Uninstalling package python3.10 nuked half of my system

I upgraded to the latest Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Before I had python 3.9 but I needed 3.10 so I installed,

sudo apt install python3.10

After the update, the standard python was bumped to 3.10 so I no longer needed the python3.10 package. I checked that python3 and python3.10 were different installations by,

which python3
/usr/bin/python3
which python3.10
/usr/bin/python3.10

So i decided to purge the 3.10.

sudo apt purge python3.10

This uninstalled a lot of packages like xserver-common and gnome-terminal. I was lucky enough to catch that so I ran,

sudo apt install python3

Which installed most of them back. I am so confused and petrified. python3.10 and python3 have reappeared in bin. Why? Where did I go wrong?

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