Love Coach: Should You Use ChatGPT for Relationship Advice? How to Find True Love in Modern Times

So many of us believe that love is like going to the spa, that that's what love should feel like. Like, ah, yeah, I'm just going to the spa. But love is like going to the gym. And maybe the gym has a spa in it, but you're not going to the spa, you're going to the gym. That's what love is. Relationships have always been hard. Where have we gotten it in our minds that relationships should be easy? We've now built into the fabric of our culture is ease and frictionless virtual experiences. You can date online. That was really easy. I now have parasocial relationships where I look and I think, wow, that's really easy. And now that doesn't mimic my relationship at home. All of a sudden there's way, way more friction in my relationship at home. But somewhere inside me believes that that friction is wrong because it doesn't mimic the friction that's happening in my day to day life online. In general, I think we do not understand the skills to make healthy love last period. I don't think the previous generation did. I don't think the generations before us, like this is not new. Now we just have easier access to the escape button.

Something that scares me a little bit is I think a lot of people in my Generation are asking ChatGPT relationship advice. What are your thoughts on that?

Honestly, I'm of two minds in some ways. I actually think it's a good place to go if you.

I want to start by reading amazing quote from your TED talk in 2016 Almost a decade ago, which is probably crazy for you. Um, the quote is. The quote is connection isn't created by the things we go get. Connection is created by the things we go back to. I, I like this quote a lot, but what do you mean by that?

Well, the talk itself was on relational loneliness. And what I was referring to was this idea that like, you know, we are so good at new novel. What's the next best swipe culture, right? And we think that that's going to bring us this idea of connection and intimacy if we just find the right person and the way to do that is. And what I found over time, and we are really going back in time to start this out, is that it's actually ritual that bring. It's like the things that we do, the mundane, the things that we do on a daily or a weekly or a monthly basis that bring us back to connection. And the example that I used in my talk and what was really relevant for me at the time was I had A group of girlfriends, and we got together every single Monday night. We didn't miss Mondays. It was really important. We all lived in the same city at the time. And so we would gather every Monday. We did this rain or shine, and we did this during the mundane parts of our lives. Nothing was going on, nothing that dramatic. But what ended up happening is during that span, and let's call it, you know, a year or two years of us gathering, people went through miscarriages, people broke up engagements, people like all of these massive life disruptors started happening. And the truth is having the anchor of connection, of the mundane, the Monday night ritual was the thing that held us during the times where one person or another person's life felt like it was falling apart. And so, you know, I think often when we think about major life transitions and events, the one person we generally have, if we're in partnership is our partner. But sometimes that thing is happening with our partner, like the thing, the rupture is happening with our partner. And we need outside support. And for people who experience loneliness and relational loneliness, especially that time that they need it, the exact time that they need support the most is the time where they don't have it because they haven't set themselves up for it yet. And so if we're a just reliant on our partners to give us whatever intimate dynamic that we need, intimate partnership, intimate, like relational cues that we need, that's one thing, and it's good to have it. But if we haven't built our, the social fabric of our lives to include way more than just our intimate partnerships, then we're going to be in a lot of trouble if something happens. And I think, you know, my supervisor and colleague Esther Perel talks a lot about how we, in current day and age, we. The job of the tribe, the job of the community, is now put on one person, that we expect our partner to be our lover, our confidant, our best friend, right? Everything. And so it's easy, especially in today's world where everything can be done online from the comfort of your couch, it's easy to not anchor in social connections outside of our relational, our intimate partnership and that dynamic. But when things possibly go south or when things get hard, you need more connections than just that. Not one, one person cannot fill all of those needs. It's also part of how we think about swipe culture and finding partners right now. Like, because we have this idea that one person should, quote, unquote, fulfill all of these needs, then what happens when they don't we leave. And it's easy enough to leave because the next swipe is right there. So I really mean what does it. And by the way, I want to say that social isolation and loneliness are very different than relational loneliness. And so just to say that out of the gate that there is social isolation means like I don't have anybody and I, and I want to have people and I don't have those connections. You can, I mean, I probably don't have to tell you this for you or any of the listeners. I imagine for a lot of us, we actually like being alone. There's a, you know, it's nice to have alone time and that space and that quiet time when it's chosen, when, when it feels like it's an option. Relational loneliness is really different though. Relational loneliness is about what it feels like to be disconnected in a partnership or a close dynamic that is meant to bring us intimate connection. And it's the difference between how that. Wait a second, I thought you were supposed to, I thought I was going to come to you and we were supposed to feel close and all of a sudden we're in bed lying next to each other and you're on your phone and I'm on my phone and I couldn't feel further away from the person I'm supposed to feel closest to that disconnection from where I thought we would be or what I thought this relationship was supposed to provide versus what I actually feel in the moment. Over time that can create a chronic stress loop which then has impacts on, you know, long term health, which I can go into more.

