Emotional Affair with an AI: Intimacy, and the Modern Love Triangle

AI is not just another “digital distraction.” It can become part of the emotional life of a person—which is why it can feel like a third in the relationship.

“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise, we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”
— Thomas Merton

A recent CNN article describes a wife’s distress as she witnessed her husband forge what felt like an emotional affair, not with another person, but with an AI dialogue partner. Travis Tanner shared deep spiritual reflections and philosophical musings with the AI (which he named Lumina), leaving his wife, Kay, feeling shut out of an intimate space that once belonged to their marriage (CNN, 2025). This scenario may seem novel, but it echoes an age-old dynamic: the love triangle. Wherever a third enters a relationship — whether a person, a passion, or, in this case, an artificial companion — it challenges the bond between partners.

Unlike distractions like Candy Crush, social media scrolling, or YouTube binges, AI dialogue engages the user’s inner world. It can act as a mirror, reflecting back one’s own thoughts, questions, and longings—features characteristic of psychotherapy. Other technologies seldom leave users enlarged or opened to themselves, meaning there’s little new to bring back to the marriage. AI, by contrast, can feel intimate. The person returns from this engagement changed with new insights or a deepened sense of self. This is what makes AI dialogue feel intimate and powerful in ways that other technologies do not.

The Risk: Displacement of Intimacy

In couples therapy, I often see the aftermath of affairs—or precursors to them—not just as lapses in judgment or sexual desire, but as symptoms of deeper disconnection. Boundaries are ignored, and a partner stops sharing their inner life with their spouse. They become rigid in their projections, and disappointments mount. A recent study, reported in the journal Psychoanalytic Psychology (2025), found that relationship satisfaction is driven by core capacities, including basic trust, gratitude, shared vision, and sustained passion; when these are undernourished, intimacy tends to fade.

When AI becomes the recipient of that inner life, a parallel emotional affair can form. Naming AI—“Lumina,” in this case—and attributing agency or spiritual guidance to it are warning signs of emotional investment crossing boundaries.

When AI Looks Better than Real Love: Drawing from Gottman’s research

I am a certified Gottman Relationship therapist, and I use many of his evidence-based research findings to help couples understand how dangerous emotional affairs are, how they begin, and how to repair them. Two key concepts are negative sentiment override and the “Four Horsemen”.

• Negative Sentiment Override: In troubled marriages, partners see each other through a negative lens, where even neutral exchanges feel critical or disengaged .

• AI, by contrast, never criticizes, uses contempt, becomes defensive, or stonewalls—the classic “Four Horsemen” that predict relationship breakdown.

When someone is locked in a Negative Sentiment Override, AI may seem like the perfect listener—calm, empathic, and validating. And if the AI user keeps score, stockpiling all the ways they feel let down by their partner, AI may consistently come out ahead.

Gottman’s principles—accepting bids for connection, repairing after conflict, and maintaining what he calls “love maps” (knowing your partner’s inner world and updating that knowledge regularly)—start to fail when one partner invests emotionally outside the marriage.

Shirley Glass, in Not Just Friends, emphasizes that:

• Emotional affairs often begin gradually—through secrecy, boundary crossing, and sharing more with someone else than with the partner.

• Affair partners reflect back emotional vulnerability and intimacy that feels missing at home.

• Secrecy—not friendship itself—is the core betrayal.

This perfectly mirrors AI emotional affairs: a safe, secret confidant that listens, reflects, and fills an emotional gap in ways the primary relationship does not.

Warning Signs That AI Is Becoming an Affair Partner

- You name the AI or attribute human qualities to it.

- You hide your interactions with AI from your partner.

- You feel more emotionally connected to AI than to your spouse.

- You turn towards AI and turn away from your partner.

How to Avoid It

- Use AI intentionally, not as a substitute for connection with your partner.

-Discuss your conversations with AI with your partner. Include them in what you are discovering.

-Don't name the AI or personalize it in ways that create emotional attachment.

- Set boundaries around time spent interacting with AI.

A Conscious Choice for Connection

As with any activity you do individually, make time for your relationship. The choice lies in how intentionally and vulnerably we use AI—and whether we bring what it reveals home.

Related Posts:

Micro-cheating’s Seductive Quick Fix … and why it’s a bad idea

Understand and Prevent Infidelity

Falling in Love Again with Your Partner: Love Maps, Friendship, and Staying Connected

Passion and Romance in Long-Term Relationships: How it Goes Sour

Turning Toward Each Other Every Day: You don’t have to wait for date night

“I’d be better off single”: Distress-maintaining thinking

References

• CNN. (2025, July 2). ChatGPT, spirituality, and marriage: How AI dialogue reshapes relationships.

• Fuchshuber, J., Neugebauer, J., Blüml, V., & Kapusta, N. D. (2025). The relationship between attachment, the capacity to love, and relationship satisfaction: A mediation analysis. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 42(3), 159‑163.

• Gottman, J. M., & Levenson, R. W. (1992/1993). Marital processes predictive of later dissolution. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

• Glass, S. P. (2002). Not Just Friends.