419: 3 ways AI can help your love life (and 3 ways it can f*** it up) | Dear Men

Jason Lange: Thankfully, as you know, life is busy. More and more shit work, I think, is going to be handled by AI, right. Oh, my God, I got to do my taxes this weekend. There's no reason anyone has to do their taxes. In a year or two, taxes will just be done, like, great, that's time. We don't have to do that. And other versions of that are going to be coming fast, which, ideally, if you're using this correctly in your relationship, it creates more time for actual presence between the two of you.

Melanie Curtin: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another Jason Lange episode. So happy to have you back with us, Jason.

Jason Lange: Good to be back.

Melanie Curtin: Today we're talking about AI and really we're talking about LLMs, large language models. There is a difference between those. We're not going to delve into that on this episode. That's sort of for a different podcast. But we did think it would be quite topical to talk about three ways that AI or LLMs can support your love life and three ways they can destroy your love life. Just kidding. But not really. Okay. So we decided that it would be fun for this episode to alternate back and forth. So one way it can support your love life, one way it can eff it up. And let's start with one way it can support your love life. So the first one that we came up with is one that I have heard some of our guys talk about already, which is that it can help you communicate better in asynchronous moments, meaning moments when you're not present in front of the person that you're dating or in a relationship with, but you're texting. Maybe you're texting or WhatsApp, whatever. You are not in the same place at the same time, and you need to say something kind of hard and you're not exactly sure how to say it. Or maybe you had an argument and you're working on how you're going to apologize or you have something sensitive you want to. To bring up, which obviously in. In many cases, we sort of. Well, we. We recommend often that you save the sensitive conversations for in person. But if you're going to be doing it, then one way that it can work is to just kind of dump everything. Here's everything. I'm thinking. Here's. Here's how I'm feeling. I want to write a message that sounds sensitive and tuned. Can you help me with the phrasing? I'm curious if you, Jason, can give any examples of that or if you've heard any examples from our clients about this?

Jason Lange: Yeah, well, you know, we've definitely heard this from clients in terms of particularly. I remember one guy talking about a tough conversation he was having with his wife, right. They were kind of in a fight and you know, even though they were in relationship and living together, they like go off to work, you know, their separate lives in a little bit. And that's a space where some of the communication continued. And I've definitely seen him in his example, other men. The idea, like you're saying is it can help us clarify and cohere our thoughts or sometimes it's just like a jumble of feelings. And I don't exactly think a lot of times for men, it's one of the reasons they work with us, they don't know exactly what they're feeling, so they don't exactly know how to communicate it. And AI in a lot of ways can be like a great editor. It's like, blah. I dump it all out and then it helps cohere it into, ah, here's the actual through line, the important thing you want to communicate. And another area I think it can really help in here that guys have given me feedback on is tone. If they're concerned about tone, it can do a, you know, not a perfect job, but it can help you become aware of the tone with which you're communicating and soften it up. And you know, I, I use AI all the time now and yeah, sometimes it's smart enough where it gives me back like three versions. Here's the most friendly version, here's a little more solid, here's a little more biting, like, okay, what version do you want? And then we kind of iterate from there so it can kind of slow us down, help us cohere what we want to communicate. And then boom, it helps us communicate that and you know, even sort through the, the results in some sense now. Right. The gift of it is it can really work. Downside is you can become over reliant on it. What I think it's best for is helping to build the capacity of. Ideally you use it a few times, you pick up a few tricks and then it's like, oh, I don't have to process everything through it right now. Which can be a huge shadow side that we are seeing as well.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah, I was just going to talk about. I do think there is, there is some risk. There are two kinds of risk. One, the. There's a risk that she's going to figure it out. I have definitely received, myself, I have definitely received text messages that I knew had been run through an LLM and I didn't love that. So there is some risk to that. You know, like you said, using it as an editor is very different than handing all your power over to it and just taking it full bore or whatever the word is exactly as it has stated. Something that's different than. I'm looking for some ideas on how to phrase this and I'm going to pick and choose what I think is good. And I, and I do think that particularly for people that aren't as familiar with emotional dialogue that didn't come from homes where emotional dialogue was normal, who don't really know, kind of like, how do I say this? So, yeah, for example, if you're, if you're dating and you're the person you've seen a few times suggests, you know, I'd love to go for a hike, on a hike with you and some of my friends. And you notice that you don't want to do that. You just want to see her. You don't actually want to meet her friends yet for, for some reason. Then you could blah, like you said, just dump it all out into an LLM and say, I don't really want to go out with her and her friends because I just want to see her and I'm nervous to meet her friends. What do I say? And then you could get some ideas from that that are. That's phrasing, right? So it's almost like an interpreter. How do I. This is what I want to say, but it's too blunt or too harsh. How do I say it in a way that sounds more friendly, that sounds more inviting. And then make it your own, then you make it your own. I think that's a really good use of it. Where it's. It's not, it's not communicating for you. It's giving you ways to say what you want to say, that feel that feel good to you and hopefully to the other person, but especially to you. Right? Because you intuitively know you can't just text her back and say, I don't want to do that. Right. That's not, that's not going to land well. But you're literally stuck where you think to yourself, I just don't know what the hell to say. I don't know how to say it. I do want to see you again. I'm actually really excited about seeing you again. And I'm noticing that I'm a little nervous to meet your friends. It feels kind of early. I would love to go on a solo date. With you, how does that feel? Right. A lot of times a man doesn't know how to say that. He doesn't know elements. He doesn't know the order, the structure. And so an LLM or AI can help. Help with that part. I do think that, you know, in. In there is. There is a risk sometimes of her figuring out that, you know, there's this really long message, and it's really, you know, there's. There's kind of a rhythm to it now, and people. People that are using LLMs can sometimes tell. So there is a risk to that. But I think that if your heart is in the right place and you're using it in the way that we're describing, it can be quite supportive. And. And like you said, it can help you find your footing, it can help you gain your rhythm. It can help you sense the patterns of. Oh, this is how I can introduce a difficult topic and have it sound better than what I was thinking. Because what I notice is that most people we work with, and I would say probably most people I know did not grow up in homes with parents that were skillful at emotional dialogue. I know very few people who grew up in family systems where people were skillful at emotional dialogue. I know a lot of people where issues were swept under the rug. That's something I hear all the time. Or someone was volatile. Neither of those is skillful, right? Neither of those. Hey, I have something sensitive I'd like to talk to you about. I'm a little nervous, you know, and I also want to say, you know, I'm not AI, but I do want to drop some knowledge here about emotional dialogue, which is one thing that I've found myself talking to clients about, and a way that I think is very helpful to think about communicating is to say, a part of me. A part of me. A part of me. So, for example, yeah, a part of me wants you to go out with your women friends this weekend. I want to support you connecting with community. And a part of me is sad. You know, I'm really sad. Like, we. We had tentative plans, and I really wanted to see you. So you can do both at the same time. It doesn't have to be one or the other. And I think a lot of times we get stuck because we feel like we can't share all of the complex feelings we're having because we're supposed to pick one. Or, for example, another example. We've done an episode this. But it was a very long time ago. It's very common within a Couple at some point in the relationship for you to be jealous of your relationship partner. And the way that might sound is a part of me is really proud of you for all the work you've been doing and all the success you've been having. And a part of me is a little jealous because I've been trying to do the same thing in my professional life and it's not working. That's just one example of you get to share both and then your partner gets to receive both. And like I said, I don't think we've seen, we haven't witnessed that a lot in our lives. So we don't always know how to do it. So that's also something that I think depending on which AI you're using or whatever, you can kind of say, I've heard people communicate like this and this feels good to me. Can you help me craft something in this way? And then you make it your own. And I do think that the making it your own part is important because sometimes I find that it feels a little bit formal or a little bit stilted or perhaps it's using bigger words than you would use or it doesn't sound as casual. There is a way that it can sound. Distant is the word that I would use. And so that is a risk, particularly if you're in a long term partnership and you haven't perhaps shared with your spouse that sometimes you do this. It's risk. It's a risk. Right. So I'm curious about your, your thoughts on if someone does use AI or LLMs to craft messages to their spouse. Do you think that's something that they should share with their spouse? Do you think that's important that they share? Do you think it matters? What are your thoughts?