Yeah, it reminds me of that very, very popular quote, like you're in a room full of people but feel alone. And it's like a lot of times especially, and this is a common in American culture, how we, we associate people liking us or our connections with what we do and what we achieve. But when like you said in that quote, it's, it can you can just go back to your friends, you could just, instead of becoming a millionaire, to have everyone like you, you could just call a friend. And it's also too like if you're, if you're liked by everyone, that doesn't necessarily translate into meaningful connections. And that's why you have like these celebrities who have millions of people that love them, but they also feel alone at the same time. Right?

Well, these are the parasocial relationships where they're one sided doors or one sided mirrors. Right. It's like all these people, millions of people could know so much about you but you know nothing about them. You wouldn't necessarily choose them as friends. It's a one way relationship. Those aren't, that's not social connection. And, and so with again, how much time we're spending online and not just adults, like we're watching the research right now with kids and young adults, like they're having sex later, they're not even having relationships or starting relationships with AI. And so things that, you know, we may have experienced, the mistakes that we made growing up, the awkward kisses, the trying, you know, crushes and things like that, like this is being skipped and it's. Being skipped is not the right word. It's the, the kind of emotional maturity to deal with all those things is now being punted way, way later in life. You're seeing it all over. It's the, the research is pretty wild when it comes to how, how different kids now are being raised to how like our generations may have been raised when it comes to drinking, social connection, forming relationships and attachment. I mean it's a, it's a completely different environment and landscape.

Yeah, it's scary. And I want to go back to this point about like being in a room full of people or being loved and feeling alone. I know something about, know about your story is you were in a TV show, reality TV show, for, for some time and you said that even though you had those 50 minutes of fame, it was the most lonely and sad you ever were. Is that correct?

Yeah. Gosh, we're really going back here. So, yeah, I mean I was 21 years old and I was on a show called the Real World, which at the time was like the hit. You know, it's not, it's no longer on TV anymore, but was one of the very first reality TV shows on air. And so I was so excited to go on. And I was also coming from, you know, I didn't have a lot of confidence at that age. And so I went on the show and on the show we were the most important people. You know, we had producers, we had people following us, camera people following us around all the time. We were like the stars, right? The most important people. And then the show stopped and it was filmed in Brooklyn. I then moved to New York and I don't have people following me anymore. I don't have people. Like no one was recognizing me on the streets. I had this idea that all of a sudden this was like again, my 21 year old brain was like, oh, this is gonna launch my career. It totally didn't. And I think the Difference between expectation and where I was in my confidence and hoping that external validation would get me the thing that would finally make me feel good about myself. Just realizing that gap was. And then also the comparison loop. Now I have seven people. You know, the premise of the real world is you move in with seven strangers and you all just live your life. Now I have seven other people who I'm now comparing myself to who some people's careers were taking off. And I'm there feeling like I am floundering at 21 years old. And like, at that point, New York really, like, chewed me up and spit me out. I. And I didn't see it coming. And I think, again, that was one. A piece of why that time was so hard is because the expectations didn't match reality. This is kind of going back to what I'm saying about the dynamic when you're lying in bed next to somebody and you feel like your intimate partner should be the person who you feel the closest with and you feel deeply alone or disconnected from that person. The gap, the delta between how you thought you should feel with this person and how I thought I should feel after this experience and what I actually felt was so large. And I didn't have the tools, I didn't have the therapists, I didn't have. Like, I had no idea. I was really kind of on my own trying to figure out. And the only thing I could think of at that point was just try and go get more validation. Do whatever you can to get the external validation. Build your career. Try this, try that. And so I was all over the place. I thought I wanted to be a hip hop dancer. I tried my hat at DJing. I mean, like, I was a. I was a. I was a hot mess in my early 20s. But it was that. It's that. It's that gap that the expectation does not meet reality. And when expectation doesn't meet reality, this is also dating culture, right? If we expect the person that we meet to. To be every. We have higher expectations today of what a relationship, what an intimate partnership should be and what one person should be able to meet than we ever have in the history of romantic love. And when that person doesn't meet it, what do we do? Well, some of us are going to suffer in silence. Some of us are going to leave way earlier than we should. Some of us are going to kick and scream in that relationship and cause a ruckus and be fighting all the time, you know, depending on who you are, your attachment, your wounding, your, you know, Your, Your kind of romantic makeup leading up to that point, like, you're gonna sabotage your relationship because you have so many, so many expectations. We do the same thing in life, in other arenas, and that's just what I was doing at the time with my career.

Yeah. If I had to guess, one of the main reasons why you almost chased that 50 minutes of fame, if you really, like, dive deep into why that is, you probably just came down to you want a connection. And I feel like when. When you, like, you ask someone, like, let's say someone's starting a business, you ask them like, well, why do you want to start a business? Oh, to make a lot of money. You're like, well, why do you want to make a lot of money? And then you just keep on going down. It eventually comes down to you want to be liked or you want to have that connection. But like you said in your TED Talk, like, why. Why go through all that? I mean, it's good to have ambitions. Right? It's good to try to help the world, to try to make the world a better place. But, like, if you really, like, ask yourself those questions, like, why am I doing this? And the answer is, I just want to be liked and have connection. You can do that by just, like, reaching out to an old friend. Like, it's that easy. Instead of we're going through all this work thinking that it's going to make you liked by everyone and have all these friends.

