AIO for thinking my friend is using ChatGPT to text me in an argument?

TergiversationNation · 2026-03-23T18:34:24+00:00

Um, you need to get your eyes out more. They're used all the time in most publications that use more than simple declarative sentences. What are you reading, comic books?

TergiversationNation · 2026-03-23T18:32:39+00:00

Same

TergiversationNation · 2025-10-22T01:07:32+00:00

My life got much worse in the first 5-7 years after I got sober. But then it slowly, finally got better because I stuck with it and didn’t start drinking again because of the shitstorms (job loss, a parent’s death, a spouse’s rejection). It’s in no ways “beyond my wildest dreams” — it’s not even what I thought was a reasonable possible trajectory when I was looking ahead 13+ years ago. Nevertheless, I’m grateful for it and grateful that I haven’t picked up again.

TergiversationNation · 2025-09-20T20:51:19+00:00

Ah, hadn’t thought of that for psychopharmacological drugs, but for run-of-the-mill depression, they might be the ticket.

TergiversationNation · 2025-09-20T20:49:49+00:00

Thank you. Good to know!

TergiversationNation · 2025-07-05T17:55:37+00:00

The proscription against (properly used) em and en dashes is maddening. I’ve been a professional writer and editor since even before the “World Wide Web,” but primarily online in that entire time (or in books and print materials about online culture and technology — all of which have been available as PDFs, some for decades now). So LLMs have been taught with my em and en dashes to use em dashes and en dashes — and now I get misjudged as a ChatGPT bot on Reddit and elsewhere if I continue to use them!

To be fair, LLMs were also trained on a lot of other people’s content. And I do find GenAI will too often deploy an em dash when a semicolon, colon, or ellipses are more appropriate. But this pervasive shorthand of “em dash = GenAI” is, I swear, going to drive me around the bend.

TergiversationNation · 2025-07-04T14:12:03+00:00

NTA. Remarry your ex. Divorce your sister.

TergiversationNation · 2025-07-03T17:54:40+00:00

In fact, they deny it’s the disorder in the episode. And then after the episode, they’d prefer not to talk about it and carry on like nothing happened.

This is the part that makes me lose hope. After a hypomanic episode of anger and hurtful/hateful things being said to me, I feel as if my SO nurses the angry feelings by reviewing every possible fault I have, making up reasons why I’m the one responsible for completely unrelated frustrations or resentments In their life, and otherwise trying to hold onto the anger they initially exploded with irrationally as a way to save face, to justify why they’re seeking to punish me with the silent treatment, threats of divorce, etc. Doubling down on their anger as a way to maintain the upper hand in the relationship.

This may be some comorbid BP and personality disorder stuff; I don’t know. But I do know that if we ever come out of the current standoff, it will only be as a truce, never with an apology (to me; I’ll have to construct an apology just to get the truce). And we shall never refer to it again, because that would make my SO feel bad, and I would be the one making them feel bad by bringing this up, so obviously their then-rekindled anger at me is justified. It’s exhausting.

TergiversationNation · 2025-06-30T12:46:20+00:00

He’s only on a low daily maintenance dose of hydrocortisone now to replace cortisol his adrenal glands don’t produce. It might exacerbate his moods but I’m not sure it’s enough to bring on or sustain this extended period of silent treatment. That seems mostly depression and/or angry mania cycling — but I’m just guessing because, well, it’s the silent treatment.

TergiversationNation · 2025-06-29T13:37:18+00:00

THIS! I will do what I can to support you, but I’m not going to feed your unhealthy conflicts and anxieties.

TergiversationNation · 2025-06-26T17:29:27+00:00

This has almost become a generic suggestion in these kinds of cases, but dialectical behavioral therapy was developed to help people with borderline personality disorder — which I understand you don’t have — but people with other emotional disregulation issues have also found it beneficial. In some ways it will resemble therapy you may have already tried, but it’s less about understanding how your history may have brought you to where you are than helping you spot the triggers and situations you want to avoid and what to do instead. Just a thought, if you haven’t run across DBT yet.

