Awkward 'Floodlighting' Is The Newest American Dating Trend & People Are Getting Ghosted More Because Of It
First dates are not for trauma-dumping, people!
New Africa | Shutterstock Most of us have been on at least one date with a record-scratch moment where our date says something totally out of pocket, and it's like time stops, and you pray for a sinkhole to open beneath the restaurant so you can duck out during the commotion.
And perhaps nothing is a quicker route to cringe-inducing dating awkwardness than the classic overshare. But what was once often joked about as a once-in-a-while occurrence with a particularly off-kilter date seems to have become a whole trend, according to new research.
'Floodlighting' is the new dating trend that is getting people ghosted more and more often.
Dating and matchmaking platform Tawkify recently surveyed more than 1,000 men and women within the first two years of a relationship to explore what sort of emotional dynamics are occurring these days in the early stages of relationships.
And in their data, a fairly startling trend emerged: users were reporting extremely high incidences of emotional oversharing on dates, and we're not talking about an offhand reference to an ex on a first date here and there.
We're talking full-on trauma dumping over the wine and apps. It's a practice that professor Brené Brown calls "floodlighting," in which you basically word-vomit all your deepest emotional hang-ups as a way to avoid vulnerability. It's a sort of test that avoids the risk of your date finding out about your traumas down the road and bolting out of discomfort.
Given Gen Z's comfort with "therapyspeak" and its openness towards mental health topics, floodlighting has become THE Gen Z dating trend, and it is really, really making people uncomfortable.
The research showed that daters feel floodlighting actually erodes trust, rather than building it.
The thing about floodlighting is that it seems to be rather counterintuitive. You think that by spilling your deepest and darkest beans up front, you're avoiding some inevitable surprise or break down the road. But Tawkify's research showed the opposite.
They found that 38% of daters felt that oversharing early in a relationship made them trust the person less, far more than the number who said it bolstered trust. Many said that this was because these overshares came before any intimacy or trust had even been established. It felt like it was crossing a line, basically, right out of the gate.
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Perhaps unsurprisingly, the number one topic for floodlighting was past relationships and exes, and men were much more likely to engage in this type than women, with 68% admitting to doing so.
Also high on the list were topics like childhood trauma, mental health conditions, and personal insecurities, which are all a bit much to delve into on a coffee date and can even feel manipulative, like you're trying to elicit pity. No wonder it felt to so many like a breach of trust.
More than half of daters said floodlighting is a red flag, and many have ghosted someone because of it.
Of all the dynamics online dating has brought into the mix, ghosting is probably the most unfortunate. It's just downright rude and insensitive, no matter how much of a "nobody owes anybody anything" kind of person you may be. Tawkify's research nevertheless showed that ghosting is rampant, with more than half of all daters and nearly 75% of LGBTQ+ daters having experienced it recently.
But when someone uses a first date to trauma dump about the abuse they suffered as a kid? Well, you can't really expect anyone to do much more than disappear, and 35% of respondents said that's exactly what they did when they encountered floodlighting. More than half, 53% agreed that floodlighting is a definite red flag.
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It's a paradox, of sorts. You overshare to protect yourself from being rejected and end up getting rejected for doing so. As someone with a lot of heavy trauma, I can certainly understand the instinct. But unfortunately, building trust is a two-fold process: taking a chance on the other person being trustworthy on one hand, and on the other, trusting YOURSELF that you'll be okay if they turn out not to be.
There's no real way around that, and opting for floodlighting instead not only doesn't solve this conundrum, but it can make people feel ambushed and burdened with providing emotional care to someone they just met. Openness is good, but there's a time and place for your deepest, darkest secrets, and it's probably not over lunch with a new potential paramour.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