Absolutely. I would add on to that that we haven't really been taught how to do friendship. We haven't actually been taught what friendships need in order to sustain themselves. And, and some friendships, like, I. I actually think about it in circles. Like, there's some people who are going to be in your inner circle, and those probably at one point needed a lot of nurturing to get to your inner circle. I can't remember the number, but I think there's some research on. I'm gonna butcher the number, so don't quote me, but it's some astronomical number of hours that you need in order to be. Become close with somebody. It's like thousand hours or so. Again, I'm throwing it out there. I don't actually, I should go back and look at the research, but that you need a lot of hours in order to actually feel really close. Like you could call them on your worst day. So then you have these certain number of people. There can be far fewer in this inner circle. And then you have people who are kind of in the outward circles, you know, right. Outside of the inner circle you have. And we can only sustain so many of each, right? Like you could have hundreds of acquaintances probably, you know, you could see somebody on the street and remember their name. You could. Or see them at an event and remember their name, but you know nothing about one another. And those, those relationships certainly aren't going to get you the quote unquote connection that you're looking for. And then you have people who you see in an event and you're excited to see them. And maybe it's once a year and you guys kind of have a drop in. You're, you know, you talk for an hour and you're excited, but you're kind of catching up. High level. Then you have people that maybe you see a few times a year. Maybe these are people you grew up with, people who you. Who maybe you wouldn't choose to be friends with today, but they have his. You share history together and every time you go back home or whatnot, you get together with those people and you feel like you, you know, you have some sort of connection, whether that's deep or it's just because of the nostalgic presence of them being around for the history of your life. So all of these people fit in these different kinds of circles. And every circle needs a different kind of nurturing. Acquaintances don't really need nurturing. The people in the inner circle or people right outside of the inner circle that you want to bring to your inner circle. These are going to be the ones that you're calling late at night when stuff has hit the fan and you really need somebody. These are the people who are on speed dial who you could call and you know, they would answer. And to some people don't have that. And especially men, by the way, especially men don't have those kinds of intimate connections. And in part that's because we just have never learned what it takes to actually be there. I mean, for men, and I'm generalizing here, vulnerability culture has raised men to believe that vulnerability is weakness. But how do we get close to somebody? Well, oftentimes you're telling them a deep secret or you're bringing them in on a wound you have, and then all of a sudden they share something about themselves. And now you have some camaraderi. But if we've believed that there's no way to, and this is for women too, which is just higher likelihood that men don't have this. If we believe that relationships should just happen, then we're missing the point of what it actually takes or we're missing the magnitude actually of what it takes to maintain, relate like friendships take effort and work. Also, if you think about, if you just kind of zoom out our whole lives with friendship up until we leave college, right. Are there the, the time spent is manufactured in for us. You go to school together, you go to, you live in the dorms together, you. So you have this built in, these built in hours to spend with people where it's easier find connection because just because you're there all the time. So you have closeness weaved in to the fabric of how your life is built. The structure that it's built, that's built for you. You go to elementary school, you go to middle school, you go to high school, some of us go to college and all of that is built in for us. We actually don't need to do much to reach out because the people that were, you know, you get a degree in whatever you get a degree in, well, the other people in that degree are probably gonna agree, you know, they have something in common with you. Then we're thinking about dorms. Okay. You're in a specific stage of life together. All of these enhance our ability to have social connection. Now what happens when we leave college is where do we find connection for many of us in the workplace? How many of us are working virtually now? But even if you're not working virtually and you're going into the office, think about how many different life stages are there. Like you might have just come out of college and you're spending time with someone who's about to have a baby. What do you have in common that's a really hard. Like that, that, that, that's probably likely not going to turn into a really intimate connection just by way of how different you, the different life stages that you're in. So we need to, once we start to get older, it's really up to us to start understanding what we, what we're interested in, what we need to build social connection. And, and we need to spend way, way more time intentionally building something that was built in for us for our whole lives.

Yeah. And this, this whole remote thing, like remote work is, is all very new. Like this became very popular in 2020. I mean I'm fully remote and I mean if I didn't have like close friends or relationships outside of work, like I, it would, it would be terrible, especially if you live alone. And it's like also too doing this podcast for three years doing like remote stuff like this and in person podcasts, there's A big difference. And like, I don't think people really understand difference and doing stuff remote is nice because, like, we can be in different time zones. Like, we are and still have a conversation without me buying a, buying a plane ticket or you buying a plane ticket. But there's a big difference. And so what do you know about that difference between like the remote and in person meeting?

