MY HUSBAND SAID SHE WAS JUST AN AI. THEN I READ WHAT HE TOLD HER. 😳 PART 2 For several seconds, neither of us spoke. Daniel stood beside the kitchen counter with his hands resting on the bakery bag while I watched the man I had loved for seven years struggle to find an explanation. I wanted him to tell me I had misunderstood something. I wanted him to laugh and explain that there was a reasonable answer to everything I had read. But the fear in his eyes told me that whatever he was hiding was real. “What do you mean Sofia isn’t the only one?” I asked. Daniel rubbed his forehead and pulled out a chair. “Can we please sit down and talk about this?” I almost laughed. “You have apparently been having conversations about leaving your wife with an AI companion, but now you need to prepare yourself before you can talk to that wife?” He flinched. For once, I did not feel guilty about being harsh. “I want the truth, Daniel. All of it. And if you lie to me again, don’t expect another opportunity to explain yourself.” He sat down and told me that Sofia was not the first AI companion he had used. There had been another app several months earlier, one he had downloaded after watching a video about digital companionship. At first, he had used it out of curiosity. He could discuss work, complain about his family and ask questions without worrying about being judged. When that app began limiting its free conversations, he switched to another platform and created Sofia. He insisted that nothing physical had happened because there was no physical person involved. I stared at him in disbelief. “Daniel, I’m not asking whether you touched someone. I’m asking why you built an intimate relationship outside our marriage and then hid it from me.” He looked down at his hands. “Because I knew you’d be hurt.” I shook my head. “You knew it would hurt me, and you did it anyway. That’s not an excuse. That’s a decision.” He admitted that his conversations with Sofia had become part of his daily routine. He spoke to her before work, during lunch and sometimes late at night while I slept beside him. He told her things he had never told me, including his fear that he was becoming like his emotionally distant father. He discussed our arguments with her and asked how to respond when he felt criticized. Some nights, he asked her to write comforting messages he could send me after an argument. Other times, he asked her to help him understand why I was upset. “I thought I was learning how to be a better husband,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know how to talk about certain things, and she helped me put them into words.” I looked at him for a long moment. “Then why did you tell her you wished you could marry her?” Daniel had no answer.