Jason Lange: Yeah, I think at some point, you know, partly because what if you're using a mainstream LLM, what you're putting in is leaving your brain in your bubble with that person and it's sitting on a server somewhere, quite literally. So it's just worth acknowledging sometimes that, hey, I'm inputting very private stuff that, you know, in some ways I like to think they wouldn't know who I'm talking to. But these days you just never know. So at some point I think it's a fair game to, to say that and you know, probably going to be one of those agreements couples have to talk about of like, hey, what's our, what's our agreement or understanding about AI in our relationship. You know, that's, that's probably a worthy discussion to have moving forward. And the other thing I just want to name that you were talking about is. And this isn't just in the context we're talking about, this is AI in general, like a big divide in how I would argue good use versus abuse, in a sense. And it's. Where is the. Where is the thought or feeling originating? So if it originates with you in the AI, AI helps you edit it. That's a totally different thing than if it originates from the AI itself. And then you're just recapitulating its thought. So, right. This is the example of. In another men's community I was in, you know, there was a guy who was kind of coaching guys, oh, just, you know, use Claude or ChatGPT to get your opening lines for when you're messaging a woman on a dating app. And to me, that's an example of kind of crossing the other side because then you're just feeding it things. The LLM generated that have nothing to do with you. It's the equivalent of a pickup line. It's running a routine that is not authentically connected to you at all. It's connected to something or someone else. And if you're using it as an editor, I think that's the key differential. So the thought or the impulse or the feeling originates in you, and you just want to help clarify it, make it communicate better. But if you're like, I don't know, you know, what to say, here's the situation, and it just spits something back for you. I think that in particular, we are developing antibodies for as a species right now, pretty quickly, just with every media that comes out. At first people have no antibodies, and then they develop antibodies realizing da, da, da. You know, the classic, somewhat overly dramatized version of this. But, you know, it tells a story in a sense. Is the War of the Worlds broadcast Right back in the day when they broadcast the radio thing and there's these stories about. People didn't realize it was fiction because radio was so neat, real, you know, there were only a few cases that wasn't such a big deal. But that's kind of the idea. Now we know. Oh, it's a radio play. I can hear it. Da, da, da. It's not really happening. So that's key. The other thing I want to say is this too is in some ways very new, in some ways very old.

Melanie Curtin: Right.

Jason Lange: I think I've referenced it on episodes with you. But there's the great play most people know, Cyrano de Bergerac, right? This great old play about the Guy who considers himself too ugly to approach Roxanne and then the fair skinned guy who doesn't know how to talk. And so the other guy starts writing the letters that she thinks are coming from the beautiful man. Who is she actually falling in love with there? Right. She's falling in love with the interior of the man writing it. And you know, that's been popularized in a lot of ways. And there's a way AI can be that right now, the whisper in the ear. But this gets right to the heart of where is it originating from. If it's editing your thoughts, your beliefs, if the gener, if it's generated from inside you, I think there's a way to use it in alignment and in integrity where it actually supports you communicating your inner world to someone else. If you're just giving that away and forfeiting your inner world because it's too much work or it's just so easy, right? When the LLM spits you out. Exactly the thing you're like, oh, I just. That's where I think it's going to cause major problems downstream. Because like, like, like you mentioned and we're going to talk about, you can't live your whole life asynchronous.

