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If both can express habits like things you tend to do, what is the difference between their uses?

examples:

イケメン*が通るとつい見ちゃう。

昔の話をしていると話がついつい長くなる。

Why was つい used here? Would 〜がち also make sense?

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    is 〜つい put the beginning of the sentence? I mean「 "つい"、言いそびれてしまった」 or something.
    – kimi Tanaka
    Jul 27, 2019 at 21:40
  • I'm not sure what this つい is about, either. Can you give us a pair or full example phrases?
    – naruto
    Jul 28, 2019 at 7:18
  • added some examples, thanks :))
    – jacoballens
    Jul 28, 2019 at 7:31

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つい doesn't necessarily stand for habit but that you do something unintentionally. がち stands for tendency and means that something is expected to happen to some extent frequently, whether it's intentional or unintentional.

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  • why can つい sometimes denote the time something happened? such as the other day, recently, etc?
    – jacoballens
    Jul 28, 2019 at 8:36
  • It can express how ignorable the spatial or temporal distance is. jisho.org/word/%E3%81%A4%E3%81%84
    – user4092
    Jul 29, 2019 at 2:16

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