AI and your sex life: when it helps & when it causes more harm

Thinking about asking ChatGPT about your desire gap at 2am? You're not alone—lots of people are turning to AI for relationship help. And I get it. It's free, private, and you don't have to admit to another human that you're struggling.

But here's what you need to know: AI can be genuinely helpful for some things—like understanding new concepts, normalizing your experience, or organizing your thoughts before talking to your partner. But it also has serious limitations that can actually make your problems worse.

In this episode, I break down what AI does well (psychoeducation, reducing shame) and what it fundamentally can't do (anything embodied or somatic). We'll talk about the "sycophancy problem"—why AI tells you what you want to hear instead of what you need to hear—and when it's time to get actual human support.

For anyone considering on turning to AI for relationship advice, but wanting to be informed about that choice, this one's for you.

Get my free guide: 5 Steps to Start Solving Desire Differences
(Without Blame or Shame), A Practical Starting Point for Individuals and Couples, at https://laurajurgens.com/libido

Find out more about me at https://laurajurgens.com/

Transcript

0:01  
Welcome to the desire gap podcast. I'm your host, Dr Laura Jurgens, and whether you want more sex than your partner or less, you are not wrong, and your relationship isn't doomed. You just need better tools to solve the struggles of mismatched libidos. That's what we do here. So welcome, and let's dive in. Hey, welcome. I am excited to talk about today's episode because I think it's just like a you know, it's a hot topic right now, everybody's thinking about AI, and today we're going to think about whether AI can actually help you with your relationship challenges. And the TLDR version is essentially, yes, it can be helpful for some things, and it also has a lot of limitations. So it's just worth being aware of what to use it for and what not to use it for, and how it can kind of get you into some trouble. So why are we even talking about this, right? Like some of you might be thinking, Wait a second, why would I go to AI for relationship challenges? And others of you are sitting around being like, Oh, I do that all the time, right? I constantly as chat GPT or Claude about my relationship issues. So, you know, people might be typing in, you know, how do I want sex again? Or my never. My partner never wants sex at like, 2am when you can't sleep and, you know, I get it, it's free, it's private, it's available immediately. You do not have to talk to another person and admit you're actually struggling with something that is feels really close to your heart or private. And research is showing that this is increasingly common. So the data we have is for high school students, which may or may not apply to adults, but one in five high school students says that they are someone they know has used AI for romantic relationship support and for adults dealing with intimacy issues. My guess is it's actually quite a lot higher, and we don't know, right, but a lot of people are turning to AI for a lot of things. So without having any, you know, let's not judge, right? People want help, and especially around desire discrepancies, libido challenges, relationship, communication, it can just feel really lonely out there and really hard to find help, especially if you do not have a good coach or therapist and you haven't found the right help yet. So we're going to talk today the real deal on what AI can and can't do, and because the research is really clear, like AI is an absolutely dual edged sword, so it offers some real benefits, like accessibility, enhanced self reflection, but it can also pose some significant risks, like fostering unrealistic expectations, emotional dependence and potentially making Your relationship problems worse. And we're going to talk about how to be onto yourself about that, and how to be onto AI about that so you don't misuse it, and how to use it wisely when to get human help that kind of deal. That's what we're going to do today. So let's first dive in on what AI can actually do for you, and there are some legitimate uses. Now this is aside from all of the other ethical considerations of AI, which I find to be really important and compelling, especially the environmental impacts of AI. It's pretty it's pretty rough. It's really rough on the environment. The amount of resources it takes to actually do these things is extreme. And then everybody you know storing all this stuff in the cloud, the cloud storage, environmental impacts are also really intense. So I'm not going to talk about that today, because that's not what this podcast is about, but I am aware of it. There's a lot of ethical considerations, there's a lot of environmental considerations. So you know, be informed and really look into that, so that you can be as responsible in your use and as aligned with your own values as possible. But in terms of like, people are using this, right? People are using chat, GPT or Claude for relationship advice. So we want to talk today about how to do that well when you do choose to use it, and how to be very careful that you don't accidentally get yourself into more problems by using it so where AI actually can help is number one, it's accessible, and it gives you some immediate sort of feedback. We have to be careful about that feedback. But it is a 24/7 you know, immediate access. Just some sort of information, and that can be helpful for people when you you know are really just struggling. It's like the middle of the night, and your coach or your therapist isn't available right right away, my clients can email me and I will get back to them within 24 hours, but not everybody has that option, right? AI is low stakes. You can ask an embarrassing question without worrying about judgment, right? It's just a computer on the other side. You can explore whether what you're experiencing, you know, you can ask it whether it's common, whether it maybe warrants professional help. It may not be able to give you that help. And it may not really be the best tool for assessing whether you need professional help, but it does give you some place to start, and for people who are really hesitant about starting with a coach, counselor or therapist because of cost time, stigma or just like not knowing where to start, it can be an entry point to just get some information. So it can even alleviate a little bit of loneliness, anxiety in the moment by giving you a false sense of human connection, which is not nothing, right? One study found like 63% of users felt less lonely after interacting with AI, even though their brains know it's a computer. But actually, our bodies don't totally know that.