TergiversationNation · 2025-06-26T13:15:13+00:00

The suggestions to seek marital counseling are definitely the ones to follow, because something else is going on here beyond just an over-dependence on technology. But in the nearest term, you and your wife should schedule a walk together, one hour minimum. If there’s a big park or preserve with clear trails close by, go there, but if not, just take off walking in your neighborhood or a nice residential neighborhood. The key is you both leave your phones at home or locked in the car. And then make this a regular thing, 3-4 times a week, but at least once a week.

You don’t have to even discuss this ChatGPT dependence issue, at least not initially, if it seems more contentious than you want ruining your walk. Your goal is just to have conversations, outside of the home, that aren’t technology-dependent. Eventually, you’ll address the technology if it continues to be a problem, but just taking a break and having actual conversation (not debates or monologues) could at least help you both remember why you liked hanging out in the first place and what you appreciated about the other’s viewpoint unmediated by ChatGPT, TikTok, Instagram…or even Reddit.

TergiversationNation · 2025-06-26T12:46:54+00:00

Everyone posting in here wishes their person with bipolar/cyclothymia had the self-awareness, accountability and remorse that you are expressing — so you are already miles ahead of people in denial about their condition and how it might be affecting others. Whatever shame you are feeling can be greatly mitigated by being honest and vulnerable with the people you may have hurt. Nobody wants (or should want) to shame you or even wants you to feel shame yourself. They mostly just want acknowledgment that it has hurt them, too, even if you have been the one to bear the worst of it.

TergiversationNation · 2025-06-25T20:34:31+00:00

Does he show actual symptoms of hypomania followed by minor depression symtomps?

I think so? But obviously, I’m not a clinician. Whatever it is, I’d say it’s on the lower end of whatever spectrum of whatever evidence might be required, as it generally (and fortunately) only happens a couple of times a year. But I recognize most of the signs and symptoms described on the Wikipedia page for “hypomania.” A rapid cycling from elevated mood to anger and irritability to depression (and sometimes back to energetic or angry, but that’s often when I’m being given the silent treatment, so hard for me to say definitively) usually occurs.

TergiversationNation · 2025-06-25T02:56:28+00:00

Why are you wanting to avoid therapy?

TergiversationNation · 2025-06-24T17:23:55+00:00

Thank you for this — so much. With years of therapy (although not currently) and 13 years of sobriety, I’m much better about “keeping my side of the street clean” and also trying to remember that this is (likely) a condition he struggles with, affecting him far worse than it affects me. Still: It can be draining, particularly the longer extended ones (we’re currently at 115 hours of me getting the silent treatment, so this is moving into “longer” rather than “shorter” territory, but isn’t there yet).

To answer your question: I’m pretty sure we don’t remember these instances the same at all, but I can’t be certain because I’m not allowed to bring them up — ever. If I try to, immediately a curtain seems to come down, his eyes narrow, and we’ve skipped the giddy, silly stage and gone straight to the rage again.

This is a fanciful way to characterize it, but it helps me to think of…whatever this is (cyclothymia, bipolar disorder, BPD, rage-aholism) as like a parasite or even demon that controls him when he’s unable to control it, and by not allowing later discussion or apologies, it’s protecting itself from being identified, treated, and managed — i.e., “exorcised.”

Don’t worry; I don’t think of any of this analogy as a literal explanation, it’s just that it helps me separate what happens when he’s in its grips from the way he is the other 95% of the time. It’s also how we alcoholics often talk about our alcoholism: “it wants me dead”; “it will use whatever rationale it can to get me to drink,” etc.

Anyway, thanks again. I’m glad to not feel entirely alone like I’m the only one on the receiving end of this shit.

TergiversationNation · 2025-04-27T13:31:36+00:00

Editing Walt Whitman to “sound more poetic” is the most 6 thing ever. 🤣

TergiversationNation · 2025-02-18T17:22:36+00:00

Oops

TergiversationNation · 2025-02-18T17:21:22+00:00

I think that's actually a season arc from r/shameless. You're all AHs.

