Early in the German sci-fi rom-com I’m Your Man, Alma, a fairly nondescript middle-aged white woman, enters a Berlin dance club. Inside, she encounters a crowd of fashionably dressed people smoking, flirting with each other, and dancing to a live band. She isn’t fooled. The people are holograms—part of a meticulously designed romantic atmosphere. They don’t tire of dancing, as humans do. Alma examines a laughing man and passes her hand through his shoulder, then through his date’s hair. She joyously dances around the room, sweeping her hand through oblivious holograms, until she accidentally hits the shoulder of the only other solid being: Tom, the robot who has been designed to be her perfect match.

I watched this movie alone in my kitchen six months after I met Sean, a PhD student studying mechanical engineering. We met in another digital playroom of artifice: OKCupid. Unlike Tom, he hadn’t been created by an algorithm, but he still checked off many of my boxes.

Sean, like Tom, was tall and quiet, pleasing to look at in a way that felt kind and reassuring rather than intimidating. Tom speaks with a British accent, because Alma is attracted to men who are “slightly foreign.” Sean too was “slightly foreign” – he was born in Sri Lanka and grew up in three countries, but had spent the past decade in America studying at the university where I worked. Tom defies stereotypical gender roles to clean Alma’s windows and tidy her apartment. Sean, whose favorite color was pink, also loved cooking and cleaning.

I’m Your Man makes Tom immediately appealing to the audience. Those intense blue eyes! That boyish smile! Alma is not impressed. She’s willing to spend three weeks with him, but only so she can report her observations on robot lovers to an ethics committee. Even three weeks feels excessive. She asks her boss why it has to be her, and he explains everyone else already has a (human) partner. During their meeting, a coworker accidentally walks in and exchanges a tense greeting with Alma. One wonders if her reluctance to be charmed by a robot has to do with unresolved feelings for a particular human.

I was reluctant to rush into anything with Sean. I had already made that mistake with a coworker a few months ago. After a few intense all-day dates with a new officemate, I had assumed we would be A Thing. I was heartbroken when two weeks later they got as close as one can get to ghosting me while maintaining professional courtesy. I drank tea with Sean on my balcony and explained that it didn’t feel right to get involved with him when I was still pining over someone I saw at work each day. He nodded, sipping from the same Pooh Bear mug that my ex-fling had always preferred. He opened up about an unrequited crush he had on a roommate that had gotten so intense he had to move out. “It was a jerk move, I know,” he said. I told him it was OK to get distance from that situation. He was very understanding about my reluctance to start dating, and I wondered if he still wasn’t fully over the roommate. He asked if we could continue hanging out. He loved cooking, and said I was always invited over for homemade food and anime with him and his roommate. I started going to his apartment about once a week. If we were in a rom-com, you could label us the “friends-to-lovers” trope.

I’m Your Man flirts with, but doesn’t fully fall into, rom-com tropes like “haters-to-lovers” and “fake-dating,” where two people who are obviously going to get together start off definitely not getting together. While Tom is designed to be admiring of Alma, Alma is immediately suspicious of Tom, pulling away after he touches her hand and compares her eyes to mountain lakes. She doesn’t see him as a possible object of romantic affection because he is, literally, an object designed entirely to please her. When she first drives him home, he offers advice on statistically lowering her chances of getting in a car accident. He notes her icy look with no hurt feelings. “Failed communication attempts are crucial for calibrating my algorithm to you…. soon every shot will be a bullseye.”

Sean and I started texting every day. Once, Sean teased me with innuendo, twisting my innocent comments about my day into references to orgasms. I told him I didn’t find sexual humor particularly funny. He never sent me sex jokes again.

The more time I spent with Sean, the less I thought about the coworker. We started meeting up for lunch on the campus where I worked and he researched. When I told him I often didn’t have energy to cook after work, he said I was always welcome to come to his place for dinner. He held up his container of shrimp curry. “If I knew you were coming, I could have made this with pork or chicken instead of shrimp.” He had quickly figured out my food preferences: yes to onions and potatoes, no to anything with sausage.

One weekend I stayed at Sean’s apartment till 3 a.m. watching movies. I wasn’t drunk, but was so tired I might as well have been. I said I wanted to date him and asked if we could kiss. He was taken aback. He didn’t say yes. He rambled a bit about not having much experience, and not being sure about his sexuality. It was adorable. Almost as adorable as the way Tom tucks Alma in when she gets drunks and demands sex. “I’m not in the mood,” he says. “It’s not the right time.”

A week later, I drove Sean to a porch music festival an hour away. He wore a nice sweater and the glasses I knew he wore when he was trying to look good. He carried a container of brownies covered in marshmallows and chocolate chips, like the ones I told him my mom made when I was a kid. As we sat in a park listening to alphorns, he said, “Is it okay if I sit closer?” and waited for my nod before letting our knees touch. He didn’t bring up dating until the end of the day, after we had dinner. Later, he would tell me he was nervous I had changed my mind. As we crossed a bridge to return to my car, he said he was interested in dating, if I still was. We spent the car ride home having what felt like a very mature conversation about expectations and boundaries. We kissed and cuddled in the parking lot under the moon.