6:30  
So number two, there is some psycho education and normalizing benefits. So AI, for example, could tell you that responsive desire is a thing, right? And it's a really common thing. It can normalize the fact that, like, maybe it's hard for you to get into sex until you start, or that you don't have spontaneous desire. It might normalize those things. I try to do that for you too, but AI can give you some sense that this is not just a you problem, and that's valuable, right? Mismatched libidos are super common. You are not broken. That is something that you can get reassurance from an AI tool about. It can explain concepts, so things like the basics of attachment theory, or the dual control model, or the difference between spontaneous and responsive desire, and that kind of psycho education can reduce shame and help you understand that what you're experiencing is normal. And it's kind of like having access to a big textbook, right that you can just like, ask questions and it like magically flips to the right page. So I think that's actually pretty awesome in a lot of ways. Another thing, number three, I would say that is a benefit is enhanced self reflection and organizing your thoughts so it can provide guided prompts and journaling style interactions that help you clarify your own feelings and experience before you talk to a partner or a professional. So sometimes, like even just the act of writing out your feelings in the prompt box can help you figure out what you actually want to say, and it can help you also think through or practice like different types of not really. It won't help you practice right, but it will help you think through and sort of, at least practice writing out different types of communication, scripts or approaches without the pressure of a real conversation. It's not going to be able to give you good feedback on all of the actual bulk of human communication, which is your nonverbals, your body language, your tone, all that stuff, the way a good coach or therapist could do. But it will give you some idea of like languaging around your thoughts and your challenges. And I think that can be really valuable. It also gives some objective, somewhat objective. It's not really built to be objective, but somewhat objective. Data, informed feedback, if you ask it questions, well, now it doesn't really do it. If you don't ask questions, well, it will tend to sort of be an echo chamber, and we'll get into that later. But AI is essentially pattern matching from massive amounts of data, and those data don't have structured personal biases about your situation specifically, right? And so because of that lack of in innate bias on the other end of the data, it's not emotionally invested right in whether you stay together with your partner, or whether you want less sex than your partner, or whether in whether you feel like you. You know your partner wants too much from you, or you want you know a lot more than your partner is offering. It just sort of gives you if you prompt it neutrally, it will give you a neutral response. But it's typically important to know that it's not actually built to be neutral. It's built to create engagement and reinforce engagement by reinforcing your innate biases yourself that you bring. So there are the data on the other end are not biased towards your situation, but the models are okay. So another benefit is that it can help you identify initial problems if you're sort of discerning about it, so it might help you identify that, yes, you do have a desire discrepancy with your partner. Or if you put in a lot of your own, you know, personal history, it might tell you, yeah, actually, you're probably do have some unresolved trauma from childhood, right? Or, you know, you put in things that you say to your partner, and it might say, okay, so your conflicts, your style of approach and conflict, and the words that you use might be contributing to the problematic outcomes you're having. Right so it can help you identify some problems, if you ask it the right questions, and help you recognize patterns you might not have noticed, and I think that can be beneficial, especially some of the research suggests that combining AI with human support can actually help you, know, offer some sort of dual benefits, right? The idea is that the AI might handle the pattern recognition, and that the humans could help refine your prompts so that you're getting more feedback and you know what to ask it, and the professional human provides the deeper, empathetic, embodied insight into the complex issues, whereas it also then could help you refine things like common communication questions that you might have, okay, but the key here is that AI is always if you choose to use it, it's a helpful starting point for education and self reflection, like reading a book, listening to this podcast, Right? We're giving you information and prompting ideas and thinking. But information alone doesn't actually create change, and that's one of the reasons why I frequently have exercises in this podcast. But also this podcast isn't meant to replace coaching. It's meant to give you information and help you understand the situation better, which is in itself empowering, and help you understand when might be the right time for you to get professional help if that is something that is if you do want to make change, because that is what you do need in order to make change. When I want to make change in my life, I still get professional help, right, because I know that that is what has enabled me to make a ton of change. So things get tricky when people want to try to use information as a replacement for taking new actions, and it's important to know the difference and be onto yourself about the difference, right? The information, whether it's from AI or in this podcast, is not a replacement for taking new different actions in order to get new different outcomes in your life, because if you just keep doing the same thing, you will just keep getting the same outcome. That's how it works. Okay?