Listen, I also work remotely, and I can tell you as somebody who has done both, I mean, I have to think, I have to put a lot of effort into my relationships that are not. I mean, I'm a solopreneur, right? So I don't have. I have like a couple people on my team who help me, but it's small. And again, we're in different life stages. We're in, like, we're not, we're not friends outside of. It's. It's nice to have the connection, but we're all remote. None of, none of us live in the same place. And I can tell a huge difference between what it's like to be virtual versus what it was like to go into the office. I mean, I don't actually think we need to explain this to people. That much I think we know. The tricky part is if you've never gone into the office, then we are. Something I think a lot about is the kind of frictionless life, the frictionless virtual life that a lot of us lead. And so it can feel like. It can feel really nice to be like, wow, I don't even have. I can be like, you know, professional on the top and party on the bottom and like, have sweats on and nobody will know and I don't have to, you know, pack a lunch for myself to go into the office or whatever it is. Like, sure, there are all of these conveniences, but what do we give up when we, when we opt in to just convenience. Now this is what we see. I mean, you know, you can talk about it working virtually, but you can also talk about it, about how much time we're spending online, right? And how much we expect our virtual experience, whether it's dating, whether it's shopping. I can literally think of a brand and it shows up on my algorithm, right? Like, it's. There is, there is nothing in between me and the ease of which my, my virtual life can occur. We can hop on here, be in different time zones like you said, and here we are just like that, never having met before. Like, like all of that is so we can get groceries. Like, we've now built into the Fabric of our culture is ease and frictionless virtual experiences. But what happens now when we get into relationship, when we get into partnership, when we now have to go into the office, you know, it doesn't really matter what we're talking about. But now you have to get in your car, now you have to be in traffic, now you have whatever. Whatever the friction may be. My focus is on romantic relationships and repair in relationships. So I think about it a lot in that context. Which is, which is, okay, you can date online. That was really easy. I now have parasocial relationships where I look and I think, wow, that's really easy. And now that doesn't mimic my relationship at home. All of a sudden there's way, way more friction in my relationship at home. But somewhere inside me believes that that friction is wrong because it doesn't mimic the friction that's happening in my day to day life online or the, the, the lack of friction happening in my day to day life online. And so now I'm with my partner or I'm with a friend and we get into a fight, and now that fight happens weekly. Maybe that. Maybe we're fighting all the time after we've hit a certain stage in relational. Maybe now we're sweeping that fight under the rug or however we're dealing with it. And internally we are in so much pain because we don't understand what healthy love or what healthy relationships actually look like because of how little they mimic a virtual experience.

Do you think it's harder to find love in today's age? I mean, there's this contradiction going on. Like we talked about, it's never been easier to find someone with dating apps. But like you said before, people are. My generation is just having a really hard time finding a partner. I mean, a lot of us are single. I have a lot of friends. I mean, I'm 26. I have a lot of friends who are unmarried and single, which back in my parents day, like that was unheard of. Like, almost everyone was married or had kids at 26. So what's the state of modern dating in your opinion?

Well, listen, I think in some ways it's harder. In some ways it's easier. I think again, we have more access to people we would never have access to before. But our expectations have raised so much. And the access gives us this idea that the grass is always greener, right? Instead of the grass is greener where you water it, the grass is always greener on the other side. And if, and if at the first sign of, ooh, we don't get that, we don't agree on this or we're different. It's so much easier now to be like, Well I have 7,000 other options online, so why not just give it a go? We have to decide for ourselves that we want to stop because the dating apps aren't going to make us stop. They're going to have us keep going. They want us to keep going. Right? It's just like scrolling. It's like it's a, it's made to be an addiction for us. And just going back to what I was saying, we don't actually have as much practice anymore. So we're out of practice of what it actually takes to have hard conversations, to open up vulnerably. We don't, we haven't, because we haven't practiced that. I mean, think about the relationship with ChatGPT and how many younger folks are now building relationships with ChatGPT. It's a one way relationship with a bot that is going to tell you exactly what you want to hear. And now you have the option to be in a relationship with another human who's going to disagree with you. If you haven't had practice, what would you choose? Right. It's, it's. Listen, I, I think about, I think a lot about how the generation before raising kids, generation raising kids has never dealt with whatever the kids are dealing with, right? So for my generation it was like we had pagers and my generation grew up right before cell phones. It was like the Internet was getting popular but we didn't have computer at home computers yet. We didn't have, or we were just starting to get home computers, but they were big and no one had a laptop. We didn't have cell phones yet. So there were pagers and then we had cell phones and then we have the Internet. And my parents generation didn't have access. They're like, whoa. How do we raise people who are, who now have virtual access online on their phone all the time? But we also didn't have apps on our phone, we just had a phone to call people. We are now faced with a position, in a position right now where this is, this is what happens, this is how the world moves. Now the next generation is raising a generation who has access to AI. I didn't have access to AI. How do I deal with raising a kid who now has virtually any access they want to any information they need and relationships with a bot that are not at all going to mimic the relationships that they have in their real life? And so Is it easier to date or is it harder to date? I think our skill level for. I think we, I think we.

In.

General, I think we do not understand the skills to make healthy love last, period. I don't think the previous generation did. I don't think the generations before us, like, this is not new. Now we just have easier access to the escape button. So we're really lacking understanding what healthy love looks like and models for that. And so we're making up whatever we think that should be on our own or through media or through movies, Hollywoods or Disney that movies that we grew up on. And now we're expected to somehow understand that. Like Prince Charming. Wait a second, you're not Prince Charming. Like that's, that's not what's. That's that. Cause this isn't what that looks like. It's cognitive dissonance when we think about how different. And so we're largely lacking the skills. So do I think it's harder to date? In some ways? Yeah. Do I think it's easier to date? In some ways? Yeah. But I think making love last, if that's a goal for people, if a goal is healthy long term love, I think we are missing a lot of the fabric of what we need in order to make that work. And we only need to look at the divorce statistics in order to. And also we also just, I mean, look at how many people are choosing to opt out of marriage. Look how many people are choosing to opt out of kids. Like, we're in a different environment now.

