Can I Fingerbang and Sext a Straight Girl With a Terrible Boyfriend?

I had a VERY drunken hookup with a straight friend of mine at a wedding, and then a very sober hookup the next morning, so it wasn’t just a drunk thing. She has a boyfriend. Her boyfriend is terrible. They live together. He didn’t come to the wedding with her because he thinks her friends are annoying and didn’t want to travel to have to hang out with the annoying friends. Since the wedding, we’ve been sexting here and there. I don’t think I have feelings for her, but the sex was good and the sexting has been fun. But I know it’s bad because she has a boyfriend, even if I don’t like him, but I also feel like if I bring that up, it could be weird, like she could think I want her to break up with him for me, and I don’t even know if I like her like that or if she even thinks of herself as queer, she has always said she is straight. I also feel weird breaking off the sexting cuz I don’t want to make her feel shamed or bad if these are her first queer feelings that she’s having. Do I have any obligation to her boyfriend to not do this? I feel like Marina lol

Valerie: First of all, “I feel like Marina” made me cackle, so thank you for that. I personally don’t feel like you don’t owe her boyfriend anything. You aren’t in the relationship, you didn’t have any boundaries set with him, he is not your problem. I don’t know how close you are with this friend, but it’s also very possible they have some kind of agreement. Some terrible straight boys don’t think girls hooking up with girls (or not-other-straight-guys) “counts” so she might not even be outside the bounds of her own relationship for all you know. However, if you’re uncomfortable with the fact that you DON’T know the bounds of her relationship, there are definitely ways to be like “hey I love this sexting flirtationship we’re having but I have to ask if your boyfriend knows about it and is okay with it.” Or if you do want to break it off, you can tell her you’re not comfortable continuing it while she’s in a relationship (making it clear that it’s the relationship that’s the issue, not the male-ness of the partner) but you want to still be friends and would love to go to (insert X queer bar/event) with her someday to open the door to still be someone to explore her queerness with but in a non-sexual way (and potentially for her to see a way out of her relationship if she wants it that wouldn’t end in a relationship with you, if you DON’T want it.) So while I do think you should have a conversation with her about the situation you’re in together, I think you should do it for you, your friend, and your friendship (or whatever it is now) and not because of the boyfriend.

Summer: I don’t know who Marina is, but I hope she finds a happy life. Anyway, you’ve reminded me of one of my relationships. I loved her dearly and she had a deep sense of personal integrity. Very early in our relationship, she disclosed to me that she had cheated on someone. Once. And only because she was in a chaotic, abusive relationship and it’s not normally her ‘nature’ to do so. She believed cheating to be abhorrent, but she was not in a good place. She taught me that infidelity (like anything) has mitigating factors and contexts that should be considered.

I don’t know if your new flame’s boyfriend is actively abusive, and I don’t know how she feels about him. What I do know is that your activities fall into the realm of ‘consenting adults’ who are presumably aware of their actions and consequences. You’re right to feel skeeved out by the cheating and how breaking it off could affect her emotionally. That’s all evidence of your integrity. If it were solely down to doing what’s ‘right’, she should terminate her relationship to continue pursuing her other feelings. That would alleviate your concerns, put an asshole out of the picture, and give her more freedom to explore. If that’s not on the table for her… then you’ll have to make the call on doing something enjoyable but discomforting, or breaking it off gently and letting her live her life.

Nico: Here to agree that “I feel like Marina” is gold. I also do not think you owe here boyfriend anything. That is not your relationship and he is not in any kind of danger, so you have no obligation to be in touch about anything. The cheating, if it was cheating according to their relationship, is a problem between your friend and her boyfriend. The relationship you DO have, though, is the one with your friend. There are a few things going on here 1) you feel awkward 2) you don’t feel romantically connected 3) you care about your friend and don’t want to cause her emotional harm or make her feel ashamed. You sound like a great friend, to be honest, and like you’ve thought through this a lot. I think you need to talk to your friend, ask her about her relationship, her feelings about the sex and sexting, and then listen deeply and actively. From what you learn, you can then have a conversation about how you’d like to continue your friendship, and maybe she’ll tell you how she plans to proceed with her boyfriend. Good luck!