Since Sean enjoyed reading but didn’t have a library card, I insisted we go to a library to get one. A week later, he texted asking if we could explore another library for our next date. A kindred soul, I thought. Or maybe he just knew how much I loved libraries. Either way, so romantic!

Even though Alma makes Tom sleep in a separate room and turns down his offer of a candle-lit bath, the two share an undeniably romantic bond. He is designed to keep her happy, even if it means keeping the reality of their arrangement a secret. Tom introduces himself to Alma’s ex as a colleague she met at a conference, but the ex isn’t fooled. “I know that look,” he tells Alma when Tom has left the room. “You used to look at me that way.” Alma and Tom look at each other with the weight of this rare, secret experience they share.

It’s hard not to root for Alma to give Tom a chance as a partner, especially when he agrees to join her at her ex’s housewarming party. How nice it must be to go to a social event with someone who looks at you like you’re the only reason he’s there! Who cares if he’s a robot?

Sean invited me to his friend’s birthday gathering. There were only six of us. Sean made chocolate chip cookies. “I thought you’d enjoy them,” he said. That was the only thing he said to me. We sat side by side on a couch. Every time I glanced at him, he was honed in on his friends. They talked about anime and programming, two worlds I knew little about but tried hard to be interested in, desperate to make a good impression. It didn’t matter; no one seemed to care much that I was there, least of all Sean. If I hadn’t driven Sean and his roommate, I would have found an excuse to leave. After six hours, Sean said the host could kick us out at any time, but he was having fun and didn’t have any other plans that evening. I said that I hated to break up the party, but I needed food that wasn’t chips and dip, plus it was getting dark. I cried when I got home, feeling silly for thinking Sean might be excited for his friends to meet me, when it seemed he just wanted to save money on an Uber.

I considered confronting Sean about how I felt at the party, but the next day he texted me about a work assignment he remembered I was stressed about and offered to proofread it. I convinced myself I was overreacting about the party. Perhaps Alma resists falling for Tom to avoid the anger that comes when an illusion dissipates, and you have to admit you should have known better, that you only saw what you wanted to see.

While drunk, Alma asks Tom if he ever gets angry. “If it seems appropriate, I believe I could display something like anger. Or even get angry. I’ve never understood the difference.”

Sean told me he had trouble understanding his own emotions. “I don’t know if I’ve ever felt happiness,” he said as we walked down my street to get ice cream. He clarified – this wasn’t about us. He really liked spending time with me. But he just couldn’t remember a time when he’d felt happy. His former roommate encouraged him to see a therapist, who had said he was “mildly depressed.” He didn’t stay with the therapist for long. “I’m not really committed to changing,” he said. “I like how I am.” I figured that was the depression speaking.

In the few months prior to Sean, three dates said they didn’t want to meet up again because of their mental health. It was refreshing to have a guy open up to me about his mental health, rather than use it as an excuse to cut off communication.

Later, after I told Sean it just wasn’t going to work and cut off communication with him, I came across the word “alexithymia”: an inability to recognize one’s own emotions. I longed to text it to him. I assured myself that he probably already knew the term. He loved psychology. He had the most recent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in his bedroom closet.

Sean told me he wanted to work more on his mental health and get in touch with his feelings, and that he wanted my help in holding him accountable. I suggested he try journaling each morning. He was diligent– bringing his spiral notebook when he slept over so we could be “writing buddies,” filling up page after page. I like to think it was the journaling that saved me from him.

Alma finally gives in to Tom’s appeals. She allows herself to imagine that Tom was the boy she had a crush on as a child, and sleeps with him soberly, sweetly. The next morning she makes breakfast for two. A tear forms as she realizes he won’t care how perfectly she boils her egg for him. “I’m acting in a play, but there’s no audience,” she says. “I’m only talking to myself.” She decides to end the experiment early.

Sean and I had been dating almost three months when he came to my apartment for dinner, apologizing for being in a bad mood. He had been journaling about something that put him in a funk. We sat on my couch and I tried to understand what was going on. He said that he sometimes thought there was something corrupt about him. I told him that if he didn’t elaborate, I’d assume the worst. He said it was worse than I could imagine. I thought about his interest in reading Lolita despite usually preferring fantasy and sci-fi, and his involvement in a Discord that he said was mostly teenagers.

“Well, right now I’m imagining pedophilia,” I said.

“How did you know?” he asked.

He told me he watched porn with post-pubescence girls on the Dark Web. “I see people, not ages,” he said, and I felt sure he was quoting something he read on some creepy male-dominated forum.

