Built by a couple who needed it
I met Lara at a bar in St Kilda on the hottest afternoon of the year — 42 degrees, no mutual friends, no reason to be in the same room. She was sitting at a table laughing, holding one of her friend's babies, and the light caught her in a way that stopped me. I turned to the person next to me and said: "that's the woman I'm going to marry." I hadn't spoken to her yet.
She was on a working holiday from Germany, adventurous and spontaneous, and she had a plan to drive all the way to Perth. We met again in Port Fairy before the long stretch west. Something shifted there. She completed the drive — and lasted four days in Perth before turning around. She met me back in Melbourne and moved to Brisbane.
What followed was long distance across three countries, about six airport goodbyes, and stretches that tested us in ways I wasn't prepared for. I spent that time looking for an app that understood what we were going through — something built for the real version of long distance, not the postcard version.
I couldn't find one. I'm a chiropractor, not a developer. I started learning to code anyway.
Bonded is what came out of that. Lara and I built it together. For couples doing the hard version. For the Tuesday nights when the distance feels permanent. For the couples navigating visa paperwork and timezone anxiety and trying to stay genuinely close through all of it.
We're on the Sunshine Coast now. The distance is over. The app is almost ready.
— Patrick & Lara, Co-founders