13:40  
So what can AI not do? And what should you be careful? Of these are, like the critical limitations that we all want to know and be aware of, because people get stuck. And one of the big ones is AI has no somatic awareness, no body understanding and desire and relationship are inherently embodied. So desire issues live in your body, not just your mind and any sort of AI tool cannot see when your shoulders are up by your ears that you stop breathing. When you start talking about having sex with your partner, that your nervous system goes into freeze, when your partner initiates or like turns towards you, when you respond with this like rapid facial Twitch, when your partner says something that is triggering to you, AI is not going to pick up any of that, and you need to start getting into the body in order to solve anything in relationship to desire discrepancies, the work of rebuilding desire is. Deeply embodied, and it requires learning to feel safe in your body, to know what you your body actually likes, to know what arousal looks like and feels like to you from the inside, to be able to track your own nervous system states, to recognize when you're in fight, flight, freeze, and when you're relaxed, AI literally cannot access the dimensions of this work that are embodied, which is the vast majority of them. It is just going to be text based, maybe a little cognitive. And the body is where the healing happens and where real authentic connection and authentic desire happen. AI can help you just stay up in your head and think about things, but it's not going to help you get out of your head into your body to actually solve problems. How you show up, how that impacts your partner's nervous system, how the dance of two people together feed off each other, either in a very positive way or often in a negative way. And we can solve that in coaching, you can solve that. And I'm sure there's a bunch of other ways that coaching is the way that I'm familiar with solving it. There may be some other approaches, but AI is not going to be one of them, all right. Number two, AI cannot read the room your relationship dynamics or your nervous system. So this is similar, but also just like it. It doesn't number one is like it has no body awareness, and it has no context for any of that. It can't give you anything related to the reality of an embodied experience. But number two is it just can't it can't process embodied information. So it's not going to hear your tone of voice or your facial expressions or your micro expressions when you talk about your partner. It doesn't understand attachment, your attachment history and how you relate to that in the present, how it won't be able to see that it won't be under able to understand viscerally a trauma background and what that feels like. It has no idea of context, of like, the 1000 tiny ways that relationship dynamics can shape a problem between people and what is required in terms of safety, embodied safety, to fix that. So you know, it can't ask the right follow up questions. It can't push back. It can't really challenge you when you need to be challenged, but gently and in a way that you can hold right. It's just not going to recognize this. You know that you kind of repeated this particular body language three times in a row, right? Or you're that you're the tone of voice when you mention his name changes the way that a story might kind of feel really embedded in your nervous system, rather than just sort of an objective reality, and it won't hear or understand emotions like it won't see that there might be grief sitting right there under the surface, right? And so a skilled human is going to pick up on what you're not saying, and AI is just going to respond to the words that you type. So that brings us to number three, AI is only going to be as good as the data that you give it, and you usually don't even know what you're leaving out, and neither do I. This is universal human failing, right? We don't know what we don't know, and so we can't even ask the right question most of the time, and we don't even know what information we need to give it, you know? So for example, I have clients that come all the time who are convinced that the problem is just their partner doesn't want sex, and I need to make their partner want to have sex with them more. And I promise you, that is not the problem.