I was still processing this when he added that this wasn’t the bad thing he was thinking about. He had done something bad, although he assured me it didn’t “directly” harm anyone.

“Voyeurism?” I asked, disgusted that I could predict how his mind worked.

It was worse than I could have imagined: he had once put a hidden camera in his shower to spy on his former roommate, the one he said he had a crush on. Over a year later, he still “occasionally” watched the footage. “I don’t think about who it is,” he said, as if that made it okay. “I kind of detach.”

I told him he had to delete the videos. He promised he would that night. For the first time I fully realized how good he was at saying what I wanted to hear, and how little it meant. I felt an ache in my stomach, and curled up on my bed while Sean cooked pasta. He said he wanted to make sure I ate something.

After dinner, I held Sean and told him I loved him. I still don’t know why that felt right at the moment. Maybe it was a defense mechanism. Maybe Sean knew that my instinct to nurture would override my disgust. That even if I wouldn’t let him spend the night, I’d still give him a ride home. The next morning, I told him we were done and changed my phone number.

After Alma has her boiled egg epiphany, she tells Tom to leave. He asks, “Don’t humans say ‘love knows no bounds’?” Alma laughs through her tears. “That’s always been a lie.”

If Sean could violate his roommate’s consent – someone he had a “crush” on – he could certainly invade the privacy of someone he met on OkCupid who was lonely and easily enticed by homemade meals. Especially someone quick to believe him when he said he had never kissed a girl before and didn’t ask how, if he lacked sexual experience, he knew he had a urine fetish. Perhaps all those nights he made me hot chocolate while we cuddled watching Gilmore Girls, he was merely waiting for me to pee in his bathroom. I have no proof. Just a nagging, unsettled feeling.

Although Sean at first said he understood my decision and would leave me be, a week later he mailed me a handwritten letter full of references to my Gilmore Girls ships and assurances that I had been making him a better person; that he loved (underlined twice) me; that even just a letter back would make him euphoric. A month earlier, I would have been charmed by such a letter. Now that I knew about the old roommate, I was disturbed by his lack of remorse. His algorithmic assessment of what I wanted to hear had its limits. It couldn’t comprehend desires driven by basic ethics.

Alma’s ethics report characterizes Tom as the next in a line of technology that appears to be desirable, but years later will prove to be harmful. It’s dangerous to expect technology to provide what humans do, and vice versa. She acknowledges the appeal of humanoid robots as partners: “They fulfil our longings, satisfy our desires, and eliminate the feeling of being alone. They make us happy. And what could be wrong with being happy?”

I had trouble eating after Sean. I kept thinking about how much I had enjoyed the green curry he made me, how I had liked the feel of his tongue against mine. Now I didn’t want to put anything in my mouth. He once told me that he was glad I liked Ethiopian food, since he enjoyed watching me eat it. I assumed he meant that he liked seeing me happy. It occurred to me later that perhaps he enjoyed sharing meals with me not for my friendly demeanor and bad jokes, but because he was turned on watching me eat with my hands. I started throwing perfectly good clementines and leftover stir-fries in my compost.

Sean was not a robot. He wasn’t created to please me. I may never know to what extent he genuinely enjoyed me as a person, and to what extent he was roleplaying as the sweet, attentive boyfriend so I’d continue giving him what he wanted: access to my body, consensually and maybe not.

Intellectually, I knew Sean’s disregard for privacy and the safety of minors was entirely a “him” problem, but I still blamed myself for dating him. I should have known better than to want a cute boyfriend who would hold me when I cried but never cried himself, who always deferred to what movie I wanted to watch. I should have known better than to stare at the selfies he sent me, in awe of how I radiated happiness beside him.

My friend asked me later if I ever had a gut feeling that something wasn’t right with him. If I did, I don’t remember. I just remember feeling more physically attracted to him than anyone I’d known in years, and feeling light and excited every time I parked outside his building for an evening of dinner and Netflix. I can’t help but feel like my body should have known better than to long for someone who deserved to be repelled.

Alma’s report continues: “But are humans really intended to have all their needs met at a push of a button? Is it not our unfulfilled longing, our imagination, and our unending pursuit of happiness that are the sources of our humanity?”

It’s okay, human even, to want a Tom or a Sean. Someone who always says what you want to hear, and makes you feel accepted exactly as you are. But if the trade-off is not being able to give that acceptance in return, is it really worth it?

When Alma tells Tom to return himself to the factory, she watches from her window as he crosses the street. She puts on her coat to chase him, but by the time she gets outside he’s gone. When she learns he never turned himself in, she goes to the beach where she used to play with her childhood crush. Sure enough, Tom waits for her on the outdoor ping pong table. Alma lies on her back and tells him how she used to close her eyes and imagine her crush would come over and kiss her, but he never did. The movie ends with her eyes closed, waiting for a maybe-kiss from Tom – hopeful for something she knows better than to want.