How Ghosting, Breadcrumbing, and Submarining Impact Mental Health and Relationships
Dating today offers endless ways to connect, yet just as many ways to disengage without accountability. Ghosting, breadcrumbing, and submarining have become so common that they feel like a sign of the times, reshaping how people experience relationships. While often dismissed as the new normal in digital dating, these behaviors can leave lasting effects on self-esteem, relationship confidence, and emotional well-being.
Unlike a clear breakup, which provides resolution, these ambiguous disengagement tactics create uncertainty, forcing individuals to process relational loss alone. The absence of closure can lead to self-doubt, dating anxiety, and emotional exhaustion, making it easy to internalize these experiences as personal failure rather than patterns of avoidance. Therapy and dating counselling help untangle emotional confusion, rebuild confidence, and set boundaries, allowing individuals to navigate modern dating with clarity and emotional security.
Ghosting: The Emotional Toll of Vanishing Without a Word
Ghosting—the sudden disappearance of a romantic connection without explanation—can leave the recipient caught between confusion and self-doubt. One moment, there’s warmth, shared experiences, even talk of the future. The next, silence. No warning, no closure—just absence.
It is often rationalised as a way to avoid uncomfortable conversations, but for the person left behind, it can feel like an erasure of the relationship itself. The human brain craves resolution, and when none is provided, it fills the void with self-questioning: Did I do something wrong? Was I too much? Not enough? This uncertainty can create:
Relationship anxiety, making future connections feel fragile or unpredictable.
Lower self-esteem, as individuals internalise the lack of closure as a reflection of their worth.
Difficulty moving on, leading to rumination and over-analysis of past interactions.
When ghosting happens repeatedly, it can reinforce hesitancy around emotional vulnerability, making it harder to trust new relationships. Therapy offers a space to process these experiences without internalising them, shifting the perspective from What did I do wrong? to How do I want to engage in relationships that prioritise clarity? With this shift, individuals can rebuild emotional resilience and self-trust, approaching future connections with confidence rather than uncertainty.
Breadcrumbing: The Emotional Cost of False Hope
Breadcrumbing refers to the pattern of keeping someone engaged through inconsistent communication and vague gestures of interest. A text out of the blue, a compliment that feels carefully rationed, a vague mention of plans that never quite materialise. Each small interaction is just enough to stoke hope, to keep the recipient tethered to the idea that a relationship is taking shape, even when the reality is far less promising. It’s a performance of interest, a pattern of disengagement masked as possibility.
What makes breadcrumbing particularly insidious is its unpredictability. The inconsistency forces the recipient into a psychological limbo, leaving them wondering whether they are expecting too much or simply misreading the situation. The brain, wired to seek patterns and rewards, latches onto the occasional hit of attention, much like a gambler chasing a jackpot. The rare, fleeting moments of connection feel significant, even when the overwhelming evidence points to a lack of genuine investment.
Left unchecked, this cycle erodes self-worth, convincing individuals that affection should be earned rather than freely given. It reinforces the idea that if they are just a little more patient and a little less demanding, then perhaps the inconsistency will resolve itself into something real. But emotional stability is not something that emerges from mixed signals—it is something that must be prioritised. Therapy can help disentangle this pattern, offering the clarity to see breadcrumbing for what it is: not a slow-burning romance but an exercise in emotional rationing. The real shift happens when individuals stop mistaking scarcity for value and start recognising that stability is not a privilege to be won but a standard to be set.
Submarining: When the Past Resurfaces Without Explanation
Submarining is the act of disappearing without warning, only to resurface weeks, months, or even years later with a casual Hey, how have you been?—as if the silence never happened. There’s no mention of the unanswered texts, no acknowledgment of the time lost, just an unspoken expectation that things can pick up where they left off.
For the recipient, this sudden return can be deeply destabilising. Just as they’ve accepted the disappearance, they’re confronted with an unexpected choice: respond or move on, confront or stay silent? It’s a collision of hope, resentment, and uncertainty, forcing a decision they never asked to make.
What makes submarining particularly unsettling is how it shifts the emotional burden entirely onto the recipient. They are left questioning whether to re-engage with someone who has already proven unreliable, knowing they could just as easily vanish again. The sudden reappearance disrupts closure, turning the relationship into a revolving door of uncertainty. Over time, this can lead to increased anxiety, diminished self-trust, and difficulty establishing emotional security in future relationships.
