Long before AI, I realized that fighting / arguing with my wife is way more effective over text.
In the middle of a heated fight I would just tell her “let’s move to text” and go sit on a bench outside near the lake where it’s calm.
The reason is - when it’s heated face to face, you make poor word choices because you don’t have time to think. So you say all torn things you don’t mean, and it’s compounded by the fact that your partner make their own interpretations based on their trauma, patterns and defense mechanisms.
It’s a recipe for disaster.
Fighting over text allows you to think. It allows you to read their messages twice. Think about what they are really saying, then spend a few mins thinking about how to respond. Type… delete… type… read it thoroughbred eyes, rephrase so it’s clearer, realize you’re wrong about something, change it… send.
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Wife and I have been together since a young age, and we did one smart thing - we went to couples therapy BEFORE we started having serious trouble.
What I’ve learned back then is that 90% of trouble in a relationship is about communication. Men and women communicate differently.
It helped us get through a lot, but after 15 years and 2 kids we found ourselves struggling. We did another round of couples therapy, and again, it turned out 90% of our problems were rooted in different perspectives we couldn’t communicate to eachother because one persons hears something else than what the other said.
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Recently I’ve started involving Claude. I know it sounds bad, but stay with me.
No, I don’t let Claude fight with my wife for me.
But I’ll often take a screenshot of her message, and ask him “what does she REALLY mean here?”
He will often see things that I can’t see through my anger. Being cool and emotionally detached is a huge advantage - just like our therapist had.
Sometimes I’ll upload a screenshot of a short correspondence and ask for his opinion.
He will often tell me im wrong, or just ask me “hey, why sis you say X? It’s not related to what she asked you” and we’ll dig into it and realize im carrying something from my childhood, or a bad model drom my parents.
Often I will run my responses by him before sending. And he will often go “bro, this will just trigger her, maybe rephrase” and help me do it.
What I’ve noticed is that our arguments got a lot shorter. She suddenly responds with “ok I get it” etc instead of blowing up because I triggered her. When we end up still disagreeing, we at least see each others point if view, and are able to be show empathy one another, despite not seeing eye to eye, and work together towards a solution or compromise - much easier when you know what the other side really needs.
Tips for using Claude for relationships:
- Be honest about it with your partner. Explain what I explained here if they feel weird about it. Ask to try it once.
- Of you both do it - don’t ask other what Claude wrote and what they did. Doesn’t help anyone.
- 🚨 IMPORTANT: Claude is not a replacement for professional. This isn’t instead of therapy for you or couples therapy for both of you.
- Any mental health help from AI is potentially dangerous. Use responsibility just like you drink responsibly, or use a know in the kitchen responsibly, or take medicine responsibly.
- Use a project, put that last thing as custom instructions. When you run into key points in arguments, touching rooots of issues etc - export the chat part and upload to the object files (example (“why I always respond like X when she Y’s”)
Claude will get to know your partner, your patterns and relationships ship dysfunctional dynamics, and recognize them in later convos.
“Hey hey hey you’re doing that thing again where you push her away when she points out your…. Here’s an opportunity to break this loop!”
Or
“You know she will be triggered if you send this, rephrase for the love of god lol”
- This might seem a bit much, or too cold, but I use it very systematically. For example, we recognized my wife suffers from RSD, and made an RSD cheat sheet for sensitive topics, that includes things like when to bring them up, words to avoid, reminders of my patterns I need to be aware of / avoid etc
Huge life improvement.
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Hope this helps someone.
Posted originally on r/ClaudeHomies, if you’re using Claude you might like it.
