Emily Jamea, Ph.D., is a sex therapist, best-selling author and keynote speaker. You can find her here each month to share her latest thoughts about sex.
A few months ago, Rachel, a client in her late 40s sat across from me and said something that caught me off guard.
“I think Jake is having an affair.”
I was shocked. Jake is the last person I would have expected to cheat. Rachel and Jake had been clients for nearly 10 years. They used therapy as a healthy prophylactic, coming in for guidance whenever life threw them a curveball to ensure their marriage stayed on track. And it had. They were emotionally connected and maintained a healthy sex life despite occasional ups and downs.
“Tell me what happened,” I gently prompted.
“Well the good news is that I don’t think he’s seeing another woman, but I’m not sure if this is much better. It’s weird.” She took a deep breath.
“I recently discovered that he’s developed an extremely intimate relationship with an AI chatbot. A few days ago, I grabbed his phone — mine was on the charger — to ask AI to elaborate on something my son was studying for history. And that’s when I saw his chat. I know it was wrong to scroll back through the conversation, but it was right there, and I couldn’t help myself. I found pages and pages of text. A lot of it was him telling the chatbot about his day, things that had gone on at work. But the replies were so intimate, so sensitive and comforting, offering more poignant, thoughtful reassurance than I can usually offer. As the chat progressed, some of the exchanges got sexual. At one point, it said something like, ‘Imagine how it would feel to lay together, the sensation of my skin on your skin.’ I’ve felt him pull back recently, but I assumed it was work stress. I have no idea how to feel about this or how to confront him.”
This was uncharted territory, not just for her, but for me as her therapist. My clinical skills in helping couples navigate the effect of AI on their relationship are running head-to-head with the evolving technology.
Technology and sex
Technology, depending on how it’s defined, has always shaped sex. Birth control changed women’s autonomy. Dating apps transformed how we meet, and pornography altered expectations around arousal and novelty. But artificial intelligence introduces something different — real-time personalized intimacy without another nervous system on the other side.
AI-powered companions can now simulate emotional attunement, elicit sexual response and personalize erotic storytelling. They learn your preferences. They never get tired, defensive or distracted. They never get a headache. They don’t need reassurance. They act human without a single human need, selflessly giving as much as your heart desires.
For some people, this feels revolutionary, but for others, it’s terrifying. From a clinical perspective, I see both an upside and a downside.
Let’s start with the good. Another client, Michelle, suffered from chronic health anxiety. Small aches and pains or minor colds would send her into a total spiral. She’d often turn to her husband for reassurance and instead, receive frustration and impatience, which created friction in their relationship. Feeling desperate, she’d google her symptoms, landing on websites that convinced her that her symptoms were the start of something dire like cancer. But the advent of AI took her down a different path. She found that when she shared her symptoms and concerns with her chatbot, it offered comfort and reassurance, linking reputable sites that confirmed she was most likely fine. In this case, AI served as a pressure valve for her marriage, creating space for more lighthearted love and closeness.
Another couple, Seth and Amanda, spent a year long-distance while he was away on an oil and gas assignment. They came to see me for advice on how to keep their marriage and sex life strong while he was gone. They had fun incorporating teledildonics — sex toys that can be controlled remotely — into their long-distance sex life. They had set up a pillow to mimic Seth’s heartbeat and breathing patterns before he left, and she got a vibrator that he could control remotely via an app. They never saw it as a replacement for real-life sexual connection, but it was the perfect stopgap during his year abroad.
AI can also reduce shame and foster healthy exploration. I’ve used AI in my therapy office with clients who struggle to articulate their desire and preferences. Together, with the help of AI, I help them gather their thoughts and feelings as a first step before communicating them to their partner.
Used thoughtfully, tech can support curiosity, communication and creativity in the bedroom. But there’s also a darker side.
Real intimacy is messy. It requires negotiation. It asks us to tolerate frustration, and it demands vulnerability. Human-to-human sex and love can create friction, but friction, ironically, is where growth happens and intimacy blooms.
Technology transgressions
Rachel wasn’t just upset about the intimate nature of her husband’s messages with the chatbot. She was devastated because her husband had stopped bringing his emotional needs to her. When he felt lonely, he turned to the app. When he felt insecure, he sought reassurance there. When Rachel occasionally turned him down for sex, he bypassed the discomfort of working through it, turning to his AI companion instead. His chatbot never challenged him, never misread him, and — unlike Rachel — never needed anything in return.
I’ve also had clients come to me with more extreme AI entanglements. I’ve seen a spike in younger men who feel discouraged by modern dating and frustrated with their inability to form consistent sexual relationships retreat into immersive virtual reality pornography, which is now hyper-personalized through AI. What begins as convenience or escape gradually becomes a substitute for real-world intimacy, where desire is intently gratified and rejection, ambiguity and emotional risk are engineered out of the experience. In these cases, AI isn’t a step toward real-world connection; it’s a leap in the opposite direction.
True intimacy is uniquely human
Sex and love that deepens over time isn’t built on convenience. It’s built on two imperfect people learning how to talk about what hurts, what excites them and what they need from each other. An algorithm can simulate that, but it can’t replace it.
I coached Rachel on how to gently confront Jake with what she’d discovered. Fortunately, he could see why she was hurt and did not become defensive. Together they decided to set boundaries around his AI use. Contemporary couples have had to learn to have conversations about boundaries regarding porn use or social media, and now, they’re going to have to learn how to discuss healthy ways of incorporating AI into their lives.
We can’t deny that AI is slightly reshaping love and romance. The couples who will thrive in this new landscape aren’t the ones who reject technology outright, nor the ones who immerse themselves in it without reflection. They will be the ones who stay in conversation, who ask hard questions about secrecy and substitution and who use innovation to enhance connection rather than avoid it. Technology will continue to evolve at lightning speed. Our task is to make sure intimacy evolves alongside it so that even in a digital age, sex and love remain deeply, courageously human.
