Dating in the 21st Century is far from straightforward. With apps aplenty the go-to for many people looking for love, it can be a minefield.
And the social-media led throwaway nature of things can get a bit too much sometimes. No doubt many singletons will be familiar with ghosting and have probably had it happen to them.
But while ghosting involves your love interest vanishing suddenly, a new dating trend is even more passive-aggressive. The rise of fizzling could lead to a whole new level of pain.
It could be more harmful in terms of how it makes single people feel, knocking their confidence and self-esteem, reports the Mirror. Fizzling is the term given to when your potential date begins to fizzle out, putting in less and less effort into the conversation rather than just ending the relationship.
Replies become slower and less frequent as well as shorter in their nature, making it hard to keep the chat flowing until eventually the fizzler will stop replying and then ghost the other person. Fizzling can happen over weeks or months at any point in the relationship, but has become increasingly common on dating apps where it is easy to limit communication.
Some have called this the more passive-aggressive version of ghosting, accusing the fizzler of being calculated in their drip-feeding of attention - keeping their match on the backburner until something better comes along. Hinge's 2023 LGBTQIA+ DATE Report suggests that fizzling is as a result of daters not wanting to tell someone they’re no longer interested and occurs mainly after the first dates have happened. The report found singles dislike fizzling just as much as ghosting, with 90% saying they didn't want it to happen to them.
Hinge's love and connection expert, Moe Ari Brown, said: "Slowly phasing someone out without offering an explanation can trigger feelings of unworthiness, confusion and self-doubt. If you're not feeling the connection, remember there's another human being on the other side of that screen – and they deserve closure."
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Rhian Kivits, a Relate-trained therapist, explained: "The human mind has a negative bias, which means we often assume the worst in situations where we have no clear answers. With dating fizzling you may be left telling yourself that it must have happened because you weren’t attractive enough, sexy enough or entertaining enough for the other person.
This can have a negative impact on the fizzlee's self esteem as "you make yourself the problem" and "ruminate on your perceived flaws". Making matters worse, the impact of the drawn out fizzle can make daters feel "worthless", as they see the other person caring less and putting in less effort.
"Fizzling can trigger insecure attachment behaviours, like grasping for attention or putting up with breadcrumbs," added Rhian. "The person doing the fizzling is most likely avoidant and selfish because they're not responsible or secure enough to admit that they’re no longer interested in the connection and they lack care for the way their behaviour makes others feel."
