Texting, in my opinion, is one of the great gifts of our time.

It makes transactional conversations easier. A text chain can serve as a vital reminder, helping to instantly recap a relationship, particularly after a gap. Typing a good text can even help articulate how you really feel about a situation or a subject.

Perhaps the one area in which it has been seen to do more harm than good, is the romantic relationship. Whether it is in the early days, or in the middle of a serious fight, each word can become so weighted down by things unsaid, that crafting the “right” message can feel absurdly stressful.

Take, for example, a post-first-date text. Something as simple as “I had a good time last night, but wasn’t that restaurant awful?” can feel impossible to send. Should it be “good time” or “great”? Is the second half of the text too negative? Does it seem needy? Smug? Too impassive?

So, at Floh, the offline dating service my husband Siddharth and I co-founded, we offered each member a primer on how to start a conversation with someone they didn’t yet know very well. I now find that a number of my clients are using ChatGPT and other AI programs for this purpose.

Let me say at the outset that I am glad this help is available. It can certainly be hard knowing exactly how to begin.

Clients tell me ChatGPT helps them find a “non-creepy way” to ask someone out; show interest without seeming desperate. (There was even one client who said he asked for help “creating a sense of mystery in the conversation”, and he was apparently very happy with the results.)

My one bit of cautionary advice here would be: Don’t let ChatGPT settle into the relationship. Once the initial dates are done, start expressing yourself independently. I say this for two reasons.

First, given how core communication is to a relationship, I believe it will be hard to build a stable foundation for one, if the people in it can’t actually communicate effectively, one-on-one.

The second reason to phase out the bot is that the other person can usually tell it isn’t you. There is often a lack of deeper emotion in texts framed in this way. More crucially, the voice and personality of the sender are missing. Over time, this can begin to feel strange, unsettling and even offensive to the recipient.

In what feels like something out of a Black Mirror episode, the strains of this are already starting to show in ways I wouldn’t have expected. One couple I am coaching, let’s call them Giselle and Rohan, are in their mid-30s and have been together for more than 10 years. They came in asking me to help bring the romance back into their relationship.

Giselle and Rohan live in Bengaluru and have demanding jobs, he with a start-up and she in the field of design. This means they spend large parts of the day, and often parts of the weekend, apart. Like most loving couples, they bridged this gap with the occasional call, the frequent date night, and lots of texts, about little things and workplace updates, but often just to say “I miss you”.

Lately, Giselle says, Rohan has started using ChatGPT to frame his messages to her. From routine updates to apologies in the wake of a fight, she can tell, she says, that a program has told him what to say. It isn’t his voice, and is often a flat monotone instead.

What finally did it for her was him using the platform to write her a happy-10th-anniversary text. We’ve been talking, in our sessions, about how this makes her feel, and why Rohan thinks ChatGPT can express his emotions better than he can. It’s a new flashpoint, in the world of relationship troubles, but I suspect we will see more like it.

My advice: Try not to mix love and ChatGPT. Use it only when the concern is how to communicate appropriately with someone you do not yet know very well.

Don’t ask it to help smooth things over with a partner, make a loved one feel appreciated, or convey deep emotion. At worst, this can become deeply hurtful and leave a partner feeling like you can’t be bothered to craft the right message yourself. At best, it can create a sense of distance, like there’s a screen between you. Because, in a sense, there is.

Go screen-free. The sooner, the better.

(Simran Mangharam is a dating and relationship coach and can be reached on simran@floh.in)

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