My partner talks to an AI every evening. What does that mean?

Most couples have never talked about this, and so there is no shared answer. In practice, what matters is rarely the technology. What matters is whether it happens in secret and whether it replaces something that really belongs between the two of you.

I hesitated for a long time to write about this, because it sounds like science fiction. Then I saw the numbers.

How common this is

A study from May 2026 surveyed 2,431 young adults between 18 and 30, all of them in a committed relationship, meaning together, engaged or married.

The result: one in seven regularly talks to an AI companion that behaves like a partner. Twenty to thirty per cent have tried it at least once.

Two figures from it have stayed with me.

69 per cent keep it from their real partner completely or partly.

56 per cent wish their conversations with their real partner were more like the ones with the AI.

The second figure is the one we really ought to be talking about. More than half are saying that a machine talks to them better than the person they live with.

That is not a technology problem.

So is it bad or not?

There is no universal answer to this, and anyone who gives you one has made something up.

What does exist is a yardstick that people apply surprisingly consistently in surveys. Around three out of four adults consider a secret close relationship on the internet a breach of trust, and among married people it is slightly more.

The word that matters here is secret. Not digital. Secret.

In my practice, I work with three questions. They work for chatbots just as well as for the colleague at the office:

1. Do I know about it? Not: did he tell me when I asked him about it. But: would he have told me of his own accord.

2. Is it getting something that I’m missing? Not time. Closeness, openness, the things he doesn’t tell me.

3. Would he stop if I told him it hurts me? The answer to this question says more about the relationship than any discussion about what counts and what doesn’t.

If all three answers are uncomfortable, then the question of what to call it has become secondary.

Why people do it

Almost never out of desire. That is the part that surprises most people.

The same reasons come up again and again in the surveys. The AI doesn’t interrupt. It doesn’t get annoyed. It doesn’t bring up something from three years ago. It is there at half past one in the morning. It never reacts hurt.

In other words: it offers exactly what disappears first in a tired, irritable, overloaded relationship.

That doesn’t make it harmless. But it changes the question. If your partner would rather talk to a machine, it is rarely a sign that he doesn’t want you any more. It is usually a sign that your conversations have become hard work and he no longer feels up to them.

The same goes for you, by the way, if you are the one who goes to the chat window in the evening. I say that without any reproach.

How to bring it up without it escalating

The most common mistake is to start with the question of how to judge it. “Do you even realise what this is.” Then the next two hours are about what to call it, and never about what it is really about.

Start with yourself instead.

“I’ve seen that you write a lot with this app. I don’t want to blame you. Something else makes me sad: I’d like you to talk about it with me.”

And if you want to know more:

“What do you get there that you don’t get with me? I’m really asking, it’s not a trap.”

This second question is hard to bear, because the answer can hurt. Even so, it is the only one that will get you anywhere.

If you are the one

There are also women reading this who talk to an AI every evening themselves, and who wonder whether they are doing something wrong.

Briefly and honestly: there is nothing wrong with looking for comfort. Comfort is a basic need, and if you can’t get it at home right now, you look for it elsewhere. People have done that for as long as there have been people.

There are two things I would ask you to watch out for. Do you keep it quiet? And: do you tell things there that you no longer tell at home?

If both are true, then the AI is not the problem. It is the thermometer.

What the research also says, and what it doesn’t

The same study showed that people who regularly use romantic AI companions are less likely to be in stable relationships.

Caution is called for here, and I don’t want to claim more than the numbers support. This is a correlation, not a cause. It is at least as plausible that people in unhappy relationships are more likely to turn to an AI companion as that the companion makes the relationship unhappy.

What can be said: secrecy harms relationships. We knew that before chatbots.

Where my assessment ends

If your partner forbids you to talk to people, checks your phone or keeps you away from the people close to you, then your relationship is not about chatbots. Then it is about control, and that is a different topic. In Germany, you can reach the helpline for women affected by violence (Hilfetelefon Gewalt gegen Frauen) around the clock and free of charge on 116 016.

What I want you to take with you

The real question is not what to call it. The real question is why more than half of those who do it wish the conversations at home were more like the conversations there.

An AI can listen very well. It doesn’t interrupt, it doesn’t get tired, it doesn’t take anything personally.

The good thing about that: these are all things that can be learned.