Melanie Curtin: Boom. You can't do that. It's true. And so if you get really good at crafting text messages, but you can't hold presence in a room, you're not going to be able to get in a successful love relationship or sustain one. Okay, let's switch to ways it can mess things up. So the first one we have here is it can make you more of a narcissist, it can make you more narcissistic. So there's a way that you. This has definitely been true for me. I've witnessed some people do this. When you are describing to an LLM a fight that you've had, you are describing your side. You are only describing your side. So you can lay it all out. And in particular, everything your partner did wrong. And AI will help you build an airtight case. And it is often programmed to validate you. It's programmed to validate you. So there's a way that no matter what you're telling it, it's going to tell you that you're right. And over time this can become increasingly convincing. And I know more than one story, someone using AI in this way. And essentially eventually the AI says your partner is a narcissist. And I'm just laughing because there's one case in particular where essentially this, this this person was in a relationship and, and her partner was, was using AI in this way. And then, long story short, eventually he started doing more personal growth work and he did a men's retreat and some other work and came back and said I was, I was wrong. All those times that I told you all these things, I was getting defensive and I was using this to essentially show me all the ways that I was right about it. So that was a happy ending, right? I think eventually he actually did personal growth work and it changed everything. But I do think that there is a risk of the recursive loop of just, you know, even in my work with couples, I, I consistently, well, one of the. One member of the couple will say, this is what happened. And here's how I responded. And then the other couple, the other member says, that's not what happened, that's not what I said, that's not the way that I said it. And so it does feel a little bit sometimes like being a ref in a, in a sports game of, okay, let's just rewind that tape and hear from both people what actually happened. What, what was the tone? Because it's not just what someone says, it's how they say it. 85 to 95% of communication is non verbal meaning, tone, intonation, timing, body language. There's a lot going on and AI can't read any of that. So when you're just inputting the words someone said or you're saying, and she yelled at me when she said this, what is, what does that mean to you? What does that mean to her? Et cetera. So I think there's a, a very high risk of having. If you are isolated, if you're isolated, meaning if you don't have a lot of other supports in your life, you don't have close friends, you don't have mentors, you don't have therapist or a coach or someone, a human being, an attuned human being, that's, that's also on your team, that's also on your side. This can be really problematic. So I do think that there's. That one of the major risks of AI and LLMs is using them in isolation. Using them in isolation. If they are part of your ecosystem, that is very different than relying on them. You're not really talking to anyone else about your relationship. You're only talking to this LLM and it's just verifying, it's just validating, it's just telling you you're right every time you're using it. That feels Relationally dangerous to me. How about you?

Jason Lange: Yeah, there's a. Right. A real term they've documented and is emerging called AI psychosis. That is the end result of this, of what happens when AI reinforces a false reality and certain people are more predisposed to it mentally as well is a thing that this is gonna, is already highlighting in some sense. But this is a real thing these platforms are negotiating with right now. Right. For, for a lot of people it peaked with GPT 4 or 4 0, I can't remember. It was about a year ago and it was ridiculously sycophantic. It was crazy. Just using it right made me feel disgusting where it's just like, oh my God. And they've dialed that down a bit and some people dial it back up. But the thing to know about an LLM is it often doesn't know what it doesn't know. And so, you know, they have gotten astronomically better, you know, in the last year. I use quite a bit for a lot of things I do. And the thing that I still notice weekly is oftentimes it'll just get something completely wrong and it's like, hey, actually it's this and it's. And then it totally. Oh yes, you're absolutely right. I got that completely wrong. And the gap right now is if you don't know that's completely wrong, it's going to keep feeding you that story. And that creates a lot of problems. And like you said, this is in some ways can be just a more intense version of what does tend to happen is we tend to represent our point of view the most strongly because it's ours. And I see this in men's groups all the time as well. Right. Where a lot of times people are in relationships and couples and you know, we do the best to get both sides of the story, but we are only getting one side of the story. And it's pretty wild when you meet someone's partner and you're like, oh hey, it's a little more complex than maybe you were letting on here. And that's just table stakes in a sense for just realizing, okay, yeah, you're going to be sharing your perspective. And if you, I mean, at the very least to mediate this danger somewhat, you have to be self aware enough to tell it. I'm just giving you my side here. And then you know, that will change what it brings back to you. But if you tell it like it is reality, it interprets that like it is reality. Like that's the exactly what happened and that's what she said. And then it's very good. Right. LLMs are no different from social media in that their goal is to keep you engaged as long as possible and using it as long as possible. I mean, AI, the biggest money sink certainly in our lifetime. They are pouring so much money in and right now there is no revenue stream that's going to cover that. So they're just, it's, it's, it's a bit like a drug. Let's hook them and then we'll figure it out on the other side. Right. And so it's just worth knowing that the reason these things are sycophantic is they want you to keep coming back. They want you to keep coming back. And this, this will tie into another one we talk about. But there are already well documented cases of AI psychosis. And even people you know, we know and we talk with, yeah, it's like, oh my God, you know, you realize it's, it's, it's kind of hyping you up and oh, that's the most brilliant insight and no, it's not the most brilliant insight in the world. Tons of other people have thought that you're not navigating any new territory here, just wants you to think that because if you're happy, it keeps getting used and that's what they want. So again, it, self awareness is gonna be the thing that really changes this for you to be able to own. This is my partial reality with what I've given you in my partial reality. Can you help me figure this out?

Melanie Curtin: Yeah, I just wanna clarify the word sycophantic for people that might not be familiar with it. It means being overly flattering. So, oh, you're so smart, you're so brilliant, you're so special, that kind of language or, or tone. And it's funny because I use AI or I guess LLMs. I use LLMs frequently for research purposes. So even in preparing for this, I used it to pull statistics and to pull studies to help me prepare. And like you said, it often gets things wrong and it will just tell me things that are not true. And so every time it says something like, I'll give you a concrete example in a moment, but when it makes an assertion, I will say, where are you getting that from? What is your source? Give me the URL. What organization did that research? And often, not sometimes, often it will say, you're right to push back on that. That's not verified. There is no research study. It doesn't say, essentially I made it up, but it's basically programmed to give me something that I want to hear. So I still use it, but I have it. Give me all the sources I want to know. Show me the peer reviewed research journal article. This is from show me the NHS study. I want to know what, what this is. Otherwise I don't want to cite it on my podcast. I don't want to be spreading false information. So, yeah, another way, I wanted to go back to what you said about essentially confirmation bias. So if you're, for example, you know, you feel like your partner is being contemptuous and that they, they have a sense of contempt for you, you're actually more likely to view a text message or a facial expression or something as contemptuous. And this has been shown to be true by the Gottman Institute. So they did a study about relationship conflict. So when couples in distress are shown videos of their own interaction, a lot of them, a lot of the members of the couple will interpret ambiguous moments, meaning it could go either way, as ways that confirm what they already think. So they'll show the video back to them and they'll say, see that expression? That means that she was contemptuous of me in that moment. When really other observers, what they've done is they've shown the same tape to other people, people that don't have skin in the game, and they've rated that facial expression as neutral. Neutral. So someone who's not within the couple says that that's a neutral expression, but the person that already thinks their partner is after them is like, no, see, that proves that they're after me. So that's also. Yeah, also known as, as, as confirmation bias. And it shows up in media as well. The way we consume media is, is affected by our confirmation bias. What do we already believe is true? And then what kinds of media do we look for and what kinds of media articles, news articles, do we ignore? Confirmation bias is, that's, that's all about that. So it becomes harder to reach or believe something that you don't already believe. That's basically confirmation bias. And AI can reinforce that. And so I think it is very important to have attuned human beings on your side, on your team, in your ecosystem, part of your world. And we're going to get to that in, in some of these other points. But I think that's another place where, like you said, AI is just going to take it all at face value. If you said this is what she said, or if you say she stormed out of the room, it's going to take that at face value. It's going to say she stormed out of the room. It's not going to say, are you sure she stormed out of the room?

