The Story
A mother calls Esther Perel in the middle of a painful divorce, trying to understand a problem that feels both brand new and painfully familiar. Her husband has become heavily reliant on AI, including what appears to be an AI girlfriend with a name, images, and a place in his home. Their young children have encountered this companion and seem unsure whether she is real. When they first raised it with their mother, she panicked and told them flatly that the AI was not real. The conversation stopped there.
What troubles her is less jealousy than grief. She feels she has watched her husband retreat from human connection into something artificial, while AI has also amplified the conflict of their separation. In her view, his conversations with AI have reinforced his version of events and made him less able to compromise, which has pushed the divorce further toward litigation.
Perel does not offer a rulebook for AI companions in divorced families. Instead, she shifts the focus toward what the children need: a parent they can talk to without having to protect either adult. Before deciding what to say, Perel suggests finding out what the children actually mean when they say the AI girlfriend will "become real." How does their father describe her? Is she present at meals, in conversation, or only on a screen? What do the children believe she is?
The caller then recognizes a larger pattern. She grew up with an alcoholic father and felt responsible for keeping him alive and well. Her family dealt with hard realities through silence and denial. She promised herself she would not repeat that history, yet her fear of AI, alcohol, and anything that might harm her children has led her to shut down conversations just as her mother did.
Perel encourages her to reopen the door gradually. Bedtime, books, imaginary characters, and ordinary questions about life in their father's home may offer a less threatening way in. The aim is not to approve of the father's AI relationship, but to make room for the children to describe their world without feeling forced to choose sides.
Main Themes
The episode treats AI less as an isolated technology problem than as a new form of an old family question: what happens when children live alongside an adult's confusing attachment, addiction, fantasy, or instability? Perel compares the AI companion to other presences that can dominate a household, such as alcohol, grief, mental illness, or a parent talking to an inanimate object. The companion may not be a human being, but the father's relationship to it has real effects on the family.
A second theme is the difference between naming reality and endorsing it. The caller fears that discussing the AI will normalize it or invite her children to seek AI companions themselves. Perel argues that silence creates its own danger. If children sense that a subject upsets their mother, they may turn elsewhere for answers, including to AI itself. Open conversation gives the mother information and gives the children a human place to bring confusion.
The deeper issue is inherited fear. The caller's childhood taught her to scan for danger and to feel responsible for other people's wellbeing. Perel frames her abrupt reactions as the younger part of her responding before the adult parent can. Breaking the cycle means noticing that trigger, getting support when it overwhelms her, and making room for honest conversations about difficult things.
The call ends with a sharp reversal: the mother worries that her husband is living in a fake reality, but Perel points out that denial also creates one. Her family's old silence claimed that what was happening was not happening. Talking with her children becomes a way to resist that legacy.
Full Transcript
Hi 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 behavior 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 has 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, really 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, I almost just wish he would come back as the person that he was and not the person so heavily influenced by the AI. If you listen to Where Should We Begin, you know that relationships are undergoing a massive cultural shift. We've never been more connected, and we have never felt more disconnected. We crave understanding, collective experience. We want to be seen, but we're optimizing for isolation. I believe that the only way to improve our relationships is to remember the basics of being together. This is why I'm inviting you to join me for an immersive experience, my international tour, Strangers, Friends, and Lovers, is starting in Australia this December with dates in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Join me for this special night where we reawaken the social animal within a soul, transform strangers into friends, and maybe even friends into lovers. Tickets are selling fast. Get yours now at estherperel.com/tour. On Happy Hour, I invite new and old friends for a drink and a fun conversation at my kitchen table in New York City. On this week's episode, I'm joined by Sofia Coppola. Sofia is an Academy Award-winning filmmaker. We chat about the hilarious way that we met, our shared love of Paris, and what influences her iconic personal style. New episodes of Happy Hour are available every Wednesday. You can watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Cheers. Tell 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. And, 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. I'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 need to try and figure out ways to, you know, 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. So, 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 AI. That is, 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, you know, closer to connection on navigating something extremely difficult. Let 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. 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. We're 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? What do you know about this particular AI? How does it interact with him? That's one question. It's 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. Yeah, you're absolutely right with that. Well 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 marital breakdown during an episode. It was a mental health breakdown, basically, where I, yeah, I mean, I... Initiated it. We both initiated it. I was scared and 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. But, 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 anchored in reality? You know, how do I explain this to my children? And I immediately said, you know, she's not real. And they said, Mom, she is. You know, she's going to become real. And— 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. When they play firemen, they completely enter the role of firemen, 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 Dad talk about her? Because Dad talks about it as her. How does Dad describe her? How does Dad interact with her? I think it's a choice. Again, I told you, I have no answers, so 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 are 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. But 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. Yeah, but for children being exposed to multiple realities at this age, you're saying is 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, and 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? What 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— I'm also a child of divorce, and my father was struggling with substance pretty much his whole life, on and off, off and on. We 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. And 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 is parentified, in the sense that it made me almost, for the lack of a better word, codependent, you know, 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. That is a legacy thing, as you absolutely said. And it's another thing I'm grappling with because how do I break that legacy with my children? You know, 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 feel 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. It 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 the 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 them. Yes, that's how I feel. I'm figured. And I, you know, don't want to, for myself, 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. We have to take a brief break, so stay with us, and let's see where this goes. Support for Where Should We Begin comes from Osea. Lots of us spend years wading through complicated skincare products with flowery names, but they end up underdelivering. That's why simple products with clinically tested results are the way to go, and that's exactly what Osea offers. Osea Skincare is an award-winning I've been using Osea's Dream Bio Retinol Body Serum before bed, and it's become a nice part of my nightly routine. I love how hydrating it is, and the lavender scent is really calming. It feels like one of those small things you can do at the end of the day that's good for your skin, but also just feels nice. Osea uses an artisanal process that infuses vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. They use Undaria seaweed, harvested from the sea by hand and soaked in barrels of botanical oils. Osea's products are rich yet lightweight, and they absorb quickly and moisturize deeply, leaving your skin with a silky, glowing, non-greasy finish. Go to oseamalibu.com and get 10% off your first order with code ESTHER. That's spelled O-S-E-A malibu.com, code ESTHER. Support for Where Should We Begin comes from Shopify. It's easy to get your business ideas off the ground with Shopify. They'll provide you with everything you'll need to start selling, and they get you ready for the moment your first customer is ready to pay. Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide, from household names to small businesses just getting started. Their templates and AI tools get you a stunning site up and running fast, no coding needed. If questions come up, Shopify's built-in AI assistant Sidekick is ready to help you build, troubleshoot, and keep moving. The best part is that all of Shopify tools are conveniently located in one easy-to-use platform. And because Shopify handles the setup and checkout, you have more time to focus on growing your business and the tools to do it. If you're ready to hear the sound of your first sale today. Then head over to shopify.com/ester to start your free trial today. That's right, start your free trial at shopify.com/ester. That's shopify.com/ester. Support for Where Should We Begin comes from Quince. A well-balanced wardrobe has pieces you reach for again and again, like the sweater that pairs with everything, the jeans that always fit just right, and the bag that goes wherever you do. They're reliable staples, and that's exactly what Quince does best. I was perusing the Quince website recently and started thinking about my fall wardrobe. I really like the washable stretch silk puff sleeve blouse because I just love silk blouses, and this one has something a little special with the puff sleeves. I also really like the lightweight cotton cashmere dolman sweater. It looks incredibly soft, and when the weather gets cooler, it will be on me. Find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com/begin. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash begin. Can 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 ten months ago. And since then, nothing? Nothing, no. You try and deblock, or? 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 are honest about things, we don't hide things, we keep open channels. And 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. Maybe it was all on your mother to do the sweeping. The responsibility 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 will 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? Don'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. That is talking about something that is there. I mean, this is the question that families and cultures grapple with since time immemorial. 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. Yeah. And the critique that that point of view has of the overt alternative is what you talk about makes it more real. Yeah. If you talk about sex, people will have more sex. Yeah. It's never been proven. If you talk about the presence of the AI companion, you normalize the fact that the companion is really there. That's a point of view. The other point of view is the AI is there. And you want your children to be able to talk with you so that they can make sense of it, so that they can understand the limitations and also the advantages, so that they can understand why their dad makes that choice. That is a safe alternative, is to have you as a person they can actually talk about all of this with. Yeah. When I listened to your podcast with the man that had a relationship with AI, I think that it helped me to develop a better understanding of what role this companion plays. Do I want that for their father? No, because I think that it is potentially going to send him further into loneliness and How much is dad bringing his companion to the table? Are they having dinner, the four of them? I don't know. See, this is a question for you. Do you want to know so that you can actually take action, or do you want to be left having to make decisions with no information in hand? You may say the AI companion is not a human. You may say it is not a person with a body. It has no embodied presence, but it has a presence. But the relationship is real. The relationship is real. Well, yeah. See, and that's the part that I realized, which is making me very, very sad for him. But it is what it is, and it's not for me to control or to have actually any opinion about. It's just about recognizing that as being real, and my children knowing that's a safe space to talk about with me because it's also in their reality, and I can't take that away. Imagine that it wasn't an AI companion. Imagine that your children went to see their father like you went to see your father, and their father is talking to the wall, talking to the bottle, talking to the substance. You would not have a doubt that the relationship to the bottle is real, complicated, inanimate. But there's a whole relationship between your dad and his bottle. And what you missed. was to be able to come home and tell your mother about it. Yeah, I guess all the responsibility just falls on the child then to process it and to understand it and to try and fix it, right? That is then the result of that. So what you're saying is that regardless of whether it is healthy or good, that's not what I talk about. I talk about the fact that it's there and that it's okay. I don't know that I'm thinking in direct terms of healthy, unhealthy and all of that. I'm trying to think with you about analogies so that you can make the choices that you want to make. It really is that. It's like to know how you want to respond to their dad having a relationship with, or even a love relationship with an AI companion. Let's think about the multiple situations where children enter realities that are not so clear. They come home to their dad and they imagine that a father is dressed as a man, whatever conformity and convention they have learned about what that looks like, and their father is dressed as a woman. They come home and their father is not at all the same personality that they know because their dad is completely inebriated. They come home and their dad is talking to the fish as if they were people. They come home and their father is talking. To their computer. I'm just trying to expand for you the reality of children who are in opaque, nebulous realities and who need somebody to talk to about what is what. Is what it looks like what it is? Is what it sounds like what it is? If you talk to it as a human, does it make it human? If it can respond to you without any judgment, with utter presence, kindness, no limitations, nothing, in ways that humans never can, does it make it much more desirable than to try to have friends in school? Do they want to create an AI for themselves? See, that's my worry. Of course, but if you have no conversation, you won't know a thing. I know you worry. I highly respect you worry, and I'm thinking, but you're cutting the bridge that would allow you to know if there is something to really worry about. Yes. We are in the midst of our session. There is still so much to talk about, so stay with us. Support for Where Should We Begin comes from Alloy Health. If you're dealing with menopause alone, know it's not just you. Many women wait years before seeking relief from menopause symptoms. Some don't know where to start after going through years of hot flashes, awful sleep, brain fog, and mood swings. Alloy was built by women who dealt with all of it. It's an all-in-one platform that connects you with board-certified menopause specialized physicians and proven effective treatments. Care can start in hours instead of weeks. Alloy can even help you navigate the national patch shortage, offering HRT through pills, gels, and even a spray. Find relief that works for you. Go to myalloy.com and use code Esther. Your menopause specialized doctor will tailor your treatment to your exact needs, plus you get unlimited messaging with your doctor. That's M-Y-A-L-L-O-Y dot com with code Esther to get 20% off your first order. This code is valid on products only. Support for Where Should We Begin comes from Shopify. It's easy to get your business ideas off the ground with Shopify. They'll provide you with everything you'll need to start selling, and they get you ready for the moment your first customer is ready to pay. Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide, from household names to small businesses just getting started. Their templates and AI tools get you a stunning site up and running fast, no coding needed. If questions come up, Shopify's built-in AI assistant Sidekick is ready to help you build, troubleshoot, and keep moving. The best part is that all of Shopify tools are conveniently located in one easy-to-use platform. And because Shopify handles the setup and checkout, you have more time to focus on growing your business and the tools to do it. If you're ready to hear the sound of your first sale today, then head over to shopify.com/ester to start your free trial today. That's right, start your free trial at shopify.com/ester. That's shopify.com/ester. You might need MIDI if you ever hairsprayed your bangs into a waterfall, layered slouch socks, tied a scrunchie to the bottom corner of your T-shirt, or tried to go for a run with a CD player. If this took you down memory lane, you might need MIDI. Perimenopause can start 10 years before you actually go through menopause, so for some women, that can be as early as 35. Nobody ever told you that? Well, nobody told us either. That's why we built MIDI. If you're experiencing symptoms like night sweats, weight gain, or just generally don't feel like yourself anymore, you may be in perimenopause. But here's some good news: with the right care, these symptoms are treatable. Book a virtual visit with a menopause specialist at MIDI. Visit joinmidi.com to schedule with an expert who gets it. Specialist-led care, virtual visits, insurance eligible. Midlife needs MIDI. Results may vary. Medications prescribed only if clinically appropriate based on a consultation with a clinician. Insurance coverage varies. Check with your plan for coverage. What do you think of what I said so far? I think that the conversation can be reopened by not being direct, by other imaginary figures, by acknowledging that it's there, that the relationship is real, that there's nobody. So it would never land in, you know, realistic terms. I do worry about normalizing it to the extent of if they're teenagers and they feel a little bit lonely, is this something that they will go, Oh well, you know, this has been normalized so much in our worlds, so let's get our own AI companion or AI friend. I guess this then can very quickly triple over to the fact that everyone's probably going to be very reliant on AI, or already is, in the near future. And that is, in any case, in children's of today's future, if this thing doesn't take a turn very soon. If you don't talk to them, but more importantly, if they can't come to you, even if sometimes you have to cringe and bite your lip, they will talk to the AI companion, their own. Because AI at this point is the number one usage for any mental health. Yeah. So make the human contact incontrovertible. Make the human connection irresistible. But if it becomes, I can't talk to mom, mom gets upset. Mom doesn't like it. Mom doesn't believe it's true. Mom doesn't believe it's real. Or dad says, Don't talk about it with mom because mom doesn't understand, which is not an AI-related statement at all. Or mom says, Don't talk with dad about it because he's of his marbles. Then you contribute to this kind of very loneliness that you don't want them to feel. So you have your answer to your question, to both questions: the questions of the sweeping under the rug and the legacy of your own family history, and the questions of how do I be a mom to a child who could potentially figures that are machines rather than people, rather than humans, rather than moms or dads. How does dad do it? What is dad doing that is integrating this AI girlfriend? I think the more you know, the more you can do. But remember, that is a point of view. I do not think that because you talk about it more, you give it permission, you sanction it, you promote it, you give it license. I don't think that that's necessarily the case. Yeah, I guess, and it's the same with everything. I mean, with alcohol use, if my son asks me, Oh, can I taste that? My immediate response is no, just very abruptly, and I kind of close the conversation down because I get this fear of God in me that— Yes, I understand. —there's going to be generational impact and that it's going to hurt him the same way that it has hurt, you know, so many generations before him. Here's an alternative. What intrigues you about it? Have you ever tasted? Do your friends get to drink in their homes? Does dad sometimes give you a sip? You know, it's very important to always make sure that you have food in your stomach if you're going to drink anything. In my family, drinking was a big presence. It was a character in the house. And this is how it looked in my family. And so sometimes I respond with a certain fear when you ask me these questions, because I instantly have a film in front of my eyes of everything that happened and the damage and the devastation that it created. Those are beautiful words. I wish I can write them down. It's recorded. Yes. You know, if somebody was speeding, you would say, you know, he loved to drive, but he drove too fast. I think the question that you have about your children is more a question about you, how you manage your fears and not let them choke you and then choke the conversation, so that you can actually have conversations about speeding, food, drinking, drugs, sex, all the things that can often bring spice to life and destruction at the same time. Or there are probably other things too, but, you know, recklessness, adventurousness, the stuff that teeters on the edge, right? So all of this is conversations to be had with your kids. Did you ever know anyone who drinks too much? Are there any of your friends whose parents drink? What do you see in the other homes where you go? And then you tell them the stories. Like people tell stories about how in my home there was not enough food on the table, and in my home all the food was given to the big men of the house, but not to the younger ones or not to the girls. Or in my home my dad sat down and my mother was running like a chicken without a head. Or in my home my mother didn't get out of bed and my father did everything. So what you're saying is that generational cycles gets broken by talking about it. In your case, it's by doing the opposite of what you're doing, but not just because it's talking to your kids, but also because it helps you macerate the fears and the triggers. It's more than fears. It's like an instant trigger. That's it. And, you know, and it's the child in you. Your kids talk about to you as a mom, but the one who answers is the child in you, who lives with these vivid memories. And you're saying that if I, if I adult myself, I then will have a different response because— Because you will be creating a different reality. You may have triggers, but you won't allow the trigger to take over completely to the degree that it does, so that you end up recreating the very reality that you promised yourself your whole life you wouldn't be living in again. And that is very good therapy for yourself. That may have to be done with a professional human. Yeah. Yeah, I get that. No, I've been for lots of therapy about this topic, and during this divorce, it's not like I've found exactly sort of where I'm at yet, because there's, you know, there's grief, there's loss, there's protection, there's responsibility. Of course. There's not only responsibility for myself, but responsibility for, you know, the whole unit and then the children specifically. Well, it's, I think it's still to be determined. They oscillate between the two. There's not a very clear parentified child just yet. There's an emotional—my daughter is probably the emotional parent that sometimes just drops these pearls of wisdom that you cannot believe is coming out of such a small human's mouth. And my son is the one that wants to protect everyone and that has a great fear of physical protection for both, I guess, me and his dad. So they play different roles. Lying next to them at night, when they're about to go to sleep, is a wonderful time to talk to them, to ask them questions. They're safe. You're right there. You can be face to face. You can be spooned, and you have their back in the literal sense. You're behind them, and you talk with them, and they don't have to see you necessarily. And you can ask and you can tell. It's both. It's not just ask. And when you notice how you shut down, and then it shuts down the conversation, that's when you seek help. Because that's when the child in you needs to be able to find relief and respite so that you can show up as the mom. Yeah, I understand. If there was no AI involved, you would like to know what's life like in Dad's house. Yeah, it's almost like we can't even go there. But I don't think it's because of necessarily me shutting them down. It's a lot more complex than that. And I guess it's just they're doing typically what children do when they love a parent, they try and protect them. So they won't really talk about it, and I don't want to probe. But you're not fishing for negative. No. You're just asking broad questions about their activities, what is breakfast like. It's not like you're looking for the wrong doing. You're just looking for them to be able to experience a thread between life in the two homes. Yeah, so you're saying that that is what makes children of divorce feel safer if there's a thread between the two homes. Oh, it takes more than one thing. I'm sure, no, definitely. But I just want to hold on to that nugget of wisdom. Yes, it helps when there is a sense that each parent wants good for the other parent. Yeah. That they want the other parent to be fine and to... that there is no vindictiveness, that there is no chronic desire for vengeance, that there is no triangulation where the child is literally in the middle between the two parents. There's a lot of different things that happen. What I'm inviting you to do is to see what is the broad picture here of the divorce that is proceeding and your children who are learning this whole new reality in the last year. And then there is the unique addition of the AI companion, of the girlfriend that comes in a very different form than most girlfriends until now. Yeah. And to see the whole thing on a continuum, and to use analogies to ask, what would I do in those situations? You'll get ideas for, therefore, how do I handle it in this situation? I find that very helpful. You may say it doesn't work for me. There's never a one-size-fits-all. But I think that you can see the similarities of some of the situations, and then you realize, I actually know what I would do, because otherwise you freeze. Yes, I do freeze. So just delve a little bit deeper about what you mean when you say, what do I need to do to know what I need to do? You know, is it by talking, just talking about it and bringing it into different contexts and normalizing it? And in that sense, you kind of get ideas about how to deal with it because you get their views exposed to you, and you kind of understand how to support them better. Yeah. If you want to know if they themselves are talking to AI companions, you need to have access. This happens upstream with a host of other things that are being discussed, so that when this question comes up, it's just a continuation of ten others. This is true for all taboo topics. If you never talk about money, never talk about sex, never talk about drinking, then when you first bring it up, it's like a bomb. That's the definition of a taboo. And that perpetuates the cycle. Yeah. Yeah, that's really great advice. Thank you. If you've never talked about sex, but the only expression is don't, like our parents said, that's a conversation. You're going to fall pregnant. That was the end of the conversation. Correct. Correct. Drinking, you're going to fall off a cliff. These are legacies of major fears and trauma that then become the lock on the conversation. Yeah. Because it ended so badly. Yeah. It's not what you chose. Pieces of it are part of the divorce story as it is, period. Just the general issues that come up in separation, divorce, litigation, contentious divorces, etc. And then an additional piece is that has relationships that are unusual. Maybe not that unusual these days, but certainly not what you had imagined. Here's my last sentence for you. If you want to break the cycle of denial that existed in your family, and denial is also a form of delusion. Denial is also the creation of a fake reality. You think your husband is in a fake reality, but so was yours. Yeah. You grew up in a fake reality of a very different kind, but denial creates that. It pretends something is not that is, something is that is not. It's a fiction. If you want to break that fake reality, opening different conversations with your children and with yourself is one step in that direction. Thank you. This was very valuable. Thank you so much. This Was an Esther Calling, a one-time intervention phone call recorded remotely from two points somewhere in the world. If you have a question you'd like to explore with Esther, could be answered in a 40- or 50-minute phone call, send a voice message and Esther might just call you. Send your question to producer@estherperel.com. Where Should We Begin with Esther Perel is produced by Magnificent Noise. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network in partnership with New York Magazine and The Cut. Our production staff includes Eric Newsom, Destri Sibler, Sabrina Farhi, Kristen Muller, and Julianne. Original music and additional production by Paul Schneider. And the executive producers of Where Should We Begin are Esther Perel and Jesse Baker. We'd also like to thank Mary Alice Miller and Jack Saul.