The AND Long Term Couples Edition: An Honest Review of the 199-Card Deck

I will tell you the honest thing first: when Glen brought home The AND Long Term Couples Edition, I rolled my eyes a little. Thirty-one years married, two grown kids out of the house, and we had already worked through a shelf of relationship books. I thought we were past the need for a deck of cards to tell us how to talk to each other. Then we sat down on a Sunday evening in February, and a card asked something I had never once been asked in thirty-one years of marriage, and I had to put my coffee down. That is the whole review in one paragraph, but I will give you the rest anyway.

The AND Long Term Couples Edition is a box of 199 conversation cards made for people who have been together long enough that the questions get harder, not easier. It is not a game. There are no points, no winners, no timer. You draw a card, you read a question out loud, and you answer it while the other person actually listens. That sounds simple, and it is. It is also, as it turns out, the hardest thing we do all week.

How I've Used It

Glen and I have a standing Sunday-evening check-in at the kitchen table. It started around year 24, when the kids moved out and we realized we were mostly talking about who was picking up what and when the gutters needed cleaning. The same argument about money and his long work weeks kept coming back, and we needed a way to talk that was not just rehashing the same two topics until we were both exhausted. We had tried other things first. A couples workshop in Bend one October that cost us a whole Saturday and mostly taught us that every couple in the room had the same two arguments. A book on listening that we read aloud in the car on the way to Crater Lake, which worked until we hit a chapter about finances and Glen suddenly found the scenery very interesting. The check-in worked because it was small and it was ours. Every Sunday after dinner we clear the dishes, put the coffee on, and sit for twenty minutes, no phones, no television, no plan for what comes next.

We used The AND deck every Sunday for about four months, from the first week of February through the end of May. Some nights we did three cards, some nights we did one. The rule we made up ourselves was that either of us could pass on a card, no explanation required. That rule mattered more than I expected, because it meant neither of us ever felt cornered. We also kept a small notebook on the table, and once in a while one of us would write down something the other said so we could come back to it. The first entry Glen wrote was a single line about his father, and we came back to it three Sundays later.

The deck is organized into categories, which I appreciated more than I thought I would. Some nights we wanted something light, and we could pick a card that was genuinely funny. Other nights we knew we needed to talk about something real, and we could go looking for a question that would get us there. The categories are printed on the cards, so you can sort through them without reading every question first. We kept the cards in the box in order for the first month, then started pulling out the categories we knew we needed to revisit.

What Nobody Tells You About the 199 Cards

Here is what nobody tells you: a deck of conversation cards cannot make you talk. It can only make it easier to start. The first two Sundays, Glen and I both picked easy cards. We laughed, we answered, we felt very mature about the whole thing. Then on the third Sunday, he drew a card about the version of himself he thinks I never got to meet, the one before the job and the kids and the mortgage, and he went quiet for a long time. I sat there and let him be quiet, because that is the other thing nobody tells you: some of these questions need silence before they get an answer. The kitchen clock was ticking the way clocks only tick when nobody is talking. I almost filled the silence twice, once with a joke about the clock and once with a question about what we were having for dinner. I am glad I did not. That night the silence lasted almost two minutes before he spoke. When he finally did, he said he was not sure that younger version of himself still existed. I sat with that too, because it was not an answer I could fix or argue with. It was just true. That was the hardest thing I did all month.

The AND brand has a particular style, and you should know it before you buy. The questions are not soft. They do not ask you how you are feeling today. They ask things like what you would change about the way you have loved, and what you think your partner would say about you if you were not in the room. That is the point of the deck, and it is also the reason some couples will put it back in the box after one night. You have to be ready for the questions to actually go somewhere.

Another thing nobody tells you: the deck is big. 199 cards is a lot of cards. The box is sturdy and the cards themselves feel good in the hand, but this is not something you slip into a purse for a date night. It lives on our kitchen table, and that is where it belongs. If you want a deck you can take to a restaurant, this is not the one. We tried taking it to a coffee shop once, and we ended up leaving the box in the car and just talking over our mugs instead.

The card asked something I had never once been asked in thirty-one years of marriage, and I had to put my coffee down.

The Standout Questions

The best cards in The AND Long Term Couples Edition are the ones that sound simple and are not. There is a card about the small thing your partner does that you would miss the most, and Glen answered it in one sentence, and then we both sat there because the sentence was about the way I laugh when I am reading something funny to myself. I did not know he noticed that. Thirty-one years, and I did not know he noticed that. I wrote it down in the notebook that night, and I still have the page.

