Communicating with an ex can be fraught – but if you share children together, it’s not exactly something you can avoid doing. Capsule reader Kate had quite a traumatic end to her marriage and it made communication extremely difficult… until she tried one thing.
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Five years ago, Kate and her husband Tom split up. It wasn’t the easiest of splits – they’d certainly had their difficulties, but then Tom had an affair and he ended up leaving Kate for her. That relationship didn’t last, but he was quickly in another one – with a woman ten years younger.
“There’s been a lot of anger over the years,” says Kate. “And disappointment. I also have felt a lot of shame – I’m still embarrassed that he cheated on me, and I’m still embarrassed by his young girlfriend.”
As anyone who has been through a divorce or big split would know, it’s incredibly hard – and particularly so when children are involved. Kate and Tom share two young daughters.
But, for their sake, Kate does her absolute best to put on a brave, amicable face about her former husband.
“Sometimes it’s certainly easier than others,” she says. “There’s so much in our history, every conversation – even ones over messages – are so loaded. We know another layer of what the other is really saying or feeling, just by how it’s written, or what time it was written, or a million other little things.”
Which is why Kate started doing something entirely new when it came to communicating with her ex-husband.
“I feel weird about saying this, but, I’ve started getting AI to do it!” she says.
“I write into ChatGPT what I want or need to tell him – I give the context of my relationship with my ex, and it writes out what to send.”
Kate says the first time she tried it she’d re-written the same message a half-dozen times. A boundary had been crossed and she needed to address it, but didn’t want the confrontation of telling him in person. When it came to writing the message though, she just couldn’t find the right words – everything was too angry, too passive aggressive, too accusatory, or… too nice and apologetic!
“I sent the message which was not how I would have thought of wording it, but was so perfect,” says Kate. “Tom replied about an hour later with a really good, apologetic message that felt like he’d really thought about what I’d said.”
Now, Kate uses it constantly.
“Basically for any conversation now over messages I run it through ChatGPT – even if it’s just one line and something quick,” she says. “It’s picked up on a few things and has honestly made it so much easier to communicate.”
Prudence Henschke, a US based divorce coach and family law expert says many of her clients now use ChatGPT to communicate with their former spouses.
“Crafting a clear, concise and professional text or email, can be challenging post-separation, when the subject matter is emotive or when the content of what you are responding to is triggering (by design or not),” she says.
“The stakes are high – very often the tone of communications plays a significant role in setting the tone of your matter more generally. If your communication is hostile, it is likely to close off any future constructive direct communications and lead to an escalation in conflict.
“Worse still (and worth remembering) your communications may end up down the track produced in correspondence between lawyers or in evidence before the Courts.”
Prudence agrees that it can be a useful tool in writing more constructive messages to an ex – “but perhaps only to arrive at a first draft, which you then revise, edit and make your own!”