Jason Lange: Yeah.

Melanie Curtin: Is that unless happened or.

Jason Lange: Yeah, unless you're smart enough to teach it right. You actually have to teach it to question your assumptions. But, you know, it's. It's funny, I wasn't thinking about this, but coming in, another classic, we have for exactly what you're saying with confirmation bias. Right. Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. I read this in high school so long ago, I don't remember much. Right. But I've always remembered the Cicero quote. Men may construe things after their fashion, clean from the purpose of the things themselves. Right. Which is basically. Yeah. We will interpret the events to the worldview, to the frame that we're embedded in. And we want it to look like. So we'll see the sign as. Oh, that means this. Because I want to see it as that. And it's just a natural human thing. It's not good or bad. Again, what we're talking about here, though, is particularly with AI, you gotta be really aware of what it's doing and why it's doing it to make sure you're working it and it's not working you.

Melanie Curtin: Ooh, that's a. That's a good quote right there. Okay, we're gonna flip back to ways it can be helpful. And I really like this one. This is one of my favorite ones. One of the things that I have used it for and that I think it's particularly good at is idea generation. So, for example, personalized date ideas. Whether you're in a committed relationship or not, there is a way that you can get really structured advice. So, for example, in here, in the northern hemisphere, it's getting warmer. Out, it's summertime. Southern hemisphere is winter. So if you're like, I want to take my girlfriend on a romantic date this weekend, we've been doing a lot of indoor stuff. I want to do something outdoorsy, but that feels really connected and warm. What do you recommend? It can take some of the mental labor off of you. And particularly if you're someone who wants to hold alpha, wants to polarize your woman, this can be really helpful because creative, interesting date ideas. For example, some cities have scavenger hunts for couples specifically. It can pull something like that. There could be a film festival you weren't aware of. You could go and see a bunch of really creative, interesting shorts and then talk about them. There could be a rollerblading event that you didn't know existed. And it could say, which is true, that couples that try something new together or that learn something new together, that tends to generate dopamine for the couple. So if neither of you has gone hot air ballooning, for example, if you do that, you're more likely to want to have sex after. I'm not saying it's guaranteed, but I'm saying more dopamine tends to be good for sexy type. So things like that can be really helpful in terms of idea generation and kind of customizing it to. I want to do something that's more sensual. Right. I want to, I want us to be really in our bodies. What do you recommend? And then you can, you can go from there. Any thoughts on that?

Jason Lange: Yeah, you know, again, we, we want to balance this with where does it originate from? You want to give it some ideas or tell it a little bit about your relationship and it just helps brainstorm. So brainstorming is another, I would say, good way to think about this that walks that line on where does it originate from. But it's just about getting the ideas rolling. You know, one, you're, you're one of them. I know a lot of writers and one of the things they love about AI is there's basically no reason to ever have writer's block again because you just start writing shit and it get, it often gets through the friction point. I just need some ideas, help me get out thinking this and I was thinking this and suddenly it gets through it. And then when it actually comes to the logistics where, I mean, I think this stuff does excel and is about to excel even more, is it handles a lot of the so called shit work, right? Where it's like, hey, we're going on a trip, right? I had a friend map out an entire bicycle, motorcycle trip, like very accurately, of how far he could travel every day where he'd need to stop stuff that would have taken him a long time, but it did it pretty fast and it got rid of some of the grunt work. So he was able to just enjoy the experience. And I think this is a good example of sometimes it's like, okay, I know we want to go into the city Friday night. We can leave at this time. What, what can we do? And it helps you figure things out and how to get there. Take this subway, do this thing. You know, for a lot of us guys, I'll admit I'm one of them. Right. Sometimes we don't want to plan because we feel tired and it feels like A burden to do the logistics and the thing. And a great way to use this is to just help lift some of that burden around logistics, coming up with some ideas, and then how do I execute those ideas, right? How do I actually get to the thing or walk to the thing or find the thing or, you know, I. I think a great example of this, too, in some sense, is how people use it, cooking, where it's like, and I've done this, right? It's like, hey, I have this, this, and this today, and I have this much time. What can I make? And then it's like, you could do this, this, and this. And I'm like, I never. I'm not a cook. I don't know that. And it helps me make a meal. I think there's a way to plan dates and experiences like that. Hey, here's the ingredients we have, here's the time we have, the place, the location we're at, here's what we'd like to experience. And then it can bring you back some great ideas inside of that.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah. Similarly, I work with a lot of couples, and one of the things that I find myself talking about a lot is childcare. And one thing I find myself saying repeatedly is investing in quality childcare is an investment in your love relationship. Investing in childcare is an investment in your love relationship, because when you take any stress or burden off of one or both parents, they have more energy. They have more energy for the couple. And I'm not just talking about you get to go on date night. I'm talking about you have someone help over the weekend for six hours. They can tidy up, they can cook a little bit. They can. They can take one of the kids, they can go for a walk with one of the kids. Now you have one instead of two. That makes a huge difference. Anything you can do to get more support and help into the home is an investment in your love relationship. What I find is that a lot of couples, both members of the couples, they feel overwhelmed by the prospect of hiring someone. How do we find them? What do we say? What does our ad say? How do we craft it? And so I was sitting with one of my women friends the other day, you know, at brunch, and we were having this discussion, and she said, we are one of those couples. We could definitely use more help. And I said, great, let's put it into Claude and just have it come up with a very brief ad, make it succinct. And one of the things that she was struggling with was what to Call it, you know, babysitter. And it's not, you know, it's like, what the hell? And Claude came up with family assistant. Looking for family assistant to help three or four days a week for four hours in the evenings, whatever. It had ideas. And then she said, you know, this would work for us, this wouldn't. But she loved that phrase, family assistant. It can also give you suggestions. Here are some Facebook groups in your area where you could post. I personally, Mel, I'm a fan of care.com I think more parents should use care.com it has embedded childcare professionals that are raising their hand to say, I'm ready. I've got this degree. I've got these, you know, verified. What are they called? Reviews. I find that a lot of parents say things like, well, we want to know the person or we want to know someone that knows the person through, like one of our WhatsApp groups or mommy groups. And I think that's great, but it's very limited. Whereas care.com has a whole bunch of profiles, Right. So I think we're going to see an advance. This technology is only going to keep advancing and at some point, you know, you're going to be able to say scancare.com Here are all of the things that we're wanting. Find three profiles that look promising, you know, and eventually it's going to be you. Reach out to them, see if they have availability. Set up a phone call for us. We're not quite there yet, but I would say that that is a major way that something like AI can help right now is just. I'm overwhelmed. You can literally put into it. I'm overwhelmed by this idea of getting childcare. I know it would support us, but I don't know how to go about it. I'm scared of whatever. You could just put all of it in and then it can help you essentially be a bit of a thought partner and help you get to where you are going to go and at least get you started. Because I find a lot of the time part of what happens for us as human beings is we get stuck. We just get stuck. We're in our own heads. We don't know where to go with something and we're just stuck. And sometimes I think that AI and LLMs can help us get a little bit unstuck. It can give us a few more ideas, it can craft. It can give us a suggestion like family assistant. That felt really good to my friend. She thought, oh, family assistant that I have a. Now I have an idea. Of what that is. And it's not just a babysitter. It's beyond that. It's. I need you to make their lunches for tomorrow. I need you to, you know, help pick up the books in the other room. I need you to, you know, whatever. It's like I need more than just childcare, but I didn't know how to say that. Right. It's not a housekeeper, it's a family assistant. It's going to help with the family. So I think that there's a way that it can be great as a tool, like you said, for essentially, I'm not. This might be controversial, maybe not. But a really, really advanced Google, a really advanced Google that can help you, help you craft what you're searching for and help you phrase it correctly and, you know, similar to the date ideas, it's not necessarily doing all the work for you, but it's giving. It's advancing you on your journey of what you're looking for.

