Can This Marriage Be Saved? Yes, If You Fuck a Robot (According to This Expert)

Sexbots are going to single-animatronic-handedly save the institution of marriage, according to economics professor Marina Adshade. In an interview with The Star Vancouver, Adshade speculated that instead of replacing marriage, robots will “complement” it by basically acting as humanoid side pieces.

Adshade, whose writing appears in the new anthology Robot Sex: Social and Ethical Implications, argues that fuckbots will fundamentally change what we look for in a partner. “Some people will not have to compromise,” she told the Star. “It will break up this bundle of qualities we want in a person and allow us to focus on those that we think are important.”

Adshade, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s Vancouver School of Economics, continued, “Sex robots add the ability of finding new ways around problems… I’m not going to worry about what my sexual relationship is because I have this technology that satisfies that part of my life.”

In other words, according to Adshade, finding the right person with whom to enter into a lifelong legal contract, and enduring in that lifelong legal contract, becomes a little bit easier thanks to humanlike fuckable robots.

But that assumes that sex—or human-on-human sex, at least—isn’t that important to marriage and is something on which people are readily willing to compromise. Surely “some people” would much prefer, if push came to shove, to decouple other areas of compatibility from marriage—like, say, intellectual stimulation (robots have probs read all the classics) or entertainment (humanoids would watch The Good Place without complaint—here’s looking at you, husband of mine). Why assume sex is so readily outsourceable?

But the Star goes so far as to consult Kim Switnicki, an intimacy coach, who suggests that fuckbots could act as an addition to, rather than a replacement of, marital sex. “Virtually all couples have mismatched sex drives, so it seems an obvious solution,” she said.

Right, so sexbots could be like what porn is now for marriage—a personal sexual release valve that never introduces any kind of marital disharmony. Switnicki admits that “it does depend on how the partner chooses to use or interact or view the robot.” As Jezebel’s Bobby Finger put it—before going on a vivid tangent about husbands failing to clean their fuckbots and leaving sullied torsos in the kitchen sink—“the problem will be SECRET sex robots.”

However, Adshade believes that, once outsourcing sexual needs to robots is normalized, it will also shift our attitudes around monogamy. She explained, “I think there is also a direct link with sex robots and increased acceptance of polyamory or polygamy.” Sooo… when she says that sexbots will save marriages, what she really means is that they will destroy the entire institution as we know it.