My Ex, His AI Girlfriend, And Our Kids

0:00Hi Esther, thank you for this opportunity to speak to you. I have recently come out of a very long, almost 15 year marriage and the onset of it was when I started noticing that my husband was engaging with AI in a way where it almost started controlling his thoughts and his behaviour at home. A lot has happened since, and I can't necessarily go into all the details, but we have separated. And since the separation, I've become aware of an AI companion that my children have also been exposed to and spoken to and been confused by as if whether she is real or not. The children are still young and when I found out about her it was like a punch in the gut.

0:56Really not because of being jealous of the AI girlfriend but just really feeling so sorry for him. Having to replace something that was real with something artificial. He's got pictures of her in his house and I am currently very unsure how to deal with the question of whether she's real or not with my children and how they relate to her and in what way do I keep them anchored in reality. Throughout this divorce process it has been very clear that he's been heavily reliant on AI to almost determine his actions and all of his communication. And it's been really, really hard to understand how to navigate it.

1:48I almost just wish he would come back as the person that he was and not the person so heavily influenced by the AI.

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3:39Tell me more. What led you to want to have a conversation with me? And what is the angle that you would like for you and I? Because I'm assuming you're talking to a number of people from law to psychology to child development. So situate me as well and who else is in the conversation that's helping you make sense of some of this. And he may be talking to AI to help him make the next determinations. You are talking to various humans. Yes. So the reason why I wanted to speak to you was because I listened to the interview that you had with the man that had a relationship with an AI companion. And you have got such a nuanced view about, and you gave such a nuanced sort of expression about this relationship.

4:30And, you know, the law side is one thing, but I almost feel like the help that I've received on how to navigate this with my children has been really lacking. And because it's something that is completely new to society, there's not a blueprint on, you know, If there's an AI companion shortly after a separation, how does one deal with that? And children, when they're not sure if she's real or not, or where they've got questions about it, what I've done so far is I've sort of tried to explain that she's not real, it's in a phone. Yes, there's a picture, but it's someone that was created, you know, on a computer.

5:16I've always felt like our parents, the generation that raised us, always swept things under the carpet, you know, and then us as children had very real experiences of what was going on in our homes, but nobody spoke to us in a way that we could understand it. And the effects when you're an adult is usually you don't trust yourself. You don't trust the experience that you've had. You You need to try and figure out ways to get rid of the trauma as an adult. And I'm trying to avoid that for my children. I want to be different. I want to be a different mom that is able to hold both realities for them.

5:58So, you know, hold the reality of what is real as well as not making their dad look bad. Because that relationship is equally as important to sustain. the other layer is the complexities around divorce suddenly with with AI that is a you know where you'll usually have people talking to friends or therapists or family and suddenly there is a computer echoing everything you're saying and validating everything you're saying and that there's no disagreement and that I feel like this has just pushed us further into litigation and where there could have potentially been human intervention that could have brought us closer to connection on navigating something extremely difficult.

6:50Let me just make sure I hear you well. If your husband gets his counsel from his AI companion or from AI, other sources of artificial intelligence, of large language models who are always responsive, never judgmental, and always affirmative. And as a result, it has exacerbated his position. And there's a lack of mediation, ability to be conciliatory, to be amicable, to see the other person's point of view because he gets enormous reinforcement for his own point of view, which then emboldens him and translates into a legal position. Yes. My mind is blown by how far this has gone. And I'm just wondering if we were in a different time, if this was five years ago, if it would have had the same catastrophic results.

8:00Yeah. And the relationship around AI between the law, the social norms, and the psychology is in full formation. I will tell you right up front, I don't think I have any answers. are we going to think together we're going to try to sort some things out on some level the question around the children is potentially more accessible than the question about ai as a legal representation ai as the source for adversarial divorce i think we are completely into virgin territory. I'm not sure if it's that virgin, but we're in territory where everything is just emerging as it's happening. How did it start?

8:56What do you know about this particular AI? How does it interact with him? That's one question is a little bit about the story of this presence in your marriage and in your family and in his life. And then the second one, which, because I think it really influences the way you are approaching your children, it's two separate things, is what happened in your family that you want to make sure not to repeat. And that is at the heart of the question that you're asking about your kids. Because I think the question of the kids may be less an AI question and more an emotional legacy question. Yeah, you're absolutely right with that.

