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Ghostlighting Is the Latest Abomination in the Dating Scene

It creates a lot of anxiety and distrust in everyone.

Synthia Stark
Preoccupy Negative Thoughts
7 min readJul 26, 2023

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Some of these ghosts shine so bright that we can’t resist their charms — Photo by CAMERA TREASURE from Pexels

The online dating scene feels more complicated than ever, especially with the ever-changing unwritten rules and increased cognitive burden tied to endlessly swiping left and right across hundreds of people daily.

A grotesque mashup of ghosting and gaslighting, ghostlighting combines the worst of the two, reeking of desperation, confusion, and possible danger.

For the uninitiated, ghosting means the other person suddenly disappeared without any explanation, as if they never existed. In our regular waking life, it is difficult to accomplish such a feat — but in the online dating space, a person can delete and block you in the blink of an eye, even if you met them physically a few times.

It is jarring, especially if months of genuine rapport were developed with a beautiful stranger, where many intimate moments, memories, and ideas were exchanged across time and space.

Gaslighting is a subtle form of abuse where a person ever-so-slowly manipulates you into not believing (or being sure of) what you previously said or did around them — to the point that you start to feel like you are slowly losing your sense of self, dignity, and self-confidence.

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Preoccupy Negative Thoughts
Preoccupy Negative Thoughts

Published in Preoccupy Negative Thoughts

A psychology, neuroscience, mental health, and human resources writing space.

Synthia Stark
Synthia Stark

Written by Synthia Stark

Canadian Therapist & Former Researcher | 5x Top Writer | Writing about mental health, psychology, science, etc. https://linktr.ee/SynthiaS

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