In the Age of AI, Esther Perel’s Relationship Counseling Is More Necessary Than Ever

I imagine that many of you will be Esther Perel fans, either via her book Mating in Captivity or her therapy podcast Where Should We Being?. In this excellent Vanity Fair profile she discusses, among other things, a recent podcast episode about a man and his relationship with an AI bot name Astrid: Perel never questions the feelings between the man and Astrid. Yet she points out the inherent flaws in the relationship, using words such as “sycophantic” and “undemanding” in the podcast session to emphasize that Astrid has no life, no history to bring to the relationship. “We have had imaginary friends since we are little, and we have spoken to our ancestors forever,” Perel says in our interview, a few weeks after the episode ran. “The danger of AI is that it becomes so soothing and so flattering and so frictionless that real relationships start to feel way too difficult by comparison.” And the point she eventually makes about AI relationships that I found really interesting: “What stood…