Like intellectual Usurpation ("bossy behavior") or physical Tyranny, which are vices about bullying someone, or conniving to selfishly take their resources (like time or energy), or actual possessions (like money) at the cost of their joint success, like its reference virtue, Artifice involves cleverness, but "clever or cunning devices or expedients, especially as used to trick or deceive others." It is a character "vice of excess of Resourcefulness" in which one's cleverness is used in a "win/lose" or destructive motive. It is about the deceitfulness of a partner, burning one's resources while preserving their own. You might say that the partner with this vice is a master of "smokescreens," which relies on distraction for their own, selfish survival instead of the "we-attitude" of Resilience.
In being unjust as a partner at contributing to achieving a goal, the artificial partner is burdening their partner in collaboration to a goal, being so bent on their personal "survival needs" that they are in reptilian-brained, personal survival mode (which is narcissistic.) People comment at the end of the relationship that, "I felt like I woke up married to a snake," or "the honest person I married was really, a sneak." That is the Artifice of a partner in its usual effect - of such weak personal boundaries, filled with boundary holes, that they lie and deceive in a survivalist mode, rather than having the faith in themselves (or at least the relationship) to comprehend that life cannot be won without the other partner. They have been called, "a lone wolf" and "only out for themselves," which in the end, can only prove that they don't love themselves enough to allow themselves to rely on a partner for half of the teamwork.
The artificial person uses an Immature Ego Defense, called, "rationalization" to rid themselves of guilt, and a Primitive Ego Defense, called "Denial" to hide their own eyes from their unjust behavior with the excuse, "I needed to survive." - that what is only a wish is somehow an actual reality, when there needs not be a threat. (The Ego Defenses guide us in finding friends and mates who happen to have similar maturity levels.)
It is pathologically narcissistic (or childish thinking) to be artificial, a liar, because we usually want to be its mature version, Resourcefulness, which makes for the "win/win" behavior of teamwork in the face of menacing threats. The survival at hand needs to be that of the couple, not either individual.
The other vice of Resourcefulness as a virtue, is that of moral deficit, called, "Fallowness" or "intellectual laziness,"a "slacker-like" state where a person of basic skill at something, doesn't even bother to help to try for a goal, leaving the more optimistic, resourceful partner, "on their own" or "high and dry" in the face of a challenge to their joint goals. They are not "pulling their own weight" and are a "free rider" in the relationship. Which leads to destructive results for the relationship.
Someone who is romantically making use of Artifice is a narcissist, actively wasting resources and taking them away from the achievement of the goals and the dreams of a mate, by trying to save their own skin.
As a vice which makes partnership within relationships fail to get to goals, Artifice is intellectually unattractive. We consider dishonest behavior to be negative in many ways, including in sexual attraction, since it actually depletes the reserves of one's own, or the other partner's masculinity or femininity". To be "played the fool" is shaming, and therefore diminishing of the gender instincts.