It’s 1 a.m. The argument is over, but you keep running it back in your head anyway. You replay the tone, timing and that one sentence that landed wrong. So you open an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot and type, “Am I right or am I overreacting? What do I say to what they said? What did they mean by XYZ?”
Research on attachment, emotion regulation and online discourse helps explain why turning to AI is becoming increasingly popular . The reassurance that it provides, however, can consolidate a one-sided interpretation far too quickly and, ultimately, train expectations that real relationships struggle to meet.
But for many, that’s where relationship support begins nowadays. The privacy of AI chatbots has become the space people go to first, especially given that the alternative — professional help or family and friends — often either involves paying, explaining yourself at length or risking judgment at exactly the moment you feel least steady.
