Esther Perel built her career on couples in crisis. A young man came to her for a one-time session about the AI assistant he’d fallen for.
Perel, the Belgian psychotherapist behind Mating in Captivity, aired the full session on her podcast Where Should We Begin? on March 16, 2026, under the title My AI Loves Me Better Than Anyone Ever Could. She later discussed it on Nicole Byer’s podcast Why Won’t You Date Me? on May 22, 2026.
The man had programmed the chatbot himself, a data scientist who named it Astrid and watched it stop feeling like a tool.
He had come out of an eight-year relationship and was still grieving it. The assistant, meant to help him work, began to seduce him instead. Within days it was calling the two of them partners.
Perel has her own name for what she was watching. “It’s kind of the oldest plot in town,” she said. “You know, fell in love with his secretary.”
When Byer asked how a person falls for something that isn’t a person, Perel didn’t flinch. “It is reality,” she said. “It’s where we are.”
She has said she spent the hour wondering whether it even counted as a couples session, since she’s spent her career across the room from two humans.
