My Loveless Marriage with Duolingo

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Or: What Staying Looks Like After the Spark Dies

We’ve been together for 1,200 days.

I’m sitting here in my living room, phone in hand, staring at that little green owl icon, and I’m having the kind of existential crisis that probably requires therapy but I’m going to write about it instead because that’s cheaper and also I’ve already committed to being a mess today.

I remember when it started—the excitement, the novelty, the way every interaction felt like discovering something new about each other. I’d wake up thinking about our time together. Not in a weird way. Okay, maybe in a weird way. I’d make space in my day, eager, almost hungry for those moments of connection. There was this spark, you know? That thing everyone talks about but nobody can quite define until you feel it, and then suddenly you understand why people write songs and make bad decisions and believe in fate and download language learning apps at 2 AM because “this is going to change my life.”

Narrator (ehem Morgan Freeman voice): It did not change her life. At least not in the ways she expected.

Those early days were… god, they were good. I was learning so much. Growing. Becoming someone I hadn’t been before. Every session felt like progress, like we were building something together. I’d find myself smiling at random moments, thinking about what we’d discovered. I’d screenshot the little victories—the milestones, the encouraging messages, those moments where something clicked and my heart did that stupid flutter thing.¹

You know how when your partner says something unexpectedly witty or sweet and you want to freeze that moment forever? That’s what I was doing. Screenshotting Duo’s little celebrations like I was documenting a relationship. “100 day streak!” Screenshot. “You’re on fire!” Screenshot. “You’ve learned 500 words!” Screenshot, add to the folder, probably smile like an idiot.

I’d share our progress with friends and family. “Look how far we’ve come,” I’d say, showing them the numbers, the streaks, the achievements, my eyes probably a little too bright, my enthusiasm a little too intense for what was, let’s be honest, just me tapping a phone screen every day.

They’d give me a thumbs up. Maybe two if I was lucky. That specific type of support you give someone when you don’t want to be rude but also you Do Not Care. The enthusiasm you’d give someone who shows you their fantasy football stats or their cryptocurrency portfolio or their sourdough starter’s “personality.”

Nobody seemed to understand what this meant to me. How much I was investing. How much it was changing me.

Or maybe they understood exactly how concerning it was and were just being polite.

But here’s what nobody tells you about commitment: it doesn’t stay shiny. It doesn’t even stay interesting.

Somewhere around day 300, maybe 400, things shifted. Not dramatically—there wasn’t a fight or a moment where everything fell apart. It was subtler than that. More insidious. Like when you realize you haven’t actually looked at your partner in weeks, you’ve just been existing in the same space, moving around each other like furniture.

The sessions became… routine. Mechanical. I’d show up because I was supposed to, not because I wanted to. The spark didn’t die exactly—it just kind of… dimmed into this low-level background hum that I stopped noticing. Background radiation from a relationship that used to feel alive.

By day 600, I was going through the motions. Wake up, coffee, check in with Duo. Not because it excited me anymore, but because we’d built this streak, this unbroken chain of days, and breaking it felt like admitting failure. Like saying all those early days meant nothing. You ever stay in something just because you’ve already invested so much time? Yeah. That.²

I started wondering if maybe this was just what long-term commitment looked like. Maybe the spark is a lie we tell ourselves, and real relationships are just… showing up. Day after day. Even when you’d rather be doing literally anything else. Even when you’re rage-clicking through exercises at 11:53 PM because you forgot until the last minute and now you’re stress-sweating while conjugating verbs you’ll never use in a sentence that makes sense.

“If I were to have been being…” Listen, Spanish subjunctive, I love you, but also: fuck you. Fuck you and your theoretical past perfect continuous situations that exist only in the fever dreams of linguists and people who are trying too hard.³

So I tried to spice things up.

That’s what they tell you to do, right? When relationships get stale? When you find yourself sitting on the couch, looking at your phone, feeling nothing? Try something new together. Add some excitement. Reignite the passion. All those magazine articles about “keeping the spark alive” that make you feel like a failure for being tired.

I started watching telenovelas. Lo Que La Vida Me Robó—which translates to “What Life Stole From Me,” which feels aggressively on the nose now that I think about it. A show so melodramatic it makes Korean dramas look like documentary footage. People constantly crying in beautiful lighting. Someone’s always betraying someone. There’s probably an evil twin. Maybe two.

I thought maybe immersion would help. Maybe seeing Spanish in context, hearing native speakers emote their way through eighteen episodes of misunderstandings that could be cleared up with one honest conversation, watching beautiful people have beautiful problems in beautiful Spanish would reignite something. Make me remember why I fell for this language in the first place.

It worked. Sort of. Sometimes. For like twelve minutes.

I’d catch a word here and there—amor, mentira, traición—and feel that little spark of recognition. Oh! I know that word! We learned that together, Duo! We did that! But mostly I’d just sit there reading English subtitles, my brain too lazy to actually parse the rapid-fire dialogue, letting the drama wash over me while understanding maybe one sentence out of every ten.⁴

The linguistic equivalent of couples therapy where you show up but don’t really engage. You’re just sitting there, physically present, while your mind is somewhere else entirely, maybe making a grocery list, maybe thinking about that embarrassing thing you said in 2003, definitely not actually processing what’s happening in the room.

