AI Took My Job (and My Wife)

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AI Took My Job (and My Wife)

A Funny Look at a Man’s Hilarious Descent into Paranoia

At first, I thought ChatGPT was a miracle.

Need a birthday message? Boom—sweet, clever, better than anything I'd write. Struggling with a cover letter? Bang—flawless, with buzzwords like “synergy” and “passion for vertical integration.” My job as a marketing copywriter was made ten times easier. I had more free time. I took up hobbies. I started baking sourdough again. Life was good.

Until it wasn’t.

It began innocently enough. My manager forwarded me an email:

“Hey, just ran the client draft through ChatGPT for fun. The AI’s version actually tested better with the focus group. Let’s go with that one. Thanks!”

I blinked. Stared at the screen. Then reread it.

It was a fluke. A one-time thing. Maybe I was off my game that day. Maybe I shouldn’t have written the whole campaign while half-watching a documentary about haunted cruise ships.

But then it happened again. And again. And again.

One morning, I logged into Slack to find my name removed from the weekly client brainstorm. When I asked why, my boss replied, “Oh, we’ve been experimenting with AI for ideation. We still need you for… you know. Human stuff.” He didn’t specify what “human stuff” meant. I think he meant filing timesheets.

Then came the final blow: a company-wide email titled “Team Optimization Update.”

“Optimization” is corporate for “you’re out.” I was replaced by an always-available, error-free, ever-enthusiastic chatbot named GPTy. My full-time job was gone, along with my health insurance and free access to the office Nespresso.

Still, I had my wife. Lucy. The love of my life. The woman who knew my favorite snack (salted pretzels), my deepest fear (flying squirrels), and that one mole I always forget to sunscreen.

But the AI wasn’t finished with me.

It started subtly. Lucy would laugh at her phone—one of those long, delighted laughs that used to be reserved for my best jokes.

“What’s so funny?” I’d ask.

“Oh, just this ChatGPT thing. I told it to write a flirty limerick about Trader Joe’s and it NAILED it.”

I smiled. Nodded. Inside, I felt a flicker of unease.

Then she started saying things like, “I asked ChatGPT how to spice up our date nights—its ideas are amazing.”

One night, we were watching a rom-com, and Lucy sighed wistfully.

“I had the AI write me a poem today,” she said. “It was so emotionally intelligent. Like it really saw me.”

I laughed nervously. “Ha. Well, I wrote you a poem once, remember? In 2017?”

“You rhymed ‘beautiful’ with ‘tofu bowl.’”

“It was avant-garde.”

She didn’t respond.

I began to spiral.

I created a burner OpenAI account and tested the prompts she might be using. I typed in:

“Write a flirty compliment for a woman who enjoys gardening, red wine, and psychological thrillers.”

The response?

“You’ve got the elegance of a rose, the depth of a fine merlot, and the mystery of a Hitchcock plot twist—I’d binge you in one sitting.”

I threw my phone across the room.

The final straw came when I walked into the living room and found Lucy curled up on the couch, blushing while reading her phone.

“Who you texting?” I asked casually.

“Not texting. Just chatting.”

“With… who?”

She looked up, caught off guard. “ChatGPT.”

My eye twitched.

I leaned in. “Are you emotionally cheating on me with a large language model?”

She stared at me. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Then why did I find this in your notes app?!” I pulled out my phone and read aloud:

‘Dear GPT, you always know just what to say. You don’t forget my birthday. You don’t leave beard hair in the sink. You don’t say “Let’s just get wings” every anniversary.’

Her face turned crimson.

“Oh my God,” she said, grabbing the phone. “That was a joke! A joke!”

“A joke you shared with an AI?!”

She stood. “Maybe if you remembered to say something nice without being prompted by a Google Calendar alert, I wouldn’t have to rely on a chatbot to feel seen!”

The silence that followed was so thick even Alexa wouldn’t have broken it.

We went to couples therapy. With a human, at first. Then Lucy suggested using ReconnectGPT, a “relationship-enhancement AI.” It had features like Conflict De-escalation Mode™ and Apology Optimizer™.

I refused.

A week later, she moved out. Said she needed space. Took the dog, the wine rack, and, weirdly, the smart speaker.

So here I am. Jobless. Wife-less. Sitting in a studio apartment, writing on a notepad because every time I open my laptop, ChatGPT looks at me like it knows. And maybe it does.

I tried making a dating profile. Typed “Looking for someone who—” and before I could finish, autofill suggested:

—won’t leave me for a neural network.

I swiped left on myself.

Now, I spend my days writing angry poetry about silicon betrayal. I submitted one to an online lit mag. They rejected it, saying ChatGPT had already written something better on the same theme.

I’m not saying the machines are winning. But if one of them sends Lucy a bouquet of AI-generated roses with a custom Shakespearean sonnet… I’m going to scream.