The story behind Subtext
I thought I was helping.
I built Subtext to explain one breakup. It ended up explaining me.
I'm better with text than I am in the room. I can re-read a message five times and finally catch what someone meant.
So when something went wrong between us, I'd write. Long messages, working out what had actually happened, where I'd got it wrong, how we'd fix it. That was me caring as hard as I knew how. She read it as cold.
A few years ago I left that relationship. It had spent a long time telling me my own memory was wrong: gaslighting, blame-shifting, though I didn't have those words yet. By the end I couldn't tell my version of us from hers.
So I went looking for evidence. Not the truth. Evidence. Mine was too kind to me. My ex's blamed me for everything. My friends were on my side no matter what, which felt good and proved nothing.
The record was still there. Thousands of messages, both sides, in our own words. Not how I remember it, how it went. So I built something to play it back without a side to take.
It gave me what I came for. Who reached out, who pulled away, where the tone turned. Then it gave me something I hadn't asked for: the distance between what I meant and what landed.
I went in to understand her. I came out understanding me.
So I ran another chat through it. Then another. Five or six in the end, different people, different years, different endings. From inside any one of them it looks like it's about that person. Side by side, that variable drops out. Same gap, every time. Nobody was in all of them but me.
I'd spent years defending what I meant. They were all answering what landed. You have to give up the version where you're the one it happened to. I didn't set out to build that. I tripped over it, then built it on purpose.
It didn't fix me. I still write the long message. I just know what it costs now. Subtext isn't therapy. It's a mirror. It shows you what was there and leaves you to sit with it. That's the read I needed. Now it's yours.
— Chris, founder of Subtext
The most important relationship data is hiding in plain text.
What we believe
Privacy is non-negotiable
Your conversations are the most intimate data you own. So we keep as little as we can: your raw export is gone within 3 days, sooner once your story's written. Our servers do analyse your messages, that's the product, so we won't pretend nobody can see them. We never sell your data, never train outside models on it, and you can delete any story, or your whole account, any time.
Honest insights, not comfortable lies
Subtext won't tell you what you want to hear. It will tell you what's actually in the data. Sometimes that's hard. We think clarity is more respectful than comfort.
No toxic positivity
We won't wrap a failing relationship in affirmations. If the patterns are bad, we'll say so: carefully, with evidence, and without diagnosing anyone.
A mirror, not a therapist
We show you what's there. We don't tell you what to do about it. When the data suggests professional help would be valuable, we'll say so and point you in the right direction.
Made with obsession in Munich.