Guest Blogger: The Discovery Game for Marriages

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Guest Blogger Insight by: Thad (& Julie)

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My wife and I see eye to eye in most of life's important issues, except one: game playing; she's all for it and I tend to drag my feet. Its not that I don’t like playing games, I really do, I just prefer to play more group oriented games and be with large numbers of people. So when she announced she had a new game for just the two of us to play I was less then thrilled, and even more so when I learned that it was one from an "adult-themed" genre. We had tried these “adult” games before and found them to be either too cheesy, too risqué or worse, both. Hesitantly one evening after the kids had gone to bed I consented to play Discovery.

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Discovery is different then the other games of this nature we’ve tried. It feels more like an actual game and not just a watered down therapy session translated into pseudo-game format. To compare it to more familiar games we felt it had a flare of Monopoly meets Life. The degree of the “therapy” component is completely variable. The games comes with a board and game pieces that include deed cards that you can purchase and collect rent on when your partner lands on them, love tokens that you earn via a variety of means, and action cards labeled Reality Check and Discovery (again think Monopoly: Chance and Community Chest cards). Play consists of working your way around the board collecting Paydays and rent, buying property and trying to avoid going to the “Dog House” (note: getting out of the dog house is generally much more fun then trying to get out of jail in Monopoly!!!!!) At the end of it all a winner is decided- making it fun for those of us with the competitive spirit as there is the immediate reward factor- of course the reward of becoming closer to your spouse is also a plus!

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Discovery is marketed as a tool to help couples rekindle the lost flame, but we feel that it also very applicable and enjoyable to couples that still have the flame and just want to be reminded about what fuels the fire. Where so many other games of this nature fail, Discovery succeeds at getting you to engage in the talking component designed to increase familiarity and intimacy. This is done through completion of Discovery card requests. These request are largely thought provoking questions that you answer or may be joint puzzle tasks that you work together to complete. A few example of these questions include: Addressing your significant ask: What achievement in my life would make you the most happy, and why? Or What first attracted you to your spouse? While many of the questions we already knew the answer to, it was refreshing to revisit some of these most basic and intimate details of our relationship. In one instance my question involved discussing a favorite past Christmas. While my wife knew the answer, she had actually never heard my version of it, having been polluted by my family as to what really happened that morning. She was excited to finally learn my version of it and we laughed that we had actually never discussed it before.

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Another great aspect of the game's flexibility is you can dictate how “intimate” you wish to make it. Frequently during the game (i.e., getting out of the Dog House) you have to perform two minutes of a “service of choice” for your partner. Any thing goes at this point and couples are left to be as free or restrained as they wish. By the end of the game we were loving the two minute service opportunities and found they lasted a bit longer!!!! We really enjoyed the game and would recommend it for any couple, young or old who enjoy playing games, want to fan the flame and are desiring a fun way to explore and get to know (or re-know) their lover.

The Discovery Game