There's a third person in our marriage. They saved it.

ChatGPT. We all use it. Full disclosure — it's helping me write this very article.

But do you know what else it's helped me write? Text messages. Between my husband and me. In the middle of heated arguments. 

Yep. I've officially outsourced emotional labour to artificial intelligence. It's like having a translator for your relationship.

Before you picture me sitting in a dark room, whispering my marriage woes to a robot (which I was) — let me explain.

Like most couples, my husband and I have a few recurring "themes" in our arguments. The kind of arguments that seem to appear on a loop.

You know the ones — same topic, same triggers, slightly new setting. After nearly eight years together, we've practically perfected the art of arguing about the same thing in new and not so creative ways.

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We've been circling the same issues for so long that we were both exhausted — emotionally and mentally. If I'm honest, our marriage has been on a one-way path to breaking. I could feel us slipping into the kind of disconnect that, without something changing, might have ended things altogether.

One night recently, mid-text-argument (because of course it was over text), I decided to do something different.

I copied and pasted the entire thread into ChatGPT and asked it to analyse it. No details, no context, just: "Can you tell me what's really happening here?" I wanted a neutral take. No bias, no blame, just… perspective.

The result? Honestly… incredible.

It articulated my emotions in a way I didn't even know how to express. It explained my frustration without making me sound defensive. But surprisingly, it also explained his perspective — calmly, clearly, and without the emotional noise.

It didn't dramatise or sugar-coat anything — it just calmly explained the emotional undercurrent. It translated his defensiveness and frustration into something that actually made sense.

For the first time in years, I felt understood, and I felt I better understood him, albeit through AI. 

Of course, when I told him what I'd done, he wasn't thrilled.

His first reaction was something along the lines of, "Our relationship must be in a dire place if we need AI to sort it out." Fair. But curiosity got the better of him, and he read it.

A few hours later, he came back and said that while he didn't agree with all of it, there were "some valid points."

It was as though ChatGPT had taken our tangled web of emotion and translated it into a language we could both finally understand. That might sound like a small moment, but for us, it was a breakthrough. It opened a conversation that felt… different. Softer. Less defensive. 

We've started communicating more effectively than ever before. We listen more, react less, and actually hear each other. We're in such a better place now — calmer, closer, and actually enjoying being on the same team again.

And I get it — it sounds weird. AI acting as a middleman in your marriage? But it worked. It gave us something we hadn't been able to find on our own: clarity.

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Relationships are messy, emotional, and full of miscommunication. AI isn't.

It's calm, neutral, and weirdly good at distilling chaos into something clear. It doesn't pick sides. It doesn't get defensive. It doesn't slam doors or sigh dramatically mid-argument (guilty).

It just takes your chaos, runs it through some weirdly empathetic algorithm, and spits out something surprisingly insightful.

So in a world where artificial intelligence can be dangerous and unpredictable and there are valid reasons for caution. For couples like us — juggling work, kids, exhaustion, and eight years of emotional shorthand — it's surprisingly and unexpectedly become a small lifeline.

Featured image: Supplied.