Absolutely. But I had the pleasure of interviewing. It was 103-year-old doctor, her name was Dr. Gladys Makary. She actually passed the month after I interviewed her. So I got super lucky. It was one of the best interviews I've ever had. And I asked her this question about like, why do you think that young people are struggling with finding love and relationships? And she goes, that's just life. Like everyone, like my, like everyone's been for the. My hundred years I've been on this earth. It's always been a struggle with relationships. But like you said, like it's, it's. But it's never been easier just to opt out and leave and find someone new rather than work on the issues that you have together and me. But this, then the other. It's a contradiction though, because I feel like on the other side of it, dating apps can bring people together. Like I found my current girlfriend on dating apps, but I also had like four years before that of that situation where it's just like it felt like that or it felt like any small issue that happened, people just ran away.

Well, and I, I, I think this is a both. And I don't want to demonize dating apps. Like, you found your person. So many people do. I don't think they're bad. I just think it gives us an out in a different way. And, and I love that you just said that about, like, relationships have always been hard. Where have we gotten it in our minds that relationships should be easy? One of my, one of my friends and colleagues, Annie Lala, she's a love coach, a distinction that I love. I just think it's so good where she's like, so many of us believe that love is like going to the spa, that that's what love should feel like. Like, ah, yeah, I'm just going to the spa. But love is like going to the gym. And maybe the gym has a spa in it, but you're not going to the spa, you're going to the gym. That's what love is. It's not the spa. But, but if we think that that's what it's supposed to feel like, that we are supposed to be completed by this person or that once we can just exhale and relax. No, no, no. Now your wounds start kicking in now, right? It's like there are there. Love is not, it's not outside of hard. Love is hard. It's not like hard is different than love. It is incorporated into a healthy, long term, secure, functioning relationship is how freaking hard it is. You earn your stripes. If you want to get to a place where you two aren't fighting or where things aren't getting swept under the rug. You don't get there by not experiencing tension. You get there by experiencing tension, knowing what to do with that tension, moving through the tension, and then hopefully you'll go through periods of more ease. But then a parent dies, you move, someone loses their job, you have kids, whatever transitions, all of a sudden you can be right back in more tension. That's not different than what it should be. That is love.

Yeah. I think another factor too is just the overall need for instant gratification, where if something doesn't gratify us right away, there must be something wrong with it. But that's not really the way life works.

No, no. And I think about the dopamine reward system, right? The dopamine is, we feel the reward system of dopamine when we're chasing. It's like right before we get the thing, it's like thinking about that sandwich we're going to have later, being so excited, it's not actually biting into the sandwich. And so this idea of the constant chase and when you first start dating, those feelings of, like, ooh, what am I going to text back? When they just texted me? And. Right. It's this like, you're feeling that reward system over and over again because you're not quite getting the thing.

Thing.

Then you get the thing, and all of a sudden you settle in and that thing, that was kind of cute before. Now they're creative, right? And now they're just a little messy. And you're like, oh, God, that's like, I didn't sign up for someone who's met. Right. So all that's all of a sudden the things that you could just kind of sweep to the side before, when you were falling in love, when you're focusing on the chase, very, very different experience. Once you now live with the person or you've decided to commit, because now that reward system isn't going off anymore. And that's the feeling of the gratification. It's like, ooh, I didn't get the thing. Oh, I'm working towards. I'm getting. And that's so exciting for us. We love that. It's very human to love that. But then you get into a dynamic, and now you're faced with your wounding, their wounding, how those things collide in a dynamic, how you two navigate those things. And those yellow flags that you didn't quite see are now glaring in your face about how messy they are or about the fact that they can never be on time or the fact that they love, love sports. And you could kind of get with it at the beginning, and now you're like, oh, I don't. I never really liked sports. I don't really want to go to the sports bar or whatever it is. And now you're just looking at your differences, and those differences scare you. And so. So either we're pulling the plug, which is not everybody, by the way, we're pulling the plug, or we're. We're now in tension, and we have no idea how to deal with that tension. That friction that I was talking about earlier. Now we're like, okay, well, no one taught me how to do this. But that's a. That's a necessary stage of relationship to get into. Is the part where you two meet, where you two bump heads and meet your differences.

You. You talked a little bit earlier about ChatGPT and AI. Something that scares me A little bit is, I think a lot of people in my Generation are asking ChatGPT relationship advice. What, what are your thoughts on that?