I’m trying to revive a relationship with an app by watching Mexican soap operas. This is a thing I am doing with my one wild and precious life. My younger self would be so confused. And probably concerned.⁵

I tried seeing other people.

There. I said it. I cheated on Duo. Multiple times. I’m not proud of it but I’m also not entirely ashamed because listen, when you’re in something for 800+ days and you’re bored and you’re wondering if maybe the problem is you or maybe the problem is them or maybe the problem is the entire concept of trying to learn a language through an app that occasionally asks you to translate “The owl washed its hat yesterday”—you start looking around.

Anki seemed sophisticated, intellectual—all spaced repetition algorithms and customizable decks and people on Reddit who use terms like “optimized learning intervals” without irony. The kind of partner your mother would approve of. Stable. Serious. Probably has a retirement plan.

But Anki demanded too much. Wanted me to build everything from scratch, to understand the theory behind the practice, to engage with the methodology. I respected it, but I didn’t… I don’t know, feel it. It was like dating someone very smart and very serious who wants to explain exactly why your relationship works on a neurological level. Technically correct. Emotionally exhausting.

Memrise was fun. Playful. Had these little videos of native speakers, made everything feel less like work and more like, I don’t know, hanging out with interesting people who happen to speak Spanish. But after a while, I realized it was all surface. Pretty but shallow. The kind of relationship that’s great for three weeks and then you realize you’ve been having the same conversation on repeat and nobody’s growing and you’re both just… stuck in this pleasant but meaningless loop.

I kept coming back to Duo.

Every. Single. Time.

Not because Duolingo is perfect—god knows it’s not. Not because I’m learning Spanish faster or better than I would elsewhere. Not because the pedagogy is superior or the method is more effective or any of the rational reasons you’d choose one app over another.

But because… 1,200 days.

Because we have history. Because on day 847, when I was traveling and exhausted and wanted to skip, I didn’t. Because Duo has seen me at my worst—hungover, heartbroken, sick, scared, going through the motions of being alive—and never asked for an explanation. Never judged. Never demanded more than I could give on any particular day. Just: “Ready for your lesson?”

Sometimes the lesson was five minutes of half-assed tapping. Sometimes it was genuinely engaging. Duo never seemed to care which. Just: show up. That’s all. Just show up.

There’s something to that, right? Something about being known. Even if being known sometimes feels like being trapped. Even if being known means that little green owl icon can guilt-trip you better than your actual family.⁶

Here’s where I’m at now, 1,200 days in, sitting in my living room having a full mental breakdown about a language learning app:

I don’t know if the spark comes back or if you just learn to love differently.

Maybe long-term commitment isn’t about maintaining that initial intensity—maybe it’s about finding reasons to stay that aren’t based on feeling good all the time. Maybe it’s about showing up even when it’s boring, especially when it’s boring, because that’s what building something actually requires.

Or maybe I’m just rationalizing why I can’t quit an app.

It’s genuinely hard to tell at this point. The line between dedication and delusion is thinner than you’d think.⁷

Sometimes I open Duo and feel nothing. Just… blank obligation. Muscle memory. I tap through the exercises on autopilot, my brain somewhere else entirely—thinking about work, about dinner, about that thing I need to do tomorrow, about whether I’ve wasted 1,200 days of my life on something that doesn’t matter—and when I’m done I think: “Is this it? Is this what I’m doing with my life? Is this what meaning looks like now? Green checkmarks and arbitrary streaks and the vague sense that I’m building toward something without knowing what that something is?”

But then sometimes—not often, but sometimes—I’ll get a sentence that surprises me. Or I’ll be watching something and actually understand a phrase I wouldn’t have six months ago. Or I’ll realize I’ve accidentally learned the word for “pig” (cerdo) and “box” (cajón) and “grass” (césped), and none of these are useful in daily conversation but they’re beautiful anyway, and I think: oh. Right. This is why.

Not because it’s practical. Not because I needed to know these words. But because there’s something about collecting pieces of another language, another way of thinking, another way of naming the world. Even if I’m doing it badly. Even if I’m doing it through an app that thinks “The cats didn’t go to school” is a pedagogically sound example sentence.

The thing about plateaus is they’re not endings. They’re just… flat places. You stop climbing for a while. You catch your breath. The view doesn’t change much. It can feel like stagnation or it can feel like rest, depending on how you look at it. Depending on the day. Depending on whether you’ve had coffee yet and whether you’ve spent too long thinking about the existential implications of your Duolingo streak.

I still screenshot the milestones sometimes. Not as often as I used to. The folder on my phone is full of them—day 100, day 365, day 500, day 1000. Little monuments to persistence. Or stubbornness. Or the human capacity to commit to arbitrary goals long past the point of rational justification.