Disrupted emotional closure – The unexpected return interrupts the healing process, making it harder to move forward.
A diminished sense of self-trust – The unpredictability makes it difficult to assess whether reconnecting is in their best interest.
Relational uncertainty – The reappearance doesn’t necessarily signal commitment, making it unclear if they will stay or disappear again.
Therapy provides clarity in the aftermath of ghosting, breadcrumbing, and submarining, helping individuals determine whether reconnecting serves their emotional well-being or simply reopens old wounds. More importantly, it reinforces self-trust, ensuring decisions are based on emotional security rather than fleeting validation. By fostering resilience, healthy boundaries, and self-worth, therapy empowers individuals to navigate modern dating trends with confidence.
The Mental Health Impact of Dating Trends
Ghosting, breadcrumbing, and submarining fuel relationship anxiety, leaving people questioning emotional connections that feel both present and absent. When communication is cut off abruptly or maintained just enough to keep hope alive, trust in relationships becomes fragile. Dating anxiety rises as every unread message feels like potential rejection, while self-worth erodes under the weight of inconsistency, reinforcing the belief that affection must be earned rather than freely given. Toxic dating behaviors turn relationships into an emotional gamble—exhausting rather than fulfilling. But these patterns don’t define self-worth. Dating therapy can help navigate emotional uncertainty, rebuild confidence, and set healthy boundaries that prioritise emotional security over unpredictability. Stability isn’t something to chase—it’s something to choose.
How Dating Therapy Can Help Navigate Modern Relationships
Dating today requires emotional awareness and the ability to recognise patterns early. Therapy provides essential tools to:
Identify unhealthy relational cycles – Learning when engagement is based on avoidance rather than genuine connection.
Develop self-trust and emotional boundaries – Understanding what feels emotionally sustainable rather than chasing inconsistent relationships.
Reframe dating setbacks – Recognising relational misalignment rather than internalising rejection.
Strengthen relational confidence – Trusting one's instincts and prioritising mutual investment over ambiguity.
For those experiencing relationship anxiety, dating stress, or emotional fatigue, working with a therapist or dating counsellor can be a valuable step toward healing. Therapy provides a space for reflection, clarity, and intentional decision-making, helping individuals move forward with confidence rather than uncertainty.
Why Dating Couples Can Benefit from Therapy
While modern dating challenges often focus on individual experiences, dating couples can also struggle with communication breakdowns, emotional insecurity, and inconsistent relationship dynamics. Issues like ghosting, breadcrumbing, or avoidant behaviors don’t just affect casual dating—they can also surface within committed relationships, leading to relationship anxiety, trust issues, and emotional disconnect. Therapy provides a structured space for couples to strengthen communication, address attachment patterns, and establish healthy relationship boundaries before deeper issues take hold. Whether it’s clarifying expectations, healing from past relationship wounds, or building emotional security, dating therapy helps couples create stability, deepen connection, and foster a more intentional and fulfilling relationship.
Moving Toward Emotionally Fulfilling Relationships
The ways people disconnect in relationships aren’t new—what’s changed is the language we now have to describe them. Ghosting, breadcrumbing, and submarining have always existed in some form, but today’s digital world has made these patterns more visible, more frequent, and, in many cases, more disorienting. Modern dating trends have reshaped how people approach relationships, often making emotional ambiguity feel like the norm. But understanding these behaviours, rather than internalising them, is the first step toward protecting mental well-being. Therapy offers a space to process these experiences, establish emotional boundaries, and move toward relationships built on clarity and mutual respect. With self-awareness and resilience, navigating modern dating becomes less about decoding mixed signals and more about choosing connections that offer stability and intention.
Restoring Peace is a private mental health centre which provides counselling and psychotherapy services for children, adolescents, youths, adult individuals, couples and groups with anxiety, depression, trauma, grief and various mental health and relationship challenges. For more information, please visit www.restoringpeace.com.sg or WhatsApp at +65 8889 1848. For periodic updates, we invite you to join our telegram group: https://t.me/restoringpeace.
Sources:
Kane, L. (2024, February). Capturing today’s worst dating trends: Why modern romance feels more like a game of emotional dodgeball. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/un-numb/202402/capturing-todays-worst-dating-trends
Brown, J. (2024, August). Ghosting: The mental health effects of being left in the dark. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/sg/