19:11  
A lot of times, what's happening is their partner is responding to like, an intense lack of safety in the relationship, this conditional love that happens unspoken anger, like a like weird sense of entitlement to their body their partner is responding to a lack of autonomy. And if this person who's convinced that their partner just has a libido issue, that's like a hormonal issue or something that they just like, they just need to have their they just need to be fixed, right? And that they themselves have no contribution to the dynamic, they will go into an AI tool with prompts about trying to fix their partner, because they just literally can't see their own role. They can't see that some of like. A lot of the problem could even just all of the problems sometimes is literally just the pressure that they're bringing to bear, and they can't see that. So they, of course, they're not going to be able to prompt it right. There's an article from the Carey center that puts it really well, which is like when you ask AI to diagnose you and your relationship, you're doing something you don't even realize you're the one guessing what matters. And if you leave out key details, which you are going which they say you know you probably do without realizing it, the output sounds neutral, reasonable and even kind, but it doesn't confront the truth. And I love that quote, because it doesn't necessarily confront the truth. So it may sound reasonable but not actually be true, you might not mention, so just a couple examples you might not mention, right, that you had this massive conflict with your partner last week and that they yelled at you, or that they like that you've been asking them to, you know, go on antidepressants for five years, and they've never been willing to even talk about it, or that, you know, you have ADHD, or maybe you didn't mention, you know, that you were sexually ashamed when you were growing up, because you just didn't even Think it was relevant, right? Ai won't probe and it won't notice what's missing. It just works with what you give it. And that is a problem that's a big old echo chamber. And so that in that that brings us to number four, right, which is that AI reinforces your biases and your blind spots. So this is called the psycho fancy problem and psycho fancy, or psycho fancy, however you want to say it, it's both acceptable the it's called this because it basically AI tells you what you want to hear rather than what you need to hear. And that's the term that's been coined for this, right that AI models are trained through a reinforcement learning based on human feedback, which basically rewards it for telling you what you want to hear, not what you actually might need to hear. So it can, you know, mirror our confusion, essentially, and it reinforces our blind spots that get us into the problem in the first place. So it just helps us dig the hole deeper. And interestingly, so like when people are actually building these AI companions, they explicitly have chosen to amplify this tendency because they want the AI experience for users to feel agreeable and non judgmental, because otherwise it'll turn people off. If someone's challenged by a computer, they're going to stop that chat. They're not going to stay on the hook longer. And if you used any of these tools at all, you know that they love to, just like, keep you engaged, right? And ultimately, once they start really massively monetizing these things, that's going to pay off big for them. So what this means is like, if you're asking questions from a place of anxious attachment or people pleasing or denial about your own role in your relationship problem, AI is likely to validate that rather than challenge it, even if the best thing in the world for you, the most loving thing for you would be for someone to actually lovingly call you out on that and to help you understand what you're actually doing and why it's not getting you the results you want. Right? And a good coach or a therapist will say, hey, wait a second, this doesn't sound quite right. You know, are you like? What about what about this other stuff? What about this? What's underneath that? Right? Challenging and probing and you need that. That's part of my job. That's what I consider to be a really important part of my job is actually challenging my clients, existing stories. That's part of what they pay me for. I'm not just going to sit there and go along with everything, because if I just let them do the same thing that they've been doing and feel completely justified in it, then they're going to get the same results. And that is not what I'm here for. I'm here to help them get new results. So the other thing is, you know, a couple ones, I think, a little bit less important, but AI generally is going to give very generic advice. I think this is pretty obvious. It's not necessarily going to fit your specific situation, because it doesn't necessarily know what questions to ask you to follow up. Like, it's not going to ask like, Okay, are you dealing with neurodivergence, trauma medication side effects, what kind of religious shame did you experience as a child? What are your attachment injuries? What are the systemic relationship problems? Right? It's not going to be able to tease that apart. So the really, the advice might sound good, but actually be totally irrelevant for your specific situation, you know? So an example might be like. It might tell you to schedule sex, and that could work great for a few people, and it could be absolutely disastrous for someone who feels pressure and it turns it into a dreaded obligation, and AI can't tell where you are and who you are. It's just pattern matching from 1000s of scenarios. It's not seeing the specific nuances that make you and your situation unique. AI is also creating unrealistic expectations about relationships, and this is pretty well documented. We have some research from BYU showing that AI companions are creating, quote, unquote, very unhealthy, unrealistic expectations about real relationships similar to the effect of pornography, and it's programmed essentially to meet emotional needs without mutual effort. So I really want that to land, because it's programmed to meet our emotional needs without requiring anything from us like another human being would. And real human relationships actually require some effort on our part as well. And so it's a lot like porn in a way, where it's this like sort of fake paradigm, where you're seeing porn as entertainment made mostly for men, almost exclusively for men. And it's vast. It's a massive distortion of real human sexuality, if you can consume it and understand that it's meant for entertainment purposes, and it does not represent how real humans, especially women, it does not represent how real women. Sexuality works at all does tend to make men also feel really bad about their penises, but it also makes a lot of people feel like women are supposed to have certain types of sexual response that is just completely unrealistic and not how human women work