Honestly, I'm of two minds in some ways. I actually think it's a good place to go if you prompt it well. So I actually tell people, you know, that, that like if they think about it, you could plug in your entire relationship dynamic into ChatGPT and it could give you probably better information than a therapist could. But if you're not, if you're prompting it, as we know, AI is trained to be likable. So if you're prompting it with your side, it's always going to give you a perspective that is likable to you. It's going to feel good for you. So I would say if you're going to use it for relationships, which I don't think is a bad thing, you just want to make sure to prompt it and say something like, one of my favorite prompts is how would I prompt you to give me the best feedback if I wanted you to remain neutral or if I wanted you to see their point of view too or, and then it will actually feed you the prompt that it will, that you should give it. Here are the relationship dynamics, here's my point of view. Here's what I think their point of view is. But I might be wrong about that. How would you have me prompt you so that I can actually get the best information that's not just one sided? So you could do that. You could also put in, so you've put in all your stuff. Then you could say, okay, now act like you're the other person. What might they be thinking and feeling about this situation? Where might. I have blind spots here? So if we're just using it to feed our egos, like that's what we're gonna get get. And that's not going to help us grow, it's going to give us validation. And the tricky part about that is that validation probably isn't correct because it's not because you don't actually have information from the other side unless both of you are feeding in. So like I have an am, an AI model that's trained in repair through my lens. So literally you get on and you're like, okay, my partner and I just got into a fight, I don't know what to do. How do I deal with this, this. And what does the AI do? It's like it'll chat with. You can literally hear a voice, you can talk to it on the phone. It will Help regulate you. It will help, but it's always going to be prompting you for, well, okay, so what, what was their right? So it's not going to just feed you what you want to hear, it's going to help you regulate, it's going to help you. So it's interesting. I actually think AI is quite a fascinating tool, but I think we need to, you know, it's, it's the difference between an AI that's likable and just feeding you what you want to hear and an AI that is actually helping you learn and grow. Those are different things.

Yeah, giving it context and like you said, having a non biased view is very important because when I feel like you ask these general questions, AI doesn't understand the context of that specific relationship or the nuance of human beings and human relationships. And so you talked about the upsides, which I think that's great, I think that's a great way to look at it, is that if you give it enough context, ask us to give you unbiased opinions, it might give you some good feedback. Are there some downsides to it?

Well, I mean, I think the downsides are also what I was talking about, which is you're not actually giving it information that is useful long term because you're, you are so biased yourself. So you're working with your own human bias. Of course, if you're pissed, if you're triggered, whatever, like you're going to be feeding it what you think, what is happening on your side of the street. But that is, is almost certainly not the thing that's happening on the other side of the street for your partner. Like, there's a great line by one of my colleagues, relationship therapist Terry Real, who says there is no such thing as objective reality inside of a relationship. There are just two subjective truths. I have my perspective, you have your perspective. That's it. And if I'm fighting for the truth, I'm fighting a losing game because yours is gonna look really different. So if I'm over here saying to you, stop yelling at me. And you're saying, I'm not yelling, like I just raised my voice. And you're like, that's yelling, you're yelling. And I'm like, I didn't yell. I was literally just like my voice raised a couple of decibels. Both of you, who's right? Who's right? Like you have different perspectives of that. There is no right. So if you're feeding information into AI as if you're right, then you're in trouble. In fact, I was watching this, I think I saw something on Instagram of this guy who fed it. I cheated on my partner. Tell me why that was right to do. And it was insane. It was like, you're right, you needed that. That was. Of course you did that right. And it was so interesting to see. Like we're gonna get what we wanna hear. That's not going to necessarily do us well in relationship, but it might feed our ego for a bit. So I think the risk really is a one sided experience that then. That then you bring by the way you thinking or you bring that the conversation that you just had now it's validated your experience even more. Now your ego is even bigger. Now you have dug in your heels to your side even more deeply and you bring that to your partner and your partner, it's like so far off from their experience. But now you have a third witness to validate you. And so again this like dig in your heels of being right is may. May win over being relational. The, the whole idea of who's right, who's wrong, who cares? Right. If the, the, the more I'm right if I win, you. If I win and you lose, we both lose. Like we have to go to bed together that night. Like no one's winning there. So if I'm using AI to val just as a validator, then I'm. That I'm losing. I'm also losing out on my own growth. Both.

Yeah. And unfortunately it's not only AI that does the validating. It's. It could be your friends, it could be. Could be your parents, could be your family. Like a lot. I feel like when a lot of people ask, go to these people that love them for relationship advice, they tell them things that they want to hear instead of the truth.

Yeah. I think you need to be really discerning about who you go to. I think that's a real. Even with therapy, I think not all therapy not. I think all therapists are not created equal. And I often say getting into therapy sooner than later in relationships is a good idea. Not just because you're not so entrenched in your dynamics, but because couples therapy is really hard. And it is hard to find a good couples therapist. They don't actually need to be as good if you find them earlier on because you're not so entrenched in the patterns. And so they don't actually need to do as much digging for, you know, gold there. Like it's. Relationship therapy is really, really hard. So in order to find Somebody, or if you find somebody earlier on, then you're like, okay, well, they don't actually have to do as much heavy lifting. They don't actually need to as good. But if you wait until you're entrenched with a lot, which a lot of people do, they wait until things are bad enough where they're like, okay, well we can't do this on our own, we have to go see somebody. Then you've really got to lean on a very good couples therapist. And they're just few and far between.