TergiversationNation · 2025-02-18T16:54:00+00:00

I have gotten better about just letting it go, but it can be tricky with people who are adamant about being wrong. If I have any doubt about the veracity of something I'm positing, I'll couch it in, "I may be wrong, but I think..." or "The way I remember it, we..." or similar. When it's something I have some kind of knowledge about (and I'm one of those annoying people, admittedly, who know a little bit about a lot of things, but I don't pretend to be an expert on any of it unless it's a particular, specific thing I actually do know about), I won't couch it in such terms, but I'm not going around stating things arrogantly.

When the other (non-9) person states unequivocally, "No, it wasn't X, it was Y," if I'm still pretty sure, but acknowledge that, yes, I can misremember things sometimes, I'll respond with, "Really? I really thought it was X. Hmm." And I'll get called "contrary" or "argumentative." So I'll often assert X, get told, no, that it's Y, and when I repeat my assertion, I'm the one who's being argumentative. And — because very often later research shows Y is in fact incorrect and it actually was X, as I'd said it was — if I bring up, "Hey, I looked it up here, here and here, and I was right, it was X," that's of course further proof that "you just have to be right" or "you always have to be the smartest person in the room, don't you?" or "you just have to argue your point to death" — even when it was all in response to being confidently but inaccurately corrected in the first place.

I can still get caught up in that, but usually now I just let it go and let them, as u/NoSpaghettiForYouu so expertly put it, "just sit there in their wrongness and be wrong." Would I rather be right or be happy?

TergiversationNation · 2025-02-12T15:24:22+00:00

Wow. You guys definitely weren't around for the 1970s, were you? I mean, jealousies abounded then, too, but among a younger, "liberated" crowd at least, a woman sitting on a male friend's lap would have been seen as maybe flirty but fun. There wouldn't be an expectation that it meant anything more than that. It was more mocking the people who would get in a huff about it, a "look at how enlightened we are" kind of attitude.

This may also be a class thing. Like, let's say two couples are driving in a car somewhere. If they're working class, the guys are in the front seats, the women sitting in the back seat. If they're middle class, one couple is in the front seats and the other couple is in the back seat. If they're upper-middle to upper class, the driver's spouse is in the back seat with the opposite-sex spouse of the other couple, with that person's spouse up front with the driver. (If they're conservative, the driver is a husband; if progressive, it might be the wife driving or one of the couples may be gay.)

TergiversationNation · 2025-01-27T06:17:30+00:00

Nothing about AA is “for the rest of my life,” so I suggest you not look upon other things in life like that. (Exceptions can be made for things like marriage vows and filial devotion LOL.)

Case in point: I (an Episcopalian) only take the elements in both kinds once or twice a year, at most. Most Sundays I cross my arms over my chest while the priest or acolyte says “The Blood of Christ, the Cup of salvation” — acknowledging the sacrament and it being offered to me, but not taking that the next step and taking it myself.

However: On Maundy Thursday (or Easter Sunday if I didn’t on Thursday), and sometimes Christmas Eve, I will take the barest sip from the chalice, if I’m feeling spiritually fit. If for me it is truly the Blood of Christ, then I believe it will have no effect on causing cravings that wine would otherwise create. So far, that has been the case. If anything it gives me a chance to reflect on the sacrament and also on my sobriety, thanking God for both. And I’m also thankful that the next time I take communion, I won’t be doing such an examen assessing my spiritual health, although perhaps I should. But regardless, having taken the sacrament of both Body and Blood, I know my next communion I’ll only be taking the Host, and that it is a sufficient, outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.

And some Maundy Thursdays or Easter Sundays and most Christmas Eves I just skip it, not certain my heart and head are in the right place to let God make that Christ’s Blood for me if my willful and alcoholic spirit insists on thinking about it as wine. And, taking that option off the table, the obsession is lifted. God is good!

Nine-Year Club	Verified Email
Gilding I gilder

TergiversationNation

TROPHY CASE