marriage. No one else gets to define what winning looks like for the two of you, but there are signs you’re on the right track. One of them is how you talk about your life together. Across 30 studies, couples who talk in terms of “we” tended to have stronger relationships and better health.

For us, winning means choosing each other through hard seasons and building toward our goals as a team. If we’re winning with each other, we’re winning at life.

Rule two: Compare yourself to who you were yesterday.

Don’t waste your energy comparing yourself to someone else’s timeline. Your strengths are different from anyone else’s, so own them and develop them. The only person worth measuring yourself against is your past self.

Aaron and I measure our marriage the same way. Instead of holding it up against other couples, we look back at the milestones we’ve reached together and see how much we’ve grown at each one.

Try it together: This weekend, write your own definition of winning as a couple. Keep it to one sentence you both agree on, and put it somewhere you’ll see it every day.

Buttermilk-marinated Roast Chicken

This one comes from Samin Nosrat. The chicken soaks overnight in salted buttermilk, then roasts in a hot oven until the skin turns deep golden brown. The result is the most beautiful, moist roasted chicken, full of flavor. It’s easy to make and such a crowd pleaser.

Get the recipe

Put what works for you into practice.

Your Couples Dashboard is where the two of you turn this week’s ideas into action. Built on your results, it suggests meals, workouts, and rituals, and you can shape each one to fit your life together. Connect your health apps, and everything the two of you are working on lives in one place. Your dashboard starts with the free Sync Quiz™, which each of you takes on your own.

Open your Couples Dashboard

Which of our superpowers do we lean on most when life gets hard?

With care,

💛 Jaylene & Aaron, Sync & Thrive Team

P.S. If you're new here, welcome. 👋 We're glad you found us. Everything we write is designed to help you and your partner build your health together, on your terms. The best place to start is with the Sync Quiz™.

P.P.S. If there’s a dynamic in your relationship you’d like us to explore, send us a note at [email protected]. Many of our best topics start with reader conversations.

🖊️ Most of what we write about lives inside four everyday areas of life together: how we move, eat, connect, and reset.