Anxiety, Relationships and the Age of AI

The rise of AI companionship

We are living in a time where forms of AI are increasingly being used not just for information, but for companionship and emotional support. While this may seem like a recent development, it is already beginning to take shape. One survey found that 1% of young adults reported already having an AI friend, while around 10% said they would be open to such a relationship. More strikingly, 25% believed that AI has the potential to replace real-life romantic relationships (Institute for Family Studies, 2024).

More recent findings suggest this shift is becoming more striking. The American Psychological Association has noted that AI chatbots and digital companions are reshaping emotional connection, with AI companion apps increasing significantly between 2022 and 2025. This movement is also crossing into the field of mental health, with one report finding that one-third of adults would feel comfortable consulting an AI chatbot for mental health advice (TIME, 2026).

The word comfortable is telling. Comfort, in this context, may come from the absence of uncertainty. There is no fear of being misunderstood, no concern about how one might be perceived or disappointed. The interaction is predictable, responsive, and manageable.

It is, in many ways, an interaction without tension or discord, especially in a time when many people feel anxious, lonely, or overwhelmed in relationships.

Learning about ourselves through others

But relationships with other people are rarely like this. It is often within the difficulty of relating to another person that we come to understand something about ourselves.

We do not come to know who we are in isolation. From early on, we learn about ourselves through our encounters with others. A child discovers that their actions have an effect in how taking another child’s toy causes upset, in learning how biting hurts, and comfort soothes. Gradually, there is an awareness that the other person has their own experience, separate from their own. Through this, a sense of reciprocity begins to take shape.

We begin to notice that how we act toward someone influences how they act toward us. We begin to notice expectations, misunderstandings, disappointments, and moments of repair. These moments are not always comfortable, but they are part of how we come to understand both ourselves and others.

Relationships, then, are encounters with another mind, another perspective, something outside of ourselves. They involve difference, uncertainty, and negotiation. Through this back and forth, relationships remain alive and dynamic. Relationships are not static, nor should they be. It is within this movement that something new can emerge.

When relationships become one-sided

Interactions with AI move in a dramatically different direction. Rather than encountering another person with their own responses, we are met with something that adapts entirely to us. The interaction becomes smoother and more predictable. There is no need to negotiate difference, and less risk of misunderstanding or disappointment.

In this sense, the relationship becomes more one-sided. It reflects rather than responds. While this may feel reassuring, it also changes the nature of the encounter. The dynamic quality of relationships, the back and forth that allows us to learn about ourselves begins to fall away.

Real relationships can be anxiety-provoking precisely because another person is not fully known or predictable. They may respond in unexpected ways. We may wonder how we are perceived, or worry about disappointing them. Yet it is often through navigating these moments that we come to understand our expectations, our fears, and how we relate to others.

When interactions remove this uncertainty entirely, they may ease anxiety in the short term, but they also reduce the opportunities through which something about ourselves becomes clearer. In a counterintuitive way, by avoiding the possibility of misunderstanding, we may also lose the chance to discover what we want in relation to another person. It is often through encountering the other person including their responses, their differences, even their limits that our own expectations and desires begin to emerge. This brings about both self-awareness and a deeper sense of relatedness to others.

While AI may offer relief from relational anxiety, it does not necessarily prepare us for the complexity of real relationships. When we return to encounters with others where responses are not immediate, where meanings are not fixed, and where another person brings their own perspective, in trying to make connection easier, we may also move further from the conditions that allow real connection to develop, the very thing people are in search of. This points to something important about relationships themselves.

Anxiety, Absence, and Desire

Part of what gives relationships their meaning is that another person is never fully available or fully knowable. There is always a gap. They may not respond in the way we hoped. They may be distant, distracted, or simply separate from us in their thoughts and feelings. This can stir anxiety, but it is also part of what allows desire to emerge.

In psychoanalytic thinking, absence is not simply something negative. It is also what creates desire. The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan spoke about how desire is shaped around what is not fully present or attainable. We often hear the phrase absence makes the heart grow fonder, and there is a truth in this. When someone is not always there, their presence carries weight. When there is space between ourselves and another person, curiosity, longing, and anticipation can take shape.

Esther Perel similarly reflects on how desire requires this sense of distance and otherness. She suggests that desire does not thrive in complete predictability or constant availability, but in the space between two people, in the recognition that the other is separate from us. It is this sense of otherness that keeps relationships alive. When the other person is not fully known, not entirely within our control, curiosity can emerge. There is room for surprise, for anticipation, and for movement. In this way, distance does not weaken connection, but can sustain it.

It is often within a real encounter with another person that this sense of otherness becomes most visible and alive.

The therapeutic encounter

This becomes particularly relevant when we think about therapy. Therapy is more than reassurance. It is an encounter with another person someone who listens, and listens differently, but who is not simply an extension of you. There are two people present, and something takes shape between them.

At times in therapy, moments of uncertainty can arise. You may find yourself wondering what the therapist thinks, feeling unsure about how you are being heard, or noticing expectations that begin to emerge. These moments are not problems to be avoided. They can begin to illuminate how you anticipate others, what you hope for, what you fear, and how you position yourself in relation to another person.

Rather than being smoothed over, it is important these moments are stayed with. They become something that can be thought about together. Patterns that may otherwise repeat in other areas of life can begin to take form within the therapeutic encounter itself. What once felt fixed can gradually begin to loosen, through the experience of being in relation to another person.

This kind of work depends on the presence of another mind. It involves a relationship that is not entirely predictable, where there is room for surprise, expectation, and response. It is through this encounter that new ways of relating can begin to emerge. An interaction that is always agreeable, always responsive, and shaped entirely around one person cannot offer this same possibility.

In this sense, therapy is not simply a space to talk, but a lived encounter. It is through being in relation to another person, rather than a reflection of oneself, that something can gradually be worked through. This is something that depends on the presence of another person, on uncertainty, response, and difference. While AI may offer comfort and immediacy, it cannot replicate this encounter. It is within the space between two people that something new can take shape.

Therapy in Dundalk

If you are looking for a psychotherapist in Dundalk, I offer individual therapy sessions that provide a space to think about anxiety, relationships, and the ways we come to understand ourselves in relation to others.

Through the therapeutic encounter, it becomes possible to reflect on patterns in relationships, anxiety, and expectations, and to begin working through.

You are welcome to reach out to discuss beginning therapy. Get in touch to enquire about booking an appointment.