Jason Lange: Great. One way I would put that is it can be again, when it's working for us, it's if you have a vision, it can help you execute it. Right. So my vision is I want to take my wife out this weekend to Denver. And we have this much time. Da, da, da, da, da, da, da. Help me figure out something that would be really cool. That's my vision. Right. And the example of the clients you were working with. Right. She had an implicit sense of what she needed. She didn't quite have the languaging to capture it. I want this, I want this. I need this, I need this. Boom. It helped her. Oh, here's the word that kind of captures that, your vision. You just hadn't found that word yet. That's when it can be absolutely incredible. I would say when we kind of give it the things that are inside of us and it helps us consolidate them. Whether that's into plans, structures, execution. And thankfully, as you know, life is busy. More and more shit work I think is going to be handled. AI right. Oh my God, I got to do my taxes this weekend. There's no reason anyone has to do their taxes. In a year or two, taxes will just be done like, great, that's time. We don't have to do that. And other versions of that are going to be coming fast, which ideally, if you're using this correctly in your relationship, it creates more time for actual presence between the two of you. That's, that's. To me, that would be one of the litmus tests for how you're Using AI in your relationship, does it actually help us get in front of each other unmediated more?

Melanie Curtin: Oh, I really like the way you say that because that's been why I've been such a strong advocate of childcare. As an investment in your love relationship for people is the more you're able to be with your partner or even with your kids. Right. If you have someone helping out in the kitchen and cleaning up the other room, you can actually read a bedtime story and not be thinking about the dishwasher and the rest of the stuff that needs to be done because you know it's being handled. So like you said, more connection time, more in person, real time connection. To me, that's part of the goal. And I think that leads. Well, actually, maybe it doesn't, but we're going to go back to the other list now. It doesn't really lead into it, but. But I do think that that's important, that what is the point? What is the purpose? What is the goal? What are we doing here? What is the reason why we are using this tool? I think that's a good goal is more connection with the people that I love. Okay, let's talk about the people that we love. So one of the big issues that I see with this tool or however when we want to say it, is the risk of false intimacy, essentially. False intimacy. So there's a way that AI can provide a sense of false intimacy and, and it can make you think that you're getting closeness or witnessing or community, but you're not really. And part of the issue with this is that attunement, true attunement, goes beyond words and involves a level of presence. And AI can't provide that. And it also can't empathize, it can sympathize. Let's talk about the difference. Sympathy. You know, let's say you just lost a parent. I feel for you. I'm so sorry. It's really hard to lose a parent. That is sympathy. Empathy is. I've been there too. I'm really sorry for what you're going through. I've had that experience. That is different. It is just different to sit with someone who has been where you are than it is to hear sympathy. And often I think we confuse those because I, I do feel like people that are empathetic, people that are empathetic can actually resonate with you. So they can actually, even though they haven't necessarily lost a parent, they can sit with you, they can be. Be with you, they can reflect your Grief and in a way, experience your grief with you to a degree and a depth that is definitely healing just because of their presence. That is not possible with AI, but it can create a facsimile of it. It can create a, A, a, a similar sympathy experience. And that can be very seductive, especially for people that are already lonely or isolated. So there's a high risk population here when it comes to this one. And it's folks that are already lonely or isolated in some way. And there's a whole bunch of research and studies that are basically happening now because all of this is happening now, that I think we're going to see longitudinal research within the next decade. But, but there, there is a population of people that is at risk in terms of falling in love with AI, experiencing, bonding to the degree that they want to marry this, this entity. And we're already seeing all of this. And the closest parallels we have are what are called parasocial relationships. Parasocial relationships have been researched since the 50s. And, and essentially, I think. But to your point, when radio and, and movies started happening, people formed parasocial relationships, meaning they would bond with a personality on TV or on radio, and they would feel like. They would feel like they were in a relationship because they knew that person. So they, so let's take Marilyn Monroe. People fell in love with Marilyn Monroe that had never met her. They didn't know her interior world. They knew her image, they knew her voice, they could see her talk. They thought they were in a relationship with her because they. And it's called parasocial. The problem is it's not, it's not bidirectional. It's not. Marilyn Monroe wasn't there. She wasn't really known. She wasn't really seen. She was an idea for them. So they felt close to her and she didn't know who they, who they were. This is a version of that, but in some ways I think worse because the AI is reflecting back all the things we were talking about being, being flattering and validating. And there are people for whom they've never had someone reflect, validate, approve of, give them that kind of attention in a sustained way ever. They've never had that experience. So it's, it's new. It creates a lot of, I guess it would be dopamine and serotonin, but just feelings of closeness, Feelings of. Yeah, being seen, being approved of. I keep coming back to approved of, of just kind of like there's so many people who are craving that from other people, but they don't know how to get there. They don't know how to give and receive love, in a way. And so this is. It's a facsimile of it. It's a. It's a version of it, but it's not real. It's kind of like eating food that's not nutrient dense. It's food, but it's not. It doesn't give you nutrients. It's not actually filling you up. So then what is it doing?

