I Stumbled on an AI That Talks Better Than Me—and It Freaked Me Out. You’ve Got to Hear This.

It was a normal, murky winter morning, and I was casually scrolling X when I came across this link, and it made me feel something special. The same way I first tried chatGPT. Excited and freaked out a bit. The conversation I had with Maya was, strangely, good. The AIs are definitely better conversationalists than I am. It can sing, pace the conversation well, and show emotions with pauses. You have to try it to see it or rather hear it. What I realized is that we are going to get a lot of those moments related to AI in the coming years.

​https://www.sesame.com/research/crossing_the_uncanny_valley_of_voice​

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Am I Breaking Every Therapy Rule?

For the past nine years—I can't believe it's been nine years already—I have been social dancing, taking classes, and practicing. But I never thought I would use dancing as a metaphor for understanding how personal and business relations work. I learned this framework from Terry Real, a relationships coach. It applies to dancing, short interactions, and long-term relationships with three distinct phases.

• Harmony: initial bliuss state
• Disharmony: discovery of imperfections leading to frustrations
• Repair: acceptance of faws

During disharmonty, we use different strategies to overcome the imperfections and frustrations called losing strategies.

• Being right: Prioritizing ego over collaboration. Arguing about who is right about what happened instead of prioritizing how to improve in the future or fix the process.
• Control: Either direct in the form of bullying or indirect in the form of manipulation that forms resentment. Arguing about what we are going to watch tonight. One might comply but resent the lack of consideration.
• Unbridled Self-Expression: Venting without boundaries, overwhelming the partner.
• Retaliation: Seeking revenge through overt rage or covert passive-aggressive behavior. If you openly threaten, your partner will double down on avoiding the collaboration and escalate the tension.
• Withdrawal: A Losing strategy in which one disengages from a relationship or issue, often presenting it as a mature choice but inwardly harboring resentment that undermines the connection. “I’m fine with it.” Do what you want attitude.

What can we do about it?

Stop acting like children and focus on collaboration and skill-building. Realize that disharmony is productive, and you grow stronger only through repair. The first step is to identify when this stage is happening. If you can do that, you can focus on moving to the next cycle. Work on resolving issues rather than proving who is correct. Actively try to avoid losing strategies by identifying our and partners' top losing strategies.

Like in dancing, we are in the flow, and if we make a mistake, all we have to do is smile and work together to get back into the flow.

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Links

​https://www.sesame.com/research/crossing_the_uncanny_valley_of_voice​

​https://tim.blog/2025/03/06/terry-real-relationship-coach/​

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