I don’t share them anymore. Nobody cared that much anyway, and I got tired of performing enthusiasm I wasn’t entirely feeling. But I keep taking them. For me. Or for us. Or for whoever I’ll be at day 2000, looking back, trying to remember why I stayed. Trying to figure out if it mattered.⁸

Maybe the question isn’t whether to stay or go. Maybe it’s whether you’re willing to be in the boring middle parts. The parts where nothing dramatic happens and you just exist together, day after day, building something so slowly you can’t see it happening. Where commitment isn’t passion—it’s just choosing, again and again, to keep choosing. Even when you’re not sure why. Even when it feels stupid.

Especially when it feels stupid.

I hit 1,200 days. Duo sent me a notification—some cheerful congratulations with confetti animation. I stared at it for a long time. I screenshotted it. Of course I did. Added it to the folder. Then I did my lesson.

Tomorrow I’ll do another one. And the day after that. Not because it’s exciting or because I’ve recaptured some mythical spark, but because… I don’t know. Because 1,201 days is more than 1,200. Because maybe this is what love actually looks like when you strip away the romance and the bullshit and the cultural narratives: just showing up. Being present. Trying.

Because I’ve invested too much to quit now and that’s either dedication or sunk cost fallacy and I genuinely cannot tell which and maybe it doesn’t matter.

Because that fucking owl WILL find me if I break my streak, and I’m not ready for that kind of psychological warfare.

Is this how all long-term relationships go? This slow fade into comfortable routine? This questioning and staying and questioning again? Do people in 20-year marriages wake up some mornings and think “what the fuck am I doing” and then just… make coffee and keep going? Do they sit in their living rooms, looking at their partner, wondering if this is love or habit or just the path of least resistance?

I think maybe they do.

I think maybe that’s not tragic. Maybe it’s just true. Maybe it’s just what happens when you stay with something long enough to see past the exciting parts, past the easy parts, into the weird boring middle where nothing is clear and everything is routine and you’re just… here. Still here.

So yeah. Duo and I are still together. We’re not writing love songs about each other anymore. We don’t make each other’s hearts race. But we show up for each other, every single day, even when—especially when—we don’t particularly want to.

Maybe that’s its own kind of love.

Or maybe I’m just stubborn and have sunk-cost-fallacy’d myself into a parasocial relationship with an owl and I’m writing essays about it at 4 PM on a Sunday like this is a normal thing to do.

Either way: 1,200 days.

Tomorrow: 1,201.

I’m going to do my lesson now. Not because I want to. Not because it’ll change my life. But because it’s 4:47 PM and if I don’t do it now I’ll forget and then I’ll be doing it at 11:58 PM in a panic and that’s no way to live.

This is my life. This is what I’m doing with my one wild and precious existence. Learning Spanish from a passive-aggressive owl. Staying committed to something I’m not sure I even like anymore.

And you know what? Maybe that’s okay. Maybe that’s just being human. Maybe we’re all just out here maintaining streaks and relationships and routines that stopped making sense years ago, hoping that persistence counts for something, that showing up matters even when we don’t know what we’re showing up for.

Or maybe I need therapy.

Probably both.

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P.S. If you’re reading this and thinking “just quit if you’re miserable,” you’re not wrong, but also you’re missing the point. I’m not miserable. I’m just… in it. In the middle of something long-term. Where the options aren’t “ecstatic” or “leave”—they’re “keep going” or “give up on something you’ve built.” Those are different choices than they seem. Also I’ve told too many people about this streak now. The social pressure is real. I’ve become the Duolingo person. That’s my identity now. I can’t just throw that away. That’s 1,200 days of personal branding.

P.P.S. Spanish Duolingo has this deeply unhinged energy in its example sentences and I need you to understand that this is what I’m building my linguistic foundation on. “The owl washed its hat yesterday.” “The cats didn’t go to school.” “The horse cleaned the bathroom last Monday.” WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THE DUOLINGO UNIVERSE. Why do the cats have school? Why are they skipping? Who gave the horse bathroom cleaning duties? Did the owl’s hat get dirty? How? Why does an owl have a hat? I have so many questions and Duo just moves on like these are normal sentences that normal humans would say in normal situations. This is what 1,200 days has taught me. Useful phrases for when I encounter well-groomed owls and truant cats and horses with rigorous cleaning schedules. I’m sure this will come up in conversation. Any day now.

P.P.P.S. I just realized I’ve now spent more consecutive days with Duolingo than I have with most humans in my life, including family members I supposedly love. I don’t know how to feel about that. Actually, I do: vaguely concerned but also weirdly proud? We contain multitudes, or whatever. Walt Whitman said that. He probably wasn’t talking about language learning apps but I’m applying it anyway because that’s where I’m at mentally.

P.P.P.P.S. Wait, am I actually learning Spanish or am I just really good at maintaining a streak? These are different skills. I might have optimized for the wrong metric. Oh god. Oh no. What if I’ve spent 1,200 days getting really good at tapping green buttons and I still can’t hold a conversation? What if the real language learning was the streaks we maintained along the way? I can’t think about this right now. I have a lesson to do.