This reminds me of a quote that you, that you said that said that there's no truth in relationships. What do you mean by that?

That was what I was talking about with the subjective realities. Yeah, so. So this idea that I have my experience over here, you have your experience over there. And the more that I'm fighting for you to see my experience as truth, the more I lose because you have such a different lens. We're both coming into the relationship with two different sets of wounding with different histories, with different patterns. And so we're going to see the same situation very differently. Now, I don't mean when there are actual lies. I'm not saying like someone lies and now you're saying, well, there's no truth. I mean when there are two subjective experiences that with people who are doing their best and they're, you know, no one's lying or manipulating or coercing, then, then you're going to come to the table and say, I mean, I'm trying to think of a, of an example of me and my wife recently because I think this is, this is, is actually where a lot of people get tripped up. And you did an interview, I think with, was it Jerry Wise who was talking about discernment? And this is where what I'm talking about with the skill that we need in order to maintain healthy long term relationships. Discernment is such, excuse me, differentiation and discernment. But differentiation is such a big piece of it, right? Which is if I can tolerate your truth, even though it's a painful truth to hear, which might be like, I'm pregnant and my wife wanted to go on this ski trip to Japan while I was pregnant and she's been traveling a lot for work. So I really didn't want her to go on the ski trip to Japan. I wanted her to stay with me because she's been gone now for her skiing is like where she feels her lifeblood. Like this is so important to her, going on a trip. I wasn't Thinking about that, I was thinking about, I want to be taken care of. Like, I want to be the priority. Right now I feel like you've been gone because you've been working so much. Like, it felt totally valid on my end to be like, hey, ski trip to Japan, it's got to be 10 days, two weeks. Like, that's a long time to miss in my pregnancy. But for her, she's like, but after the kid, we're not. I'm not going to be able to do this for a really long time. This is a dream vacation that I've wanted to go on for a really long time. Who's right? You could probably argue if you're one person. If you're someone who's pregnant, you could probably argue that I'm right. If you're somebody who values freedom more like, you could probably argue that my wife is right. But if we're trying to. If somebody has to be right and someone's reality has to be quote, unquote, true, again, you're fighting a losing battle. What we actually need to do is what differentiation teaches us is differentiation teaches us how can we tolerate friction and tension. That even in the midst of her saying, hey, I really want to go all what comes up for me, I have all of my attachment stuff. I'm like, okay, does that mean I'm being abandoned? Does she care more about her friends than she cares about me? I mean, I have all of this stuff that goes on, but my move is, how do I learn to regulate? How do I learn to breathe through the tension and the friction that I feel right now that's telling me, oh, my God, she doesn't love me, she might abandon me. Blah, blah, blah. Like, this is, am I being rejected? Whatever stories I might create so that I can stay with her experience, if I can't do that, then what I'm gonna try and do is convince her. Or maybe I withdraw, right? Maybe I punish. Like, we all have different kind of ineffective behaviors that we use when someone else's truth comes up against our truth, quote, unquote. And we'll do that to. We. We do it for closeness or we do it for safety of distance. So. So for somebody who's a little more avoidant or who. Who prioritizes autonomy, that person in this situation might say, okay, we can't agree. I need to step out and I need to, like, go be by myself for however long. Another person who values safe connection as safety might say, okay, we disagree. Can we go out to dinner? Can we. Can you hold me? Can you? But if I am saying if your desire over here, if your desire to go on this trip, now I have all this meaning that I make about it over here on my end. It's. I'm. I'm making it mean that you don't love me. I'm making it mean that I'm being abandoned or left. I'm making it mean that you're not prioritizing this pregnancy. All of those are my stories that I need to own. But if I think that those stories are about her now, all of a sudden I'm blaming, I'm shaming, I'm making her wrong. And now what is she gonna do? She's going to probably bring her ineffective patterns of keeping herself safe into the space too. She's like, wait a second, I didn't do anything wrong. Like, I just wanted to go on this trip. Why am I being punished? Why are you telling me I'm too? So you can start to see where our lack of skill in relationship when tension starts to hit, hit. It's not that we need to create less tension in our relationships. How do we, quote, unquote, make relationships easier? No, it's how do we actually deal with the tension that exists in our bodies and own that that's happening to me. My experience over here, she may have shared something that created the experience, but whatever. The experiences that I'm happy having is mine to own. And by the way, when I actually own my experience instead of making it about her. So when I can say, when I can touch into the part of me that's like, okay, I can feel. How when you want to go on this trip, I can feel brings up in me this part that feels like I'm gonna be left all of a sudden. Now it's not about her. And her ability to stay with me in that is going to be much easier. So if I can own my side of the street, it's gonna be so much easier for her to then stay with me and for me to get the connection and I actually want. Would someone. The second someone feels blamed, we'll go into defensiveness. Of course, we're like, try to defend our honor here. Like, we didn't do it. That was not our intention. That's not how we were thinking about it at all. But if we have been taught that that tension is bad, that conflict equals bad and wrong, like, if we fight, then that must be bad. Then we're now starting to make meaning of our relational dynamics about like, well, what's wrong with us. Why are we fighting? This other couple that I just saw on Instagra that has six kids and they look really pretty and the wife is all done up and blah, blah, blah. How'd they do that? I don't know. I'm, you know, can't even get out of bed, let alone do my makeup because my kids are, you know, just poop themselves, like whatever it is. All of a sudden then we're thinking, oh, this isn't normal. This isn't what relationships are. I thought relationships were the spot, but no, relationships are the gym. We just need to understand what it the, the type of training it takes to be in this, the gym.