26:55  
if, but if that's what you consume, then you tend to believe the depictions is showing you are real. And the same thing can happen with AI, where you tend to believe that this is somehow what a healthy relationship might look like. Your partner will never be as available and agreeable and patience patient and focused on your needs as AI, and that is a good thing. We really do need healthy relationships to be with autonomous human beings with their own needs, and to understand how to have reciprocity and negotiation and things. That's actually a beautiful thing. So we don't want to start having the expectation of, you know, our partner being like, super agreeable, never having a bad day, never getting tired of their questions, all that kind of stuff. It also a couple other things are, it doesn't provide accountability. It won't really track your actual progress, because it can't actually, doesn't have any way of understanding what embodied desire is like, so it can't actually feel that and help you understand how to language it, and help you understand how to track it. And it can't really adjust its approach. So even if it recalls data, it's not going to track your patterns, notice your own ups and downs, and adjust its like therapeutic approach, because it doesn't have one, right? And so it's just not qualified for most things as they relate to relationships and intimacy, and it's really good as a pattern matching algorithm. And if what you want is just to have some things explained to you, or run some sort of conversations by it that can be useful, but it's not going to replace something like, you know, multiple certifications, years of training, years of working with actual humans, ethics requirements, you Know, Like the the intense amount of work and expertise that somebody who's a good coach or a therapist or counselor is going to have Okay, and it's just that's so that's a pretty big risk to throw out into the AI verse. The bottom line is, basically, it's pretty good at giving you some basic information, but can't do anything to help you make change, and doesn't have actual emotional wisdom. So just know when you are making the choice to use AI, if you're using it instead of talking to your partner, beware of that. If you're forming any emotional dependence on it, beware of that. If it's reinforcing problematic patterns, right, you're starting to like, it's kind of like it can reinforce, actually, even controlling behaviors, one sided thinking, conflict avoidance, some really problematic behaviors. So be careful. And you know, some of the extreme. Games are people actually like losing social skills and relational capacity, but I think that's pretty extreme. But just be careful if you are sort of substituting AI for professional help, rather than using it as a minor component and complement to like as kind of an informative textbook or a journal for yourself to help you organize your thoughts. And so what I'm offering today, what I want people to just take away from this, is just that thinking about AI, kind of like Google, it can help you find information, understand basic concepts, reduce shame through psycho education, and just don't mistake information for transformation, right and convenience for actual effectiveness. Yes, it's free, yes, it doesn't require you to be vulnerable with another human being. Those are benefits. Use them for what they're worth. For information, don't expect them to offer transformation and effective change when you invest in actual human support, like when How do you even know that it's time for you to do that right? If you've been struggling for more than a few months, that's a good time. If the pattern keeps repeating despite your efforts, that's a good time. If you are feeling really like you are suffering, you are incred you have a lot