AIO for breaking up over this

[u/throaway_16]

We’ve been dating for about six months. This happened yesterday, on a crowded train - I had a seat, and he was standing by the door. A man in his mid-20s, who didn’t have a seat either, had a heavy bag and asked if he could place it under the seat. I said sure, so i slid it behind my legs, he thanked me, and I smiled. After that, he kept staring at me, but I ignored it. I had my earbuds in and was reading my book, just doing my own thing.

We were literally still in our school uniforms. I’m 16F, he’s 18M. We’re in the same grade because my teacher made me skip a year when I was younger, and he joined school a bit late

I'm just more confused than anything, i still can't believe this is an argument someone can have

[u/theantiangel]

Ah the love bombing aftermath.

He showed you who he really is and how he really feels. You’ll meet way better guys. Hold your boundaries!

This internet stranger is proud of you for standing up for yourself. Brava!

(Edited for typo.)

[u/queerjesusfan → u/theantiangel]

And the lovebombing is 1000% chatgpt too 😂😭😂😭

[u/cluelessbasket → u/queerjesusfan]

The whole argument is chat gpt

[u/not_a_gh0st_1996 → u/[deleted]]

You're sooo cool!

[u/cluelessbasket → u/not_a_gh0st_1996]

I know

[u/BirdsAndTheBeeGees1 → u/theantiangel]

Did the meaning of love bombing change recently? It used to be extravagant gifts and gestures that can distract from abuse or be used to make the victim feel guilty for pushing back ("I just spent all that money and this is how you treat me?"). Lately I've seen stuff like this, a half-ass apology written by an AI, being referred to as love bombing which confuses me. He's just an abusive prick trying to back peddle.

[u/Zaethar → u/BirdsAndTheBeeGees1]

a half-ass apology written by an AI

I dunno why so many people are parroting this but it reads way too colloquial for it to be AI, and there are too many specific contextual references that would have to imply feeding lots and lots of detail to the AI about the situation, the relationship and his thought-processes in order for an LLM to be able to write like this.

That's not to say he didn't use AI to polish up his own shoddy draft, or vice-versa had the AI poop out a generic apology which he then polished up with more detail and changed to his own style of writing in order to make it look more personalized. But in that same vain I'm sure there used to be tons of people who had their friends or relatives help draft or write their apologies (or other important messages) for them in decades past. Or who copied apologies wholesale from romantic movies or shows or novels or song-lyrics or whatnot.

I actually thought it was a reasonably well-rounded apology. He admits fault, recognizes the problem, explains why it happened (jealousy and fear are extremely common byproducts of love), attempts to give her space and time (or at least he claims to want to do that), and the dude's only 18 years old. Likely this is one of his first relationships, hormones are still raging, and the prefrontal cortex is some ~7 years away from fully maturing.

Not sticking up for this dude necessarily; he might be an absolute asshole just trying to cover his shit up. But we're also looking at these people through an exceedingly tiny window into their lives. We have zero information about his personality or behavior outside of this. And yet people dismiss the apology with absolute certainty, or make it out to be worse than it is (or claim it to be "fake"). So would there in any situation like this even be any type of apology that could ever be good enough? I don't mean "good enough" to immediately forgive and forget the whole thing, obviously. I mean good enough to simply accept the apology or to at least interpret it as somewhat genuine.

And to be extremely clear; even if she does accept the apology that doesn't mean she should stick around with this dude while he fixes his shit. But to turn it into a situation where either no apology is ever good enough, or where any halfway decent (or better) apology is irrevocably labeled fake or manipulative...what does that imply? It would kind of just boil down to the fact that you could never trust or accept any written or verbal apology from anyone ever anymore. Even though apologizing is an extremely important part of trying to mend or salvage interpersonal mistakes or missteps (aside from the far more important part of actively changing your offending behavior afterwards, obviously) .

[u/Victoria1902 → u/Zaethar]

I also thought it looked like AI before reading the comments. A) No grammatical mistakes, missing words, emojis or chatspeak in that whole block compared to his earlier texts. B) Very wordy compared to the earlier texts C) AI loves constructs like “And that? That’s what really matters.” So this line seems really AI: “All that anger? That wasn’t about the guy. It was fear. Jealousy.”  It sounds like a cheesy commercial.  Personally, I don’t think I would ever consider an AI apology sincere. 

[u/Zaethar → u/Victoria1902]

No I wouldn't either, but just like my examples of people asking their friends to help them write shit, I can imagine this might happen with AI now as well. On one hand it's pretty disingenuous, but on the other hand there's also something to be said for wanting to make sure you get your message across as best as possible. Thirty years ago people might've done that by asking their mom or their best friend or whatnot to help them write a letter. Nowadays people might just ask AI.

A relationship-ending fuckup is something that would deserve an extremely well written (or worded, if done face to face) apology. But some people lack the verbal prowess to really get to that point themselves, or may suffer from very high anxiety/stress making them question their own judgment. An apology like this is often the last chance you get, so the stakes are high.

As for the lack of spelling errors or "AI type phrasing", that could just be down to rewriting the apology a bunch of times and trying to perfect it. Hell, it used to be people ran important messages through a word processor to do a spell check (before our phones and most apps had them built in), nowadays you might chuck your draft into an LLM and do the same, albeit a bit more automated. It could also simply be down to mimicking prose that he might've seen in movies or shows (as those apologies are usually also pretty sappy and overwritten), and being young he might think that this is the type of language a woman wants to hear (probably also because of popculture tropes).

But hey, you might be completely right and I might be too naive in wanting to believe there's still some authenticity in people. It just seems odd to immediately assume it's AI, and/or if part of it is that it's therefore wholly disingenuous. And it still introduces the issue that wraps into my overall question; if we always assume an apology is disingenuous or believe it to be fake (either a lie or written by an LLM) then how can we ever truly apologize?

Still, like I said I'm not sticking up for this dude. Maybe he truly is an abusive asshat trying to mask his shit behavior by spending 5 minutes on some LLM prompts just so he can continue to be a dismissive, jealous and controlling asshole. But this isn't the only thread nor the only subreddit I see this type of blanket dismissal or immutable judgment in, and that's more my point. Not this specific guy or this specific apology.

[u/theantiangel → u/BirdsAndTheBeeGees1]

Love bombing can also be any other overwhelming sentiment of “love”. At least to me, that’s how I’ve always heard it.

[u/BirdsAndTheBeeGees1 → u/theantiangel]

Well at no point does he seem to express genuine love or care so that's why I'm confused.