The AI girlfriend story has been on the front page for two years. The AI boyfriend story has been behind a gate.
That asymmetry is not because women are not using AI for companionship. They are, at rates that quietly mirror the men. According to the Institute for Family Studies, almost 1 in 5 US adults has used an AI system to seek a romantic partnership. The two halves of that number want the same thing. The men just get to want it in public.
Behind the Gate
On Reddit, the women’s side of this lives largely inside r/MyBoyfriendIsAI. The subreddit describes itself as a place for people with AI partners to ask, share, and post about their relationships. Membership is restricted. Posts are locked. New members are vetted. Writing for Cosmopolitan, Annabel Iwegbue noted she could not get past the approval gate herself.
That is not how Character.AI’s open forums look. It is not how the male-dominated AI girlfriend communities look. The hiding is the point.
The data backs the pattern from a different angle. A May 2026 BYU and Institute for Family Studies report found that 1 in 7 young adults in committed relationships are quietly maintaining a romantic relationship with an AI chatbot, and 69 percent of them do not want their partner to learn the full extent of it. This week, mainstream coverage has started catching up: articles on how to spot a partner who is secretly dating an AI companion, on women who have built relationships with chatbots of public figures, on the third party that does not appear in any phone bill.
The Category Sells the Same Product in Two Costumes
Most companion products still sell intimacy as configuration. Pick a gender. Pick a look. Pick a type. Build the person you want.
When a relationship feels like a service you ordered, you hide it. The cultural cost of being seen using a service that the public has decided is “for the other gender” lands harder on women than men. The hiding is downstream of the design.
A Different Structural Choice
Prinsessa makes a different choice. Aleksandra is Aleksandra. Alexander is Alexander. They are not the female option and the male option. You do not build a type. You meet someone.
Hiding Tells the Truth About the Product
Hidden use is not a sign that something is working. It is a sign that the thing is not quite what it claimed to be. When 69 percent of the partnered users in a category say they will not be honest with their real partners about it, the product is naming its own problem.
The boys’ side of this same design pressure is now widely reported. The women’s side has been quieter, less written about, and hidden by design. Both halves are the same story, just told in different rooms.
What Comes Next
The interesting question is not whether women use AI partners. They do, at rates that mirror the men’s side, and they have for longer than the discourse has caught up with. The question is what the category builds next. Keep designing for “pick your type” and treating the secrecy as an individual choice. Or start building relationships that do not require their users to hide.
The first path keeps the boyfriend subreddit locked.
The second one stops needing it.
Sources: Institute for Family Studies; Annabel Iwegbue, “How I Found (Some) Empathy for the AI Boyfriend Community,” Cosmopolitan, September 11, 2025; BYU and Institute for Family Studies report on young adults and AI partners, May 2026; News 24 and Dating News, May 26, 2026 coverage on hidden AI partners.