There is another card about what you would want your partner to know about your childhood that you have never been able to put into words. That one took us two evenings. We did not finish it the first night. We came back to it the next Sunday, and Glen told me something about his father that I had never heard in three decades. His father had worked for the same county road department for almost forty years, and one night in 1987 he came home and sat in his truck in the driveway for close to an hour before he came inside. Glen was eleven. He never asked his father why, and his father never offered. That was the whole story, and Glen told it in under two minutes. Then he said he had never told anyone before, because he was not sure it was a story at all. The card did not do that. The card just opened the door and held it open long enough for him to walk through. I have thought about that evening a dozen times since, and it is the reason I keep recommending this deck to friends.

The deck also has lighter cards, and they are not filler. One asks about the meal you would want on your last night on earth, and we spent twenty minutes arguing about whether a really good burger counts as a meal or a snack. Another asks what song you would want played at a moment when you felt completely yourself, and Glen picked a song I had not heard in years and then told me why. That is the range of the deck, and it is why we kept coming back to it. Not every card needs to be a breakthrough. Some of them just need to remind you that you still like each other.

The Cards That Fell Flat

I said I would be honest, so here is the honest part. Not every card in the 199 worked for us. There is a cluster of questions that feel written for couples in their thirties with young kids, about dividing labor and finding time for each other between soccer games. We are past that season of life, and those cards landed with a thud. We passed on most of them, which is exactly what the pass rule is for. I counted one evening, and we had passed on seven cards out of the first forty we drew.

There were also a few cards that felt like they were trying too hard to be profound. One asked something about the shape of our love, and Glen looked at me and said, I do not know what that means, and we laughed and moved on. A deck of 199 cards is going to have some misses. The question is whether the hits are worth it, and for us they absolutely were. I would guess we found something real in maybe one out of every four or five cards, and that ratio is better than any other deck we have tried.

The one thing I would warn you about: a handful of the questions are the kind that can stir up real hurt if you are in a fragile place. The AND does not label those cards, and I think it should. If you and your partner are in the middle of a rough patch, some of these questions are not a gentle way in. They are a deep end. We were in a good place when we used the deck, and even we had a night in April where one of us needed to step away. It was a Thursday, not a Sunday, because Glen had a big job the next morning and asked if we could do the check-in early. The card asked about the biggest regret in our marriage. Glen answered first, and then I answered, and we both needed a minute. Glen went out to the garage and came back ten minutes later with two cups of tea. We finished the conversation sitting on the back steps, and we did not draw another card that night. The conversation was worth it, but I would not have wanted to start it on a night when we were already raw.

How It Compares to Other Decks We've Tried

We have worked through a few question decks over the years, and The AND is different in one important way. Most decks we have tried are built for new couples, full of questions about favorite movies and first dates. Those are fine, but they do not go deep enough for people who have been married for three decades. The AND Long Term Couples Edition is the first deck we have used that seems to understand that long-term couples do not need help getting to know each other. We need help getting past the things we think we already know.

The AND is also less gimmicky than some of the other decks we have tried. There is no app, no scoring, no competitive element. It is just a box of cards and two people at a table. That simplicity is a feature, not a lack of effort. The deck trusts you to do the actual work, and it gives you the questions to start with. We tried one deck a few years ago that came with a companion app, and we spent more time looking at our phones than at each other. The box said it was designed for empty nesters, but the first card asked us to rate our week on a scale of one to ten. We did that for three weeks, and then the app started sending us reminder notifications. Glen started treating it like a chore, and we stopped after a month. The AND does not have that problem, because it does not try to be anything but a box of good questions.

Who This Is For

The AND Long Term Couples Edition is for couples who have been together long enough that they mostly talk about logistics. It is for the Sunday evenings when you sit down across from each other and realize you have not had an actual conversation in a week. It is for people who are willing to sit with a hard question and let the silence do its work. If that sounds like you, this deck will earn its place on your table. It earned its place on ours, and I am not easy to impress with a box of cards.

Who Should Skip It

Skip this deck if you are looking for a light game night activity, or if you and your partner are not in a place where you can hear hard things from each other. Skip it if you want a deck you can take to a restaurant, because the box is too big for that. And if you are in the middle of a serious crisis, please do not use a card deck as your only tool. I am not a therapist, and neither is this box of cards. For abuse, safety, or serious mental health concerns, please talk to a licensed professional. The AND is a tool for couples who are already safe and mostly healthy and want to get closer. It is not a repair kit.