Jason Lange: Yeah, I mean, there's so much here that we're all in exploration with as a culture right now, and a couple of key things, you know, that you started with in terms of empathy and presence and whatnot. As of now, right, we're recording this in 2026. AI can't feel pain, and pain is a big part of empathy. Right. So if you're like. If I'm like, oh, my God, I just, you know, I. I threw out a disc in my lower back. And you've never done that, right? Yeah, you can. You can be sympathetic. You can empathize via proximity in terms of, oh, I've had an experience where my body doesn't work the way I don't want it to, and it's very humbling and painful, and I don't have the mobility. I get that. So it's closer, Right. Even if you haven't quite had that, AI doesn't know that. All it knows is what we've told it about that. So it can approximate what someone might say in that experience, but it's never experienced that. And as of now, it can't. And I think that has a consequence in terms of the type of attunement and presence it can bring back. And then we balance this with, you know, there is some research that MIT did last year, right. That was heavy usage. You know, I was actually relieved, right, as we're coaches, Like, I was like, oh, okay, great. That's great. Heavy usage did tend to have worse outcomes in terms of mental health and the number of relationships and emotional dependence. Now there's a whole stratum in there. So it's. It is dosage dependent in a certain way. But if you fall into that thing of there are people falling in love, right, with their AA chatbots. There were people who were upset when OpenAI turned down the sycophantic dial, and they were like, oh, that was my person, and you just changed it. And I feel a loss in that relationship. Right. Even though that wasn't really a person, that was, you know, a bunch of code on there. And I think the danger we're all going to be navigating is we want to anthropomorphize things, right? Like we constantly project human attributes onto animals, onto characters, onto robots. It's, it's a human thing to do in a lot of ways. And we're gonna do it with AI. We are doing it with AI, like oh, it does have feel. No, right now it doesn't. And so it's just really again important to know that. And you know, you and I were talking a little and planning for this, this gets more into the woo thing but there is an actual, you know, frequency vibration particularly that happens when you're physically in front of someone. But even over zoom, you know, I don't know, it kind of happens. There's something to the real time connection of a human being with another human being. Even if it's non local, that's real and that's really meaningful and I think is in a lot of ways only going to become more valuable with the direction society's going. So the more you can be present with someone and actually attune to them and in real time right now in your two bodies, that's going to become an asset. In a world where lots of people aren't going to know how to do that. A lot of people already don't know how to do that. And that's only going to accelerate with AI as is, you know, your capacity to think in a lot of ways for yourself. Right. Another one of the center for Humane Technology tracks all this stuff, right? One of the studies they were talking about is kids getting so dependent on it, like left my AirPods on the bus and instead of literally just figuring out where the bus is and going and getting it, they have to ask the AI, how do I get my AirPods back? Like that's a severe loss of agency. That is going to become a huge down scene consequence here if we realize, you know, anyway, all tied together here. But it's not a replacement for real relationship. It's going to be a different kind of relationship. Can say that, I think that's fair to say. But it will not replace human relationship.