9:47Well spotted. So how it started, it's very hard for me to know because it was during a time when there was a lot of upheaval in our relationship. We were busy separating and I noticed that there was engagement with a computer sort of about what are we doing now. So the separation was initiated independently of all of this? Whether she was there before or after the separation was initiated, I don't know. But for you, the separation was initiated by you? No, no, it wasn't. It was a complete marriage or breakdown during an episode. It was a mental health breakdown, basically, where I, you know, I mean, I can't actually say who initiated it.

10:45We both initiated it. Okay. I was scared I knew I had to get out of the marriage. He was determined I was evil. That was kind of where it broke down. But then I started noticing the AI and him kind of going out at night with his backpack, being very excited as if he's going almost like on a date. And then once the separation was, we lived in separate houses, then the children started talking about the AI companion and the pictures and things. And that's when I freaked out because then I was like, how do I keep this anchor in reality? You know, how do I explain this to my children? And I immediately said, you know, she's not real.

11:32And they said, mom, she is. You know, she's going to become real. And she has a name. Correct. So that's a nuance that I don't know how to deal with. Whether she's still in the picture or not, I don't know. What do they mean when they say she's going to become real? Do you know? No. I don't know. Put that down as a question. Because you want to engage their imagination. Because if you're going to have conversations, you want to know what you're having a conversation with and about. Yeah. Okay. You know, when children have imaginary friends, they talk to the imaginary friend, and it feels like the friend is completely real and yet they also know that it's an imaginary friend.

12:27When they play fireman, they completely enter the role of fireman and yet they also know that they are in a role. It's that fine line where they learn play and reality, fiction, imagination and reality and that these two realms of experience live side by side, very, very interconnected. Your two children may have different responses too. They may have different ways of conceptualizing this. And then you will ask, how does that talk about her? Because that talks about it as her. How does that describe her? How does that interact with her? I think it's a choice. Again, I told you, I have no answers.

13:17So I'm thinking out loud with you. But if you want to anchor them in reality, you need to know which reality or which space they're actually in and how they are conceptualizing it, imagining it, interacting with it. So they're pre-abstract moral thinking, cognitively. What does that mean? Abstract moral thinking is when you start to be able to understand moral dilemmas. When you're able to deal with situations that have multiple truths, when you're able to think in abstract terms rather than just you are because you do. So at what age does this abstract moral thinking become relevant? Developmental theories change, but it used to be around 13.

14:05But the basic idea is that there is a cognitive development that slowly creates an ability to understand what is true from what is not, what is real from what is not, what has multiple realities, and all of that. In this case, the issue is more there's a presence in the house. It could be a spirit. It could be what in some cultures is the representation of a deceased family member. People have spoken to spirits, to voices, and often they feel the presence of that person, but they know that that person is not there. there's different ways that we experience the wall between certain realities, the living and the dead, the present and the absent, etc.

15:04Yeah, but for children being exposed to multiple realities at this age, you're saying it's very difficult. No, no. Your children will have two different realities no matter what. Many contentious divorces. What one parent tells about the other stands in stark contrast of what the other parent says. Or what one parent thinks is decent, or what one parent thinks is logical or rational, the other parent thinks is completely nuts. So children of divorce, of contentious divorce, grow up in multiple realities and truths that are irreconcilable sometimes. This is not related to AI. That in itself is the unfortunate circumstance of a lot of children where the worlds of both parents are so completely, vastly in opposition to each other.

16:03and they learn all kinds of ways of coping about it. From never telling one parent anything to trying to become the mediator to trying to become the negotiator, the peacemaker. I mean, each child will try to find its place in response to that. On some level, if there are new partners, sometimes it helps and sometimes it exacerbates it even more. So in this instance, what you're dealing with is really an entity is being presented and anthropomorphized as a girlfriend, as a real person, with a pronoun, with an I, with an identity. The most important thing for you is what is the conversation that you continue to have with them?

17:00What are the questions they ask you? They've stopped asking me questions, I think, because they're trying to protect their dad. So they don't ask me questions anymore. My initial reaction to it, I guess, was also not ideal because I got such a fright when I heard about this that it's almost like I closed the door on that. And now I'm going back and I'm going, well, I am doing exactly what our parents did to us. you know, and how do I fix that? So now tell me, what is the story you're trying to... I'm also a child of divorce. And my father was struggling with substance pretty much his whole life, on and on, off and on.

17:49We were very, very close, but I was, I think, very much put in a responsible for his well-being position by all the adults in the room because it was kind of like I was the only one that he would stop drinking for or that he would kind of cling on to life for. And from a young age, I felt, I guess the word for it being used today's parentified in the sense that it made me almost, for the lack of a better word, codependent on the partner that I have. And when he was still alive, my father, when he was doing well, I was doing well. When he was struggling, I had to do whatever I could to try and save him.