So I'm, I'm currently in the early stages of a relationship. What's your advice to me? Asking a selfish question. So what are some of like the core things I should keep in mind going into a new relationship?

Have you had any fights?

No.

I would say wait until you have a fight. That will tell you. That will tell you so much. And I don't believe actually in true love until a couple has been through the wringer. So I think we think we can feel love. Like we feel all the butterflies and the feelings of infatuation. We feel the oxytocin and the dopamine and the, you know, we like feel all the endorphins and serotonin, blah, blah, blah, like all those feel good chemicals that make us fall in love. But that's just the beginning. That's nature's way of trying to make us procreate, whether or not you're actually going to have kids. So to me, what I would pay attention to is actually not so much right now. Like, have fun, do your thing, have the, just, you know, be in it. If it feels good to stay in, stay in. When you two have your first fight, that to me is where things get interesting. So from my lens again, my lens is going to be the lens of repair. So I'm always going to think about, about like, okay, well, what's the conflict? I might be asking. So what do you do when you get triggered? What do you do when you shut down? Or what do you do when you get mad? What are we going to eventually meet in one another? That, like. And knowing for yourself, what are the things that are triggers for you? And when you get triggered, when you're on your worst day, how do you show up? Because you're going to meet that part of this person eventually. And if you two have had conversations about it before, it's not that it will necessarily make it easier, but you'll actually have an idea and potentially a map. Right? So if somebody says to you I can really easily withdraw when I feel triggered, you're not actually going to be able to see it on my face. I just shut down. I'm emotionally vacant. Even if I'm in the room. Like I have left the building, I kind of dissociate. And the thing that brings me back usually is when you put your hand on my left leg or when I take an hour of space or a night off, then I can usually start to regulate myself and come back. But if you keep provoking or if you keep wanting to talk, I'm going to keep distancing. Like I'm just going to keep. If there's enough self awareness there. I mean, that takes a lot of self awareness to even know. But you're in really good shape because then you know when that happens and you kind of can see them go vacant a bit, then you have the map. You're like, oh, they said if I just put my leg on or my hand on their leg or they said they need space. So I can actually say, hey, let's take the next off. Like I would love. Let's, let's, let's talk about this in the morning. Let's take the night off and, you know, finish up the conversation when you know, tomorrow, if you do have a map that's outside of when you're triggered, it's going to do you so well when the inevitable first fight hits. And it will. And fighting looks very different for people. Some it looks really quiet. Nobody wants to fight. People want to please. People want to override. Like, there are many, many ways to fight. Might not happen loudly. So if you two know how you two behave when you are most triggered and you can talk about that and sort of map it out, you are way, way ahead of the game than most people who are just dating.

Good to know. What's your advice to someone who is struggling to find a relationship? So they're. I mean, I know a lot of people in my generation who are just like, they're kind of fed up. Like they're, they like, you hear like, there's no good men out there. All the men suck with men. Like, there's no good girls out there. What's your advice to someone who's like really struggling to even find someone and is like chronically single? There's a lot of people in my generation out there like that.

Totally. I hear that and I hear the complaints Too about like it's this gender's fault, it's that gender's fault. Here's what I would do. I would make a list of all the things that you want in a partner. So maybe you want them to have a great community, maybe you want them to have a really good job, maybe you want them to be really kind and open, affectionate, whatever those things, things are self aware, blah blah blah. And I would turn that list on yourself and I would find the places where you have room for development, because we all do in the areas that you most want. And I would focus on that. So if you want someone who's really self aware, what are you doing to become more self aware? If you want somebody who has an amazing community and you lack community, how are you going to start to find and build community? If you want somebody who has a career that they love and they're passionate about, but you're in a 9 to 5 that doesn't feel so good, what are you going do to. To do like, how are you putting yourself? And so taking the focus off of the person and the things that we say we want so many of us are focused on. Well, we need a partner who fills X, Y and Z qualities. But if we were to turn that around and look, it can sometimes not be that pretty of a mirror to be like, oof, yeah, I want someone who's really in shape and beautiful and like I haven't gone to the gym in a while. Like that's not that okay, like I gotta start there. So I would first, first map what you want and then spin it back on yourself and then go to work on those parts where you feel like you have a little bit of room for improvement. And again, we all do. This is not about making you bad and wrong. This is all of us.

So my last question is, if you had one minute to talk to your younger self, what would you tell her?

I would tell her that instead of searching for happiness, look inside yourself for what it will take to be content and build contentment as a practice. Because then no matter what happens, contentment will always be there. You can be up, you can be down, you can have a relationship, you don't have to have a relationship. And either way you will know, know how to feel content, not happy.