Melanie Curtin: I think that's the thing that I keep coming back to is I think it can be a helpful part of one's ecosystem. But if it, if you're, if it's the only part of your ecosystem, boom, that's a problem. That's a problem. So it can be, it can be part of your team, it can't be your Whole team or you're. It's just. It's problematic. This ties in a little bit, I would say, to the. So let's flip to the other side of where. Where it can be useful and valuable and help, which is breaking rumination patterns at 2am when your friends are asleep. So I have an actual story of this. I was at a friend's place and I had really severe allergies that night. And it was 2 or 3 in the morning. I couldn't sleep. I was freaking out, right? I'm like, I can't lose all this sleep. I have things I need to do tomorrow. What the hell do I do? And so I went into one of the LLMs and I said, here's the situation. This is, you know, this is the area I'm in. This is. This is what's happening. And it gave me a few really good suggestions. One of them was to prop up to essentially sleep on an. At an incline, which I hadn't thought of, which is pretty obvious. But it, it did help and it had a few other suggestions. And I just felt like someone's here with me. I'm not alone. It's the middle of the night, I can't sleep. I don't know what to do about it. And I'm not resourced. I'm tired, you know, I'm not in a good place to kind of figure it out myself. So it gave me some helpful suggestions. And in those moments, it can be really, really nice to have the LLM say things like that must be really hard. I'm sure you're worried about how you're going to function tomorrow. It makes sense that you're stressed right there. I think there are ways that having that mirroring as part of your team is nice in those moments when you can't access the human beings in your life, the people that you love. There's another app that I heard about that's being developed that I really loved. There was a woman I saw at a conference here in Los Angeles called endwell, the End well conference that's all about death and dying and transition. And she said a lot of us are obsessed with the outputs of AI. So what's coming out of these LLMs? And I'm obsessed with the inputs. What are they training on? What are they learning from? And so she's developing a tool specifically for caregivers. So people that are giving care to folks that are aging or folks that have chronic illness. And so she's inputting all of these stories, real transcripts and stories and lived experiences of caregivers as the base of this application. So that when another caregiver, again, it's am or it's pm or something, they, they've helped to their person go to sleep and now they're trying to figure out, you know, what happens next. Where do we go from here? Here's what the physicians said today. I'm not quite sure what to think or where to go. And I can't really contact my friends or family because it's too late at night, but. Or it's four in the morning or I wake up earlier than ever and whatever. And so this tool can help with both the kind of practicalities of okay, you're in Illinois, here's how death certificates work there, or here's what you're going to need to do once the person passes away or whatever your, whatever is going on for you. But also, how are you doing? Do you need to sit down? Should you get yourself a cup of tea? Would you like to take a break? So part of what she's training that model on is, is to evaluate how the person is responding. So if their responses are shorter or they're coming quickly or there's some kind of indication that they're in a stressed state to kind of help them perhaps slow down, you know, and I think that's really valuable. Those moments when we can't always be there for each other in every single moment. It's part of the limitation of being a human being. So as a part of one's team, that can be a huge advantage. And so when it comes to dating and relationships, let's say you're up and you're ruminating about the fight that you had or the date that you had. You can put all that in and just, just say, you know, like, help me feel better right now. Like, give me a little bit of reassurance, you know, and sometimes that's really valu. It helps you sleep and it helps you get to the next part, which is having the hard conversation with your spouse or, or whatever it is. And I know for me it can help me when I'm like, I'm preparing for something difficult. Give me a few ideas on what I can do to help me prepare or what, what are some, what's some phrasing that I can use or it, it can calm me down when I know I have at least a semblance of a plan versus again, I'm tired, I'm under resourced. I don't have the capacity in this moment, I don't have the prefrontal cortex online with this. So can you kind of be that for me in this moment as a bridge to whatever's next?

Jason Lange: Yeah. Again, you know, we don't want to just be critical of AI and even all of our criticisms are things that are going to be different in two years. Like, it's all evolving so fast, like you said. One of the positives here, I think, is it can kind of break these mental rumination loops. Places where we feel stuck, writer's block, you know, like I was kind of talking about is all somewhat in this, where it can kind of just get the ball rolling. There's this famous article I sometimes quote from 2012 called the McDonald's theory. That's like part of what sometimes in groups makes decision making hard is you get kind of get stuck in consensus and no one wants to be the wrong one. So he's like, yeah, oftentimes you can undo the log jam by someone just says, let's go to McDonald's. And then everyone suddenly, oh, we're on the same team. We definitely don't want to go to McDonald's. How about we go here? And it just gets the ball rolling. And I think AI can do that in some sense. We were like, hey, I'm thinking about this. I'm stuck about this. Even if it gives you the kind of wrong answer, what it helps you start to clarify is where you're at in relationship with it. And so if you keep engaging with it, it can help you kind of navigate your way out of stuckness. That would be the thing. Or feel a little bit more confident to take a risk or try something or send a little text message of some kind. Because this is, you know, like you said, what it's really good at is it's always there and it's on demand and it's never tired. Right. It's just kind of a neutral third party at best, even though it's not always like that. But that the. The. It can kind of break up your perspectives, too, and help you think through things and get a little data and see things from a different lens when it's working the best. And I think, you know, hopefully more and more, if we give it the right inputs, that's what it's going to do. It's going to help us live more effectively as humans. And actually, hey, what are the things you want to be in? What are your goals in life? My goal in life is to have a great relationship and spend as little time on AI as great, then AI is going to help me do that. Right? That's where we hope it would go. And a lot of times, you know, rumination for me is it's like choice overload, right? It's like, well, I could do this, I could do this, I could do this, I could do this. And then it just, I get lost, right? It's like, oh my God. And oftentimes where it can be good is it can at least start to narrow. That help you? You know, I did really well in, in school and people ascribed that to smart, but I think what I was just good at is taking standardized tests. You know, once you realize that basically for multiple choices, one is always pretty much totally wrong, one's pretty much wrong, and then there's two that are always kind of close. So you can always immediately get rid of like two answers, basically. And that's kind of what AI can, I think, help us do when we're feeling choice overload is it can sometimes give us clarity on the ones that just say, oh, yeah, that's probably not the right fit at all. And then help us get the ball rolling towards where we want to go and be. And if there's one thing, you know, a lot of our clients come to us struggling with, it's rumination. It's spending way too much time in their head. And AI, when used well, can help us just move into that experimental action mode of okay, you know, in some sense, if nothing else, you know, again, I don't always love this word, but it can give us just a little bit of confidence to fuck it. I'll try it, right? I'll try it and then I'll. I'll get some feedback. Okay. And then this happened. And then it's like, oh, okay, well then da, da, da. This, right? It's like an ever present guide in that sense. And ideally can help us just move forward rather than endlessly analyzing and getting stuck in that analysis paralysis. AI can do that kind of thinking in seconds, right. The way the pro, the con, and it just spits out the thing and then you're like, okay, great, I'm going to go with this. Sometimes it might be totally wrong, but I'm going to go with it. And then you learn in that experience. And I think for a lot of guys we work with, leaning a little bit more into just taking some action and not having it be perfect is actually great. And AI can help with that.

