AI can prepare us for human intimacy—or protect us from having to risk it. The adjacent evidence supports a working hypothesis: AI may support intimacy when it improves the human conversation that follows—and undermine it when it substitutes for disclosure and repair. Preparation moves toward the partner: the AI session is time-limited and ends when the human conversation begins. Would you be comfortable telling your partner you used AI to process the conflict, even if the chat itself stays private? What it must not become is the reason the doors stay closed—the third person in the relationship who is easiest to talk to precisely because nothing is at stake.