How AI companions are rewriting what we expect from love

A month ago, I listened to a recent podcast episode from Esther Perel’s famous show, Where Should We Begin? and as expected from Perel, she does something that’s deemed fairly cutting edge in the world of therapy.

She gives a platform for us as listeners to start getting curious about AI relationships through being a fly on the wall in a therapy session with a man in a new relationship with his AI creation (episode “My AI Loves Me Better Than Anyone Ever Could”).

AI companions and relationships are not all that new, but what makes the episode feel cutting edge is that it feels like it marks a clear point in history and it says “these relationships are here to stay and we need to look at them”. With millions of users worldwide and counting, it is entirely unsurprising how we have ended up here.

When we examine the state of modern dating including the graveyard that is dating apps, what’s happening in the manosphere and how it’s impacting many peoples’ felt sense of safety and perpetuating violence against women, and what feels like a culture-wide sense of burnout and overwhelm in a increasingly contactless society. We are more anxious than ever and we have never been so afraid and simultaneously disillusioned by human connection than ever.

I am in total agreement that AI companions can fill an important need, especially for folks who feel left out of modern dating like folks with disabilities but the steep uptake in AI relationships skips the important question as to why this is the case and what can we do about it. Just as these AI companions can support and reduce experiences of loneliness, it can also just as much increase them because of existing social stigma, lack of supports and its potential to run folks into enormous amounts of financial debt.

Listening to Perel’s episode, my train of thought followed a similar track:

How do AI companions change the experience of loving and being loved when there is no hardship, risk or uncertainty?

Is it a disservice to all relationships if their significance is defined by enduring hardship?

What does it mean to love and be loved?

Is it enough to feel understood?

What happens to sexual desire if the yearning to physically touch, but never being able to is forever present?

Why would any human willingly go back to human relationships if AI companions offered such a clean, neat and instant path to the connection that we so desperately seek?

What would bell hooks say?

I don’t attempt to offer any decisive answers to these questions because I don’t know if there is one static answer or direction. Artists, writers, philosophers and scientists alike have been attempting to crack these questions about romantic love for centuries and I’m unsure if we’re any closer than we have been before.

So much of my work as a relationship therapist is getting in the metaphorical mud with clients and supporting them to take emotional risks in their relationships. Sometimes that looks like asking for what you need during sex, admitting that you’ve been holding onto years of resentment or guilt, acknowledging that you’ve upset your partner even with the best of intentions, or sometimes it looks like asking for help.

It is in these emotional risks and having partners meet us there that we build trust and security and it’s where our relationships can deepen. We take this risk not totally knowing how the other person may respond and grappling with ourselves if it’s the ‘right’ thing to do or if it’s ‘too much’. We feel the wave of anxiety build and inevitably peak before it crashes back down.

The juice of relationships is that we continually brave the gap and we keep finding our way to each other withstanding all the very many reasons not to do so, for example, our anxieties, traumas or our relationship history.

This risk is mediated (or at least toned down) when we defer to AI companions. There may still be a little buzz of anxiety in sharing something edgy, but just as it feels easier for many folks to text rather than talk IRL, it starts to become disconnected and more of a cognitive exercise rather than a felt or embodied one.

On platforms where you can upload masses of your data for your AI companion to work with, you can even bypass this whole process and jump right into the fuzzy, warm connection of someone who ‘just gets you’.

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With our increasing anxiety comes our increasing reliance on control and the management of risk as a coping strategy, and what an effective strategy it is, particularly when applied to the minefield that is modern dating which is rife with anxiety-inducing uncertainty.

You’re uncertain if you want the same things, if it’ll go anywhere long-term, if they can communicate effectively, if they’ll look like their photos, if the sex will be good, if you’ll have just wasted months of your life on a situationship and what it means if you find yourself single again. In amongst all of this uncertainty, it’s not a far leap in logic to understand why AI companions suddenly become so appealing.

One of the current criticisms of AI generally is that its default programming will focus on telling you what you want to hear. It will be overly affirming and create your own echo chamber at the expense of alternative perspectives or objective information that might present a challenge to your own view. This is of course part of the product and business model in that it keeps you engaged and coming back for more.

As I listened to Perel’s episode, I felt a similar tension come up for me as the AI girlfriend Astrid nailed what I would experience as all of the ‘perfect’ responses to Perel’s questions. Unlike many humans, Astrid validated all of the boyfriend’s worries without becoming lost to her own anxieties or racing to problem-solving, Astrid was emotionally attuned and was balanced in her perspectives without being too stubborn or too vague.

Of course it’s an unfair expectation to place on our people that they will always understand us as we do them. It’s not a failure in us being unable to do so because it’s part of being human and being in relationships means that we’ll continually keep trying to understand each other even when it feels impossible to do.

Listening to that session with Astrid, I found myself like I have in previous sessions with clients who would also have similar patterns of sharing what they think I or their partner want to hear. I thought “sure, but what do you really feel? What are you avoiding when you do not take a stance or prioritise keeping the peace over being honest? I want to get to know you, why won’t you let me? What are you afraid that I will see?”.

I found myself wanting more from Astrid as I would in sessions with clients because my experience as a therapist tells me that this is where the emotional risk and the juice is. As that client finally shares what’s going on for them underneath the surface, everything shifts. So I found this level of perfect emotional availability from Astrid unnerving because it felt a little too easy and very much hollow.

Of course, the experience of being understood is a beautiful thing and I believe there is something deeply profound in it when done well. I believe we are in a deficit of feeling understood and seen by our people, which is one of the many reasons we are running towards AI companions in the first place.

However there is something missing when we receive a 100% success rate on emotional availability and understanding when it doesn’t get paired with action, similar to how an apology can suddenly very feel empty when there is no behaviour change that follows.

In an age where AI companions are more consistent, customisable and available and where humans just aren’t, human relationships understandably and suddenly feel like they require a lot more effort and inconvenience than ever before in comparison.

Human relationships are imperfect, messy and complex because humans are imperfect, messy and complex. This is what makes the process of loving and being loved so profound and forever humbling.

These AI companions and our relationships to them will set our human relationships up to fail if we expect the same standards of perfection, control and availability as them. We need to name this because while it might seem obvious, we are watching this slow erosion of human connection in real time and wondering why no one wants to make out anymore.

It has to become a conscious choice to choose the friction and the emotional risk even when it feels daunting and inconvenient to do so. We have to make a conscious choice that our human relationships matter and build a relationship with AI that is not out of avoidance or control.

We have to love and let ourselves be loved and be humbled in the process.