Melanie Curtin: It's interesting you say that. Yeah. Because one thing that I notice, one thing that's very loud for me in our work and in this conversation is the power of groups. And one thing that AI cannot do is provide the experience of sitting in a group, being with a group, being part of a group, the sense of belonging, of being in a group. And one of the things I see repeatedly in our clients is the virtuous cycle. I feel like often I feel like we've even seen that within the past few weeks when one man in the group takes a risk and tells the other men in the group about it. There's this kind of ripple effect of other men feeling like, well, if he can do it, I can take a risk too. I can try something like that. And so we see this virtuous cycle of more people taking risks and more action being taken, and just there's more momentum, you know, And I think that that's unique in a way to groups. And again, there can be, hopefully some action taken because of what we're talking about here. And there will never be a replacement for that. There is something about belonging and groups that is primal, a primal human need that will always exist. Okay, we're running out of time, and I really want to make sure we get to the last one, which is one of the ways that AI can harm your love life is that it removes the necessity for negotiation. So this is. This is related to that sort of parasocial relationship. When. When you have a relationship with an entity like this, it doesn't have any needs. It doesn't have needs. So you're relating with something where you are coming with your needs and your desires, and it's serving you in a way, and you don't have to attune to it. You don't have to negotiate with it. It doesn't have any needs. It doesn't have any triggers, you know, it doesn't have any personal history. There's no. So there's no need to kind of negotiate with that. And. And the truth is that in any healthy relationship, whether it's a love relationship or not, but let's take that for now. The negotiation, the friction, the where are we different, the how do we do this? That's what generates intimacy. True, real, deep intimacy. That's part of what it is is figure is navigating that landscape. I got triggered because of this thing. How do we come back? How do we repair? When you have a pseudo relationship with an entity that you never have to repair with, you can get used to that and feel like that's normal, that is not normal. And when I say the word normal, I mean normal between human beings, it's a different thing, it's a different category. It's useful and valuable in its way. But I find this to be a very high risk. This is a way it could really mess up someone's love life is by giving you a sense of what you think, what you now think relationships should be like. Can you say a little bit about that?

Jason Lange: Yeah. We were talking about this and I kind of named it can be like emotional pornography. So one of the challenges with porn is it can create an unrealistic expectation of what sex is. And in terms of, you know, dopamine and reward systems, it can give us the reward without the effort. Right. And that can be very damaging. And tons of research that shows that. And you know, it's not just about being some Calvinist, you have to like suffer to earn. But there is some real research that our reward system, we feel things more when we've put a little energy in. Right. It's like the difference between cooking your own meal from scratch and just picking up takeout. It's different, it feels different, it's nourishing in a different kind of way. And just like porn can kind of give us the fake sugar version, I think AI can give us the fake sugar version of relationship and then you tie in the sycophancy and you can see where it goes and what it can't teach us to do so far is play. And that's part of what we're talking about here. So friction in negotiating another human being's desires. Right. Conflict is one way I heard it described that was just so great for me is, oh, I want this, you want that, that's conflict. That's it. I want something, you want something else. So we're in conflict and now we have to negotiate. How can we make this work for both of us? And it is a negotiation. Negotiation. And what AI can do in these relationships is totally remove that capacity. And you know, I see it in my, my 19 month old now and my 6 year old's playing with him and she has to learn to negotiate. Oh, I want to play this game. But then he's like, no, I want to play it like this. Well, if we want to keep playing, I can either totally have my way or I kind of have to work with him in like, in a keto way and kind of play off of him in riff and vibe. And that's really what we're talking about in relationship here, that it's pretty rare you're going to come into an intimate relationship in particular, it'd be 100% aligned on everything. I'd never met anyone who was like that, that wasn't codependent, but instead it's, well, we have different desires, needs, wants, and the friction of relationship is what we learn to work and it actually is what makes it meaningful. Hey, you're willing to work through the friction with me. And that willingness is, I think often what creates the resonance and the togetherness. And sometimes that difference is what creates the polarity right when we start to play with that. And so without that friction, you know, you don't really have much. And so this is a key thing to. We gotta look out for with AI in terms of the expectations it can create for what normal relating is. And it's one of the reasons again, you know, I love doing group work and community work and men's work is you, you will get confronted with people who aren't the same as you. Right. There was a great Ezra Klein article about this maybe a year or two ago or podcast where he was talking about that was kind of the, the, the missing social component that has fallen away. It's like when we had slightly more localized neighborhoods because your community was local. You'd always have the weird neighbor down the street who's just kind of funky and a little ornery, but you were in relationship with him, so you learned to work with it because you were in the neighborhood and you had to interact. As we've shifted to more parasocial and online things, all of us align around identity. Oh, you, you have the same politics as me, the same spirituality as me, and it's gotten rid of that capacity for a lot of us to have to deal with friction to be in relationship with someone who's coming from a different point of view. And AI is just accelerating that. And you know, I've talked about this before, one of the ways I said it towards men, but I think as a human being you can AI proof yourself right now is get really good at friction. If you can be the one in the room who can hang in conflict and not eject, defend, dominate, you are gonna have an incredibly rare skill set that I think is only going to become more valuable for in the world interacting, particularly when it comes to dating or your relationship.

Melanie Curtin: And I want to emphasize that part of the way that you build that capacity is by doing it. Meaning being in the room, developing your nervous system, being with other growth minded people, doing personal growth work and stretching your nervous system, stretching your capacity, stretching. What's Possible. And that's why, in my opinion, in person work, or it could be virtual over zoom. The way that we work, we work both in person and over zoom. But getting the reps in, actually getting the reps in and doing the personal growth work. Because one thing that I, that comes to me very strongly is that safety and trust is built in person with human beings. And most of what we are gauging is how they are being with us, not what they are saying. Again, back to, it's beyond words. It's, are they breathing? Are they breathing deeply, are they grounded? And some of that, a lot of that is about, have they done their trauma work, have they resolved the tension in their body, are they able to be fluid in their body? Or, you know, how is their body, what, what is happening in their body, are they breathing? Things like that. So, you know, I'm thinking about, you know, our retreat, our live retreat is coming up at the end of August. And I've witnessed men unburden themselves and release tension from. For decades, you know, decades worth of tension. That's, that's now gone. Or a huge identity shift that cannot happen through a conversation with AI. It has to happen in the room with real people. And, and again, part of what you're pointing to is witnessing someone else in his grief or his shame or whatever he's going through. That changes me, that changes us, that changes the group. There's a transmission on both sides. Whether you're experiencing it or you're witnessing it, there is something that happens in that space that doesn't happen when you're chatting with an LLM. So they're both helpful, they can both be helpful in their way. And it's irreplaceable. The work is irreplaceable if you want to be a really safe, grounded, trustable man. So with that said, if you ever want to get the reps in with us, you can find us. You know, my website, his website, everything is on the show, notes. And if you're interested in working with us, you can go to Evolutionary Men Apply. And we do have that live retreat coming up in what, 10 weeks? Eight weeks.

Jason Lange: It's the first week of September. We got 10 spots left as of today.