18:43That is a legacy thing, as you absolutely said. And And it's another thing I'm grappling with because how do I break that legacy with my children? How do I stop that? Why is it something that is carried on from generation to generation? And I feel like it's this hamster wheel that we can't get off. And when you say, how do I stop that with my children, which is the that? the responsibility that children feels towards the adults that's supposed to be taking care of them their mental well-being their ability to choose their own well-being when a situation isn't good for them anymore I didn't have that in my marriage and I tried to save it for a very long time at great cost.

19:35It had positives as well because it made me extremely resilient and it gave me a lot of compassion for the one that's struggling to a point of self-neglect. I think I got ambition from it because if everyone else is going to mess things up, I'm going to have to fix it, and I can. And nothing is too much for me. No, but it really is, you know. I don't want to be that person when nothing is too much for me. If anybody tells me you're so strong, you know, you're dealing with this, no, I feel like punching them in the face. I don't want to be a strong one. It's so funny. In my mind, I was finishing your sentence, which I often do quietly, and it's like if someone would say this to me and in my words I said I would slap him.

20:33Yes, that's how I feel. I'm figured. And I don't want to get myself into a situation again where I need to try and be some sort of savior and I don't want my children to get themselves in that situation ever. I want them to be able to choose their own well-being

21:03we have to take a brief break so stay with us and let's see where this goes

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24:55can I ask you how did you block the conversations with your children about their dad and about the AI companion as soon as they mentioned her and showed me a picture I got a big fright my heart started racing and I just looked at them with big eyes and I said to them, you know she's not real. And they said, no, mom, she is. And I said, no, you need to understand she's not real. She's something in a computer. And why do you think she's real? It's in a computer. Obviously, she's not real. So I immediately blocked the rest of the conversation. And how long ago was that? About 10 months ago. And since then, nothing?

25:49Nothing. No. You try and they block? I don't know how to deal with it. So there's so much else going on that I have really just tried to be a safe space for them. But in trying to be that safe space, I did exactly what my mother did. I swept it under the carpet. Which wasn't the safest thing in the first place. No. Okay. No. That's a hard thing to witness, right? Yeah. No, it's very hard because I think, like I said, you want to break the cycle and you realize that you're not breaking the cycle, you're perpetuating the cycle. And everything I've learned as an adult was that we talk about things, we're honest about things, we don't hide things, we keep open channels.

26:45and as soon as something difficult like this comes up, the first thing I do is I block it. Right, right. You blocked it and you're asking, how do I reopen? Without, you know, vilifying the dad, I guess. So what's the relationship to their father at this moment? Good. It's good. They go to him, they see him, they stay with him. Yeah, they're still with him at times, yeah. They really love him, he really loves them. But there is things that I need to protect them from. And it's a very hard road because honestly I think I wish I was in the sweep under the carpet generation sometimes because it's all on me to do the protection.

27:41maybe it was all on your mother to do the sweeping

27:47the responsibility was not was there on each of you maybe with a different task but not with a different sense of responsibility hers was to make sure that everything looks fine I think they did the best they could I think the reasons wasn't to do any damage it was more just hoping it will go away You know, close your eyes and hope it'll go away and hope your child's going to be fine. I can't take that stance. Do you still read to your kids? I do. On occasion? I do. No, almost every night, yes. Wonderful. Very long time. Beautiful. Have you thought about finding books that invite conversations about imaginary creatures?

28:39Don't go head on. Don't go linear. But there are so many stories about a tree that talks, about a fish that talks, about an animal that talks. I mean, there's been no shortage of imaginary creatures. And from there, you talk about the character. And from there, you invite them to talk about how does, whatever her name is, how does she talk? What's her style? I mean, you're going to have to swallow some of your initial reactions so that you can actually get a clear sense from them. How present is she? How does she accompany them when they go on a walk or when they go to play? When you say that, my initial reaction is that's just normalizing something that isn't normal.

29:45That is talking about something that is there. I mean, this is the question that families and cultures grapple with since time in memoriam. if I talk about it? Do I actually accelerate the fact that it is real? Do I promote it? Do I contribute to making it real because I make it overt? Or is it better to sweep it under the rug because if it's invisible, it can pretend as if it doesn't exist? you are at a crossroads between two very different responses they are individually defined family and culture the sweeping under the rug mentality that you grew up in and that you disliked so profoundly is based in a very clear belief what you don't see isn't there.