What AI Gets Wrong About Couples Therapy
Updated: Oct 5
A few days ago I asked Google's AI what it knew about my practice. It had my address right, my phone number right, and my method right. Then it told the person asking that my sessions are two-hour mini-intensives, and it pointed them at a website I no longer use.
Neither of those is true. Sessions here run 90 minutes, and the site you are reading is the current one.
I am not writing this because I was annoyed. I am writing it because it is a small, checkable example of a larger problem. These systems are most confident in exactly the places where they are wrong, and there is nobody at the other end to correct them.
That is a nuisance when the subject is my office hours. It is something else when the subject is your marriage.
The Machine Only Ever Hears One Side
In couples work, the client is not either of you. The client is what happens between you — the pattern the two of you build together without ever deciding to. I cannot do that work from a transcript. I need to see the moment your face goes flat while your husband is still talking, and then stop everything and ask about it.
When you type the fight into a chatbot at eleven at night, you hand it your version. Not because you are being dishonest. Because your version is the only one you have. It answers the story it was given, and the story it was given is missing the person it is about.
So the answer comes back reasonable, organized, and entirely sympathetic to you. The advice usually isn't wrong. It is answering a question your marriage never asked.
These Systems Are Built to Agree With You
Agreement is a design goal. A chatbot that regularly told you that you were the difficult one in that argument would not be a product people kept opening.
Half of my job is the opposite of that. After years of working with couples, I have become convinced that the most useful thing I do is interrupt. I stop the pursuing partner mid-sentence and ask what she is afraid of underneath the criticism. I stop the withdrawing partner from explaining himself and ask what happens in his body when her voice rises. Neither of them enjoys it. Both of them need it.
An agreeable machine will not do that at eleven at night. It will confirm the story you walked in with, and at eleven at night, confirmation feels a great deal like being understood.
What Emotionally Focused Therapy Actually Does
The model I work in is Emotionally Focused Therapy, and it works by changing an interaction while it is happening. Sue Johnson built it around the idea that the fight is not the problem. The fight is what two people do when the bond underneath stops feeling safe. You do not repair that by learning better sentences. You repair it by having a different conversation in the room, with someone there to keep it from collapsing back into the old one.
The research base is good. Across outcome studies, roughly seven in ten distressed couples move out of distress. I am deliberate about that number, because you will see larger ones quoted and the larger ones are not well supported.
Where AI Is Genuinely Useful Between Sessions
I am not against any of it. Use it to draft the letter you cannot start. Use it to find the word for a feeling when you have three and none of them fit. Use it to work out what you want to raise before you get here, or to understand what I meant when I said pursuer and withdrawer. That is preparation, and preparation helps.
What it cannot be is the second person in the room.
Can ChatGPT Replace Couples Therapy?
No. It can help one person think, which is worth something. Couples therapy changes what two people do to each other in real time, and that takes both of them present, with someone watching the part neither of them can see.
Is It Harmful to Use AI Between Sessions?
Usually not, and often it helps. It becomes a problem when it turns into the place you go instead of going to your partner. If you have been having the important conversation with a chatbot for months and the version at home has not moved, that is worth bringing here.
What Does a Session Cost, and Do You Take Insurance?
A session is $250 for 90 minutes. I do not take insurance and I do not bill it. Couples work does not fit a system that requires one of you to carry a diagnosis, and staying outside it means no session limits and no treatment plan written for a reviewer.
If You Are Ready to Stop Doing This Alone
If you have read this far, you are probably already past the point where a chatbot is going to help. You can read what marriage counseling in Joplin, MO looks like here, or more specifically how I do couples therapy in Joplin. If you are still deciding who to see, I have written about how to choose a couples therapist. And if you want to know who you would be sitting across from, that is Shira Hearn, LMFT.
If you want the other half of this — what the research actually supports doing instead, and where to start — I wrote about what AI gets wrong about your relationship.
And if you want the plain version of what I am aiming at with couples, here is what getting unstuck actually looks like.
In Peace,
Shira
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If you are ready to get started, Schedule a Couples Therapy Appointment.
Call or text me at 417-768-9089, or email me at shira@radicalrelationshiptransformation.com.