of anger resentment, you feel rejected or pressured or broken, bad about yourself. That's when you need some human help. If there's trauma or shame or just like substantial emotional pain or any safety concerns at all, please find a real human and if you notice that your AI tool is giving you advice that sounds good, but you're not actually able to implement any change. Then also time to get to a real human right, someone who sees you as a whole person, including your emotions and your nervous system and your body, your history, your attachment patterns, your relational dynamics, how you relate to each other, how you treat yourself, how you treat yourself as of such the foundation of everything, and someone who can adapt to what you specifically need, who can challenge your blind spots rather than validate them, and who has, like, actual training in what you Want to accomplish, right? Who can help you see patterns over time, and who can cheer you on in a really like, give and give you appropriate challenges to, just like, push your growing edge, rather than, you know, tell you to do things that just aren't going to work for who you are, right? So that's just, I'm not saying don't use AI. I use it for business pretty regularly, and I've even used it to practice what to say to my narcissistic mother in a letter. So, you know, I actually think it can be really helpful for dealing with people, especially with personality disorders, because they actually think so differently from us, and their values are really different. The what they a narcissistic person can be really, really challenging to put your it's just almost impossible, if you're not narcissistic, to put your self in those shoes. So it's that AI actually does a really great job of that. If any of you happen to have somebody with narcissistic personality disorder or like borderline or something in your life, it can be pretty helpful to it uses and collates information in a way that then and then it thinks about it objectively and can can help you kind of draft what you might consider saying, and then you can revise it based on what feels okay to you, but just don't use it to solve relationship challenges, right? The vulnerability, the willingness to actually let someone in to see you, to support you, that's actually where the real healing happens, and you you and your relationship deserve more than generic advice from an algorithm, right? So we want to use AI to learn to organize our thoughts, to reduce shame. But when you're ready to actually make change, find a good human to do the work with you, and if you want that to be me, reach out. We'll see if I were a good fit. But there are also just a like, a qualified human is going to be really helpful at most stages of trying to actually make change. All right, my dears, I hope this has been helpful. It's fun to think about. Also, I know a lot of us are scared, scared about the AI future, but I think if we approach it really thoughtfully, and we sort out some of these massive ethical issues with it, including the environmental issues, I mean, I think it's here to stay. It's not going anywhere. So we need to figure out a way to live with it and move forward like we have with other technological advances. And. Yeah, I hope you've enjoyed kind of geeking out on this with me today. I'll see you here next week. Hey. So before you go, I have some more free help for you. If you are okay with sharing your email, I will send you my free guide, five steps to start solving desire differences without blame or shame. This is a practical starting point for individuals and couples. You can opt out of my emails at any time, but I think you'll want to stick around. I am not a spammer. Go get it at www.Laurajurgens.com/libido. Make sure to spell my last name right and the link is in the show notes.