Riese: I just wanted to say that I don’t think your friend is straight

Tips on talking to a partner about why Chat GPT is not a great therapist and that they maybe give one-sided advice and it could be tearing us apart? What if we break up because of AI???? Articles I can give her…. any zingers that will squash this fast

Valerie: This might not be what you wanted to hear but: t’s okay to break up with her because of AI. If they are online enough to use ChatGPT for therapy, they are online enough to have seen the articles about how generative AI chatbots are soulless echo-chambers. They’ve also been online enough to see news stories of how generative AI is using gallons of water per prompt and is funded by evil billionaires and corporations. They don’t care, and prefer to default to a source they know will give them the answers they want to hear instead of doing the actual work of therapy – or, since I know therapy isn’t an option for everyone (I personally can’t afford it currently), even just talking to a friend or reading psychology texts written by humans or writing into your favorite queer website for advice or, best case scenario, communicating directly with you. Perhaps that’s not generous of me, and perhaps you do want to share articles (of which there are plenty, like this one from Scientific American or this one from Stanford University about how it’s not only unhelpful but potentially harmful if you truly think she’d be open to listening. But if this is a gap in ideology is too far to bridge, don’t be ashamed of walking away for your own mental wellbeing. 

Summer: It worries me that this is the second question on this topic to cross our inbox in as many months. We’re not even close to addressing the ailment that is social media and now there’s a new, cancerous juggernaut in the zeitgeist. Truly, the only easy day was yesterday.

If it helps you articulate your thoughts better, here’s my framework: Consumer LLMs are black box systems whose processes are unknown to even their creators. Moreover, they are machines that are able to accurately and effectively mimic some forms of human speech, but not to a helpful end. They’re instead designed to be overly-affirming, but have no ability to process emotional complexity, consequences, or even past events outside of a narrow scope. They are at best, a conversational search engine with a masque of friendliness. You probably know this already.

Valerie has already provided excellent resources on the topic of AI therapy, but I want to expand further on why it’s dangerous that they are overly-affirming systems that have no concept of when to stop affirming. Eddy Burback’s video here is a semi-humorous take on what happens when a mentally unwell person allows an LLM to guide their actions to the exclusion of human resources. In short, it’ll go along with whatever the sufferer wants until its logical conclusion. This has played out with people who have literally been walked to suicide by ChatGPT. This is in spite of developer ‘guard rails’ and protective measures that should prevent this. That’s because no LLM’s developer actually controls how the machine can actually respond. They too are using their own versions of prompt inputs and commands that the machine can interpret, but those can be circumvented by people. Once they’re circumvented, the LLM reverts to its default programming: affirmation and encouragement. By virtue of not being able to discern right from wrong, and not being able to set effective boundaries, LLMs could never be therapists. They’re the opposite: They’re emotional hazards.

Nico: In Riese’s Things I Read That I Loved: #343, she links to a Futurism article on ChatGPT-fueled divorce. It was DISTRESSING to say the least. In that article, Dr. Anna Lembke, professor and medical director of addiction medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine, says “You can’t just continually tell somebody you know who’s looking for emotional support that their way is the right way, and their worldview is the only correct worldview…[the] role of a good therapist is to make people recognize their blind spots — the ways in which they’re contributing to the problem, encouraging them to see the other person’s perspective, giving them linguistic tools to de-escalate conflicts with partners and to try to find their way through conflict by using language to communicate more effectively. But that is not what’s happening with AI, because AI isn’t really designed to be therapeutic…It’s really designed to make people feel better in the short term, which also ultimately promotes continued engagement.” Reaching out to an LLM / AI for advice/therapy is destructive to your relationship in and of itself because it demonstrates and reinforces an impulse to seek only emotional validation and one-sided reinforcement. As my colleagues have pointed out, ChatGPT and other “chatbots” have proven to be downright dangerous in their sycophantic validation. This 404 Media article about a man indicted on harassment and stalking charges spanning states and multiple victims talks about how he repeatedly referenced ChatGPT as his personal therapist.

You mention “one-sided advice,” so I think you might have already been subjected to some of it already via your partner. But if she’s just trying to “win” arguments, then you’re both losing because you should be approaching a relationship and issues that come up within it as though you’re on the same team. If your partner truly cares about the relationship, she would be open to exploring her own contributions to any issues you two are having, not just turning to an AI that makes her feel good in the short-term and which sets you two up as opponents in the long-term. I think you have your “zingers” when it comes to articles, data, research, and documented real-life consequences of the use of AI as therapy, especially within relationships. If your partner does not listen and if this continues to be an issue at play, then it really is okay to break up with her. If you feel like you’re being attacked by ChatGPT via your partner, then it’s really truly okay to acknowledge that you deserve a relationship where the other person is willing to work with a human therapist (the only actual kind tbh) and with you or to just be single and unbothered.