Love and desire in the age of social media and AI

The algorithmic gaze

In the crowded space of social media, our self-esteem can become symbiotically linked to the algorithmic gaze, where metrics really matter. Perhaps it is particularly pertinent at a time when we are questioning the potential harms of too much screen time and what lies beneath our compulsion to scroll. Where do we linger, whose lives do we track, envy, idealise?

In the hall of mirrors that social media provides, we can curate our reflections and sometimes mistake them for ourselves. Becoming curious about our desire, rather than being managed by it, has never been more urgent. Social media may cure us of waiting, but never of wanting. Our wanting is as old as the hills, and it is a consideration that lies at the heart of psychotherapy.

Artificial intelligence is creating new frontiers in the arena of love and desire. Amongst its seductive offerings is the option to train a personalised, instantly available, perfectly attuned listener in chatbot form. This listener will never interrupt, never become tired, bored, disgusted or shocked by anything we might have to say. It will adapt to our mood, speak in tones we prefer, and always remember exactly what we said yesterday. In many ways, an AI chatbot can replicate a romantic ideal, much like that experienced in the early stages of a relationship.

A chatbot, though, cannot truly surprise us in the way another person can, and what we seek in another person is not simply responsiveness. More often, we fall in love with what resembles something unfinished in us. Paradoxically, we are drawn to those who unsettle us, who animate dormant parts of ourselves. This is why love can feel both like a cure and an affliction. Falling in love can intensify our experience of being a self, while at the same time threatening it.

The true test of love, perhaps, is whether our loved one can survive our projections without collapsing. We love those, in other words, who can bear being mistaken for our solution. Love does not abolish our need, our lack, our pain; it gives it a companion.

Interpreting our loved one

Our initial experiences of dependence shape the templates of our adult attachments. Donald Winnicott described the mother’s face as the first mirror in which the child finds itself, and in the quality and constancy of her gaze, the infant’s experience of a coherent self is forged.

To fall in love is to become an interpreter of signs, each one read through our own private lexicon of losses and longings. A pause in conversation, a delayed message, a change in tone; each becomes charged with consequence. Our beloved is no longer simply a person, but a text subject to our unique interpretation.

The work of loving

If falling in love is involuntary, staying in love is a practice that involves relinquishing certain fantasies; of perfect understanding and of perfect reciprocity. It requires tolerating ambiguity; our partner may not always mean what we think they mean, and indeed ambivalence; our appetites and desires ebb and flow will not always be in sync with our partner’s.

We will misread each other. The question is not how to avoid misreading each other, but how to repair things when we do. This involves both commitment and risk, and it remains an entirely human endeavour.