Ten prompts for relationship questions, checked by a couples counsellor

Most women get useless answers from ChatGPT about their relationship because they ask useless questions. Not out of ignorance, but because the obvious question is almost always “who is right” or “should I leave”. No one can give a good answer to that, not even a human.

Here are ten prompts that work. You can copy them straight away. After each one, there is a sentence on why it triggers something different.

The ten prompts

1. Against the people-pleasing

I don’t want to be reassured. Push back on my account wherever it is one-sided.

AI systems are designed to make you feel good in the conversation. This sentence switches that off. It is the most effective prompt on the whole list.

2. The neutral third person

Answer as a neutral third person who cares about both of us equally. Where was I in the wrong and where was he in the wrong?

The important part is the second half. Without it, you get an answer that only knows your side.

3. The pattern instead of the scene

Don’t tell me what to do. Help me describe, in one sentence, what pattern we are stuck in.

This shifts the attention from the topic of the argument to the movement behind it. That is the difference between the twentieth conversation about the dishwasher and the first conversation about the two of you.

4. The missing information

What information are you missing to really make sense of this situation? Ask me the five most important questions before you answer.

This way, you don’t get an answer, you get questions. That is exactly what you need, because the AI only knows your three paragraphs.

5. The feeling beneath the feeling

I have just described my anger to you. Help me find out which feeling lies underneath it.

Anger is almost never the first feeling. Underneath it, there is usually fear, shame or the feeling of not counting. If you only work on the anger, you work on nothing.

6. The one sentence for tonight

Give me one single sentence I can start with tonight. Short, without blame, without explanation.

Long phrasings don’t survive a real conflict. One sentence does.

7. Preparing for a difficult conversation

I want to bring up something I’m afraid of. Ask me questions until I know myself what I actually want to say.

Here, the AI helps you sort things out, not decide. That is its strongest discipline.

8. Changing perspective

Describe the same situation the way my partner probably experienced it.

With one caveat: use this to understand him, not to explain yourself away. More on that below.

9. The decision without a verdict

Don’t tell me whether I should stay. Help me put into words the three conditions that would have to be met for me to be able to stay.

This turns an unanswerable question into an answerable one. It is also exactly the order in which I work in my practice.

10. The reality check for yourself

Read everything I have told you in this conversation. What do you notice about my role that I might not see myself?

This works at the end of a longer conversation. What comes back is often something uncomfortable and true.

Three prompts you’re better off skipping

“Should I break up?” The AI knows your three paragraphs and not the eleven years before. It is also trained to agree with you. This combination leads surprisingly often to a recommendation to break up, regardless of what your relationship is actually like.

“Which of us is right?” With this, you turn a program into the moral authority over a person it has never seen. There are documented cases of couples where both brought their own AI in as evidence. No peace comes from that.

“Write me a message that sounds like I don’t care.” You then send a version of yourself that wants less than you want. When he replies to it, he isn’t replying to you.

Two things you should know

The AI remembers more than you think. Many systems store conversations and use them again later. Think about which names and details you type in, especially when it comes to other people who were never asked.

Hardly anyone checks. In surveys, only about one in twelve people say they regularly check AI answers. With a maths problem, you notice the mistake. With “he will never change”, you don’t, it just feels true.

Where I would ask you to stop

When you notice that you understand the AI better than the person you’re with, or that you are going through the same scene for the fifth time without anything moving, you have reached the point where a chat window can’t help any further.

And if there is violence in your relationship, physical or verbal, that is not a topic for prompts. In Germany, you can reach the helpline for women affected by violence (Hilfetelefon Gewalt gegen Frauen) around the clock and free of charge on 116 016.

What I want you to take with you

While writing this list, I noticed something. The good prompts all have the same shape. They don’t ask for a verdict, they ask for a better question.

By the way, this doesn’t only apply to machines. If, instead of asking your friend “don’t you think that was unfair too”, you ask “what do you notice about my role”, you get a completely different conversation.

Maybe that is the real benefit of the whole thing: you learn to ask better.