Why ChatGPT Relationship Advice Can Backfire

More and more people ask ChatGPT for relationship advice. After an argument, they paste screenshots of the conversation into a chatbot and ask who is right. When someone they are dating behaves in a confusing way, they ask AI what it means. When something in the relationship feels wrong but is hard to put into words, they try to figure it out together with the chat.

I understand why. Talking to friends about your relationship can feel awkward or embarrassing, and you may not want it to turn into gossip. For many of us in Israel who moved here from somewhere else, the friends we used to call after a fight now live in another time zone, and explaining your feelings in a second language is exhausting. A chatbot is there at 2 a.m., in any language, and it never judges.

In my previous column, I wrote about what a conversation with AI can and cannot give us. This time I want to look at what happens when we bring our relationships into the chat, and why AI so often hears only one side.

It understands you too quickly

Tell AI what hurt you, and it will almost immediately answer with something like: “Your feelings are completely understandable.” It is nice to hear. It feels like someone finally gets it.

But usually the understanding stops there. AI does not explore what this situation means for you in particular. Behind the hurt of an unanswered message, one person has a fear of not being needed. Another has anxiety and the urge to control. A third has a deep belief that asking for anything is not allowed. Each of them has their own story.

This is why relationship conversations with AI so often go in circles. You retell the situation, add details, send new screenshots, get new reasonable answers, and nothing changes inside.

It only hears your side

AI works only with your words. Your tone, your pauses, what is left between the lines, the way you talk about your partner: it sees none of this. And that is often where the most important thing is hiding, something you are not yet fully aware of.

It also hears only your version, however objective you try to sound. Even if you send the whole chat history, it does not know what your partner felt while typing, or what happened between you before.

It turns your partner into a theory

AI knows a great deal about relationship psychology: attachment styles, manipulation, codependency, narcissism. And it is happy to share.

If you come with a hypothesis, like “I think he just can’t love” or “I think she is manipulating me,” the chat will easily pick it up and develop it. As I mentioned last time, research shows that AI tends to agree with the person talking to it, and people leave these conversations even more convinced they were right. Or the chat offers a label itself: “This sounds like avoidant attachment.” If it fits your hurt, it is very easy to take it as the truth.

Either way, you end up further from your partner. Next to you is no longer a living person, but a ready-made theory about them. And it becomes harder to come back with curiosity and ask: “What was going on for you?”

It can replace the conversation with your partner

Say there is something hard to tell my partner: a hurt, a disappointment, a request. I tell the chat instead, get support, calm down, and never say it to the person it was meant for. The tension drops, but nothing reaches the relationship.

Sometimes that is useful. If you tend to blurt out things you later regret, a chat can help you cool down. But if speaking about your feelings is already hard for you, the chat can make it even harder. Everything has been discussed and analyzed, so going to your partner starts to feel pointless. The unsaid piles up, and the distance grows.

Couples who have moved to a new country know how much needs to be talked about: one partner settles in faster, the other misses home, roles and money shift. These conversations belong between the two of you, not in two separate chats.

It rushes you out of uncertainty

Misunderstandings, hurt and fights are part of any close relationship, not a sign that it is broken. After a fight, each partner often needs a pause to come back to themselves.

These pauses are anxious, and a chatbot offers an explanation in seconds. But sometimes we need to stay in not knowing for a while. That is when something ripens inside: I choose this person again, or I realize I no longer do. A decision made after a late-night conversation with a chatbot relieves anxiety quickly. Decisions about relationships need time.

How to use AI so it helps your relationship

• Ask it to ask you questions instead of giving verdicts: “Help me understand what really hurt me. Ask one question at a time.”
• Don’t ask who is right. Ask what your partner might be feeling and how the situation looks through their eyes.
• Doubt the answers you like most. An explanation of your partner’s behavior is a version, not a diagnosis.
• Don’t forward its answer to your partner as proof. “Even ChatGPT agrees with me” almost always sounds like an attack.
• Don’t make big decisions about the relationship the same night.
• After a conversation with the chat, have a conversation with your partner, even a short one. Otherwise the relationship slowly moves into the chat.

Signs it may be time to see a couples therapist

• You discuss the same situation with AI again and again, and nothing gets clearer.
• You talk about your relationship more with AI or friends than with your partner.
• You keep fighting the same way, and it always ends the same.
• There is more and more silence between you: no fights, but no closeness either.
• The same pattern repeats in every new relationship.
• You face a big decision and can’t reach it together.

This kind of work can happen in individual therapy too. You come alone, but the relationship is still in the room: being honest with a therapist and not being pushed away slowly changes how you are with your partner. In couples therapy, the therapist sees both of you and how you actually talk to each other: where communication breaks down, and what needs are hidden behind each reproach.

AI can help you vent, cool down and prepare for a difficult conversation. But what matters most in a relationship still happens between two living people, including in the pauses and in not knowing.

In my next column: when AI can be useful in the role of a therapist, when it is dangerous, and where the line is.

I write more about working with couples on my website: Relationship and couples therapy.