They have been criticised as self-indulgent, over-sharing and guilty of perpetuating lifestyle envy. They are couple bloggers. But can sharing your lives with the world really bring you closer together?

Relationships on Female First

Relationships on Female First

For Mike and Jess, who run mike-jess.com, their blog has been a welcome addition to their life together and has enhanced their relationship.

“Writing and editing a blog together has been a very positive experience for us,” says Jess. “Like any couple, as we learn and experience new things through our blog we naturally grow together –as individuals, and as a pair.”

The couple, who have been together since they were in school, began the blog in 2010 when they moved from Canada to Malta. Initially a platform on which to share their new life with their family and friends in other countries, their blog now attracts readers from around the world. Mike-jess.com has grown into a guide for expats and travellers with Malta in their sights, and they have a finely tuned process of working on the blog together.

“We produce content both together and separately,” explains Jess, who is tasked with managing how the blog looks whilst Mike provides practical travel advice.

For a couple living, loving and blogging together, has the project ever been a source of conflict for them? “Not yet!” says Jess. “Ensuring that our visions and expectations for our blog aligned has saved us many arguments.”

Having originally met on their school’s ‘student government’, the duo is used to working together. But Phillip Hodson, Fellow of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, says that sharing a blog may not be as easy as sharing a bed for couples that have no experience of organising and running projects together.

“Writing a mutual or common blog is like any other project undertaken by two lovers,” he explains. Its success “depends on their pre-existing attitudes and personalities.”

He warns that for some couples any hint of working together is a disaster:

“[Some couples] just cannot cope where intellectual judgements need to be shared, opinions tested or one of the parties may let slip an intimate, personal disclosure.

Deciding on where to draw the line with just how much of your personal lives you make public is paramount, agrees Jess. But once the boundaries have been agreed, blogging as a couple can have its rewards.

 “Since we began, we have been presented with many opportunities that would have otherwise passed us by,” she says.

“Our blog allows us to help others with questions about traveling or relocating to Malta, and in the process we are able to connect with so many interesting people, many of whom have become ‘real-life’ friends.”

Hodson agrees that if couples can make it work, the partnership can “thrive” as the blogging project “adds to the list of reinforcers of their relationship.”

Aside from strengthening a bond between a couple, there are other plus points to adding a blog to a list of your shared assets.

“At the end of the day,” says Jess, “if nothing else, our blog is a permanent collection of the memories and stories from this exciting period of our lives.”


by for relationships.femalefirst.co.uk