Last month, driving down the highway somewhere between Washington, DC, and New Jersey, my wife and I found ourselves staring straight ahead in silence after officially running out of road trip games. Taking a chance, I pulled out my phone and clicked on an app innocently titled Card Decks, a tiny pink box with two hearts nuzzling each other.

A dizzying array of colorful boxes filled the screen. One titled Love Maps. Another titled Open-Ended Questions. A third, Expressing Needs. And there are several others, including a trio of boxes filled with little chili peppers labeled “Salsa”—Mild, Medium, and Hot.

We decided to begin with Open-Ended Questions. “Be a ‘dream detective,’” the app instructed. “Alternate roles as speaker and listener.” We added a fun twist: we’d answer the questions on each other’s behalf, then the listener would appraise the response.

I read the first question aloud: “What do you want your life to be like in, say, three years from now?”

I took a moment to think. “You’d like to be settled in your job,” I told my wife, who happens to be a postdoctoral psychology fellow. “Finally making a real salary instead of the pennies they pay therapists-in-training.”

She smiled.

“And you’d like to be traveling more,” I continued. “At least once a year. We’ll probably be looking at houses by then, and maybe thinking about kids.”

“That’s fair,” she responded.

“Next question: How do you feel about our physical…