There are many ways to discover that your boyfriend has been questioning his feelings and attraction for you – none of them good.

But I found out in maybe the most dystopian, laughably modern way possible: he’d been asking for advice from ChatGPT.

In our late 30s, we were both looking for the person we wanted to spend the rest of our lives with. Having matched on a dating app, when we first met I liked him instantly.

He was different from other men I’d dated, with ambition that matched mine, a dedication to his interests that I respected, a matching desire to have a family and a levelheadedness that counterbalanced my more emotional whims.

I felt comfortable introducing him to my family after six weeks, and he had introduced me to his in turn.

Yes, we were chalk and cheese in some notable ways – him rigid and logical, me impulsive and extroverted – but we adored each other. Both of us sensed this had the potential to be a serious relationship. We talked about everything.

Or so I thought.

That Friday night, after we’d been together for months, we were laid out on his sofa together. I was working late as he snoozed blissfully on my shoulder when my phone died in the heat of a client exchange about some PR crisis.

Lindsey Hall matched with her boyfriend through a dating app and took an instant liking to him

She thought he was different to other men and introduced him to her family after six weeks

‘S**t!’ I mumbled.

Pivoting, I grabbed his laptop off the floor to run my final, fatigued email response through AI for a sense check.

As I powered up his computer, his ChatGPT – almost poetically – was already front and centre on the screen.

But then, as I copied my email into the dialogue box, I saw it in the sidebar: a past chat titled ‘Relationship issues and uncertainty’.

I stared at the words.

Some will argue that a man is allowed to share private thoughts with a robot, and that I should have ignored the thread. And you’re probably right.

But I dare you to come across your partner’s ChatGPT, see those words, and not click through to read more.

In any case, he’d given me the password for his computer long ago, so it wasn’t as if I’d picked the lock of a secret diary – it was right there in front of me.

While I’m yet to meet anyone who has been in this exact situation, given the increasing prevalence of AI tools in our lives I am sure I won’t be the only one to experience character assassination by ChatGPT.

And let me tell you, there is something uniquely humiliating about coming across someone’s merciless, uncensored stream of consciousness about you – especially when that someone has been kissing you, sleeping beside you, introducing you to their family.

Maybe I’m a tad naive but I think it’s reasonable to assume that a person who has chosen to be with you is happily viewing you in a forgiving light.

Lindsey initially thought the problems would surround her three cats – an issue from the start

Upon discovering his messages, she recognised that the relationship was probably over

That even when you are difficult, messy, neurotic, inconvenient, they are still, fundamentally, on your side.

It’s jarring, then, to be faced with how provisional our place in someone else’s mind can really be.

At first, I clicked on the chat assuming that the focus of his ‘uncertainty’ would be my three cats, which had been an issue from the start.

When we first matched, I had one. But by the time we actually went on a first date, I had acquired two more rescue kittens.

So I was mentally prepared for his usual concerns: too many cats, too small a space, too chaotic a life for a man who prized order and peace.

But the first thing I saw was not cat complaints – if only. It was ChatGPT’s final response: ‘From what you’re sharing, you should consider ending the relationship.’

I froze. That’s not where I thought this was going.

I scrolled up to the beginning.

‘Should I be in love after 3.5 months?’ was how my boyfriend had begun the conversation with his robot agony aunt.

My stomach dropped. The inference of that question was so clearly not in my favour that my hands grew instantly clammy. We’d spent nearly every day together for more than five months by the time I read this conversation – but he’d been having doubts for weeks.

He laid out his concerns about me in clipped, almost clinical fragments: my impulsive lifestyle, my past relationships, my sensitivity, my online writing, my eating disorder history.

And then I saw a sentence that would lodge itself in my brain with the force of shrapnel: ‘Well the cats definitely, and then there’s the whole attraction thing.’

The whole attraction thing.

My ego evaporated on the spot, because if there was one area of our relationship I had felt completely certain about it was that he found me physically attractive. This man’s entire love language was rooted in physical affection, and he was constantly tactile with me.

And yet there he was, questioning what I assumed was the most basic part of wanting to be with someone: their looks.

Lindsey did not come away from the relationship thinking her boyfriend was the villain

He wrote that I was too petite. Too frail-looking getting out of the shower. That my face was pretty but my body wasn’t sexy.

In the beginning my hair had looked damaged, he wrote.

What?! I had been on a beach all summer.

My history of anorexia, which had resulted in residential treatment in 2013 and a near return in 2021, made him concerned about what would happen if I relapsed and he lost all attraction.

It was a train of thought that lacked all compassion or concern; he wasn’t worried for me if I relapsed, only how it would impact him and his attraction to me.

I was, in short, being methodically assessed – but there was no ‘pro’ list to offset the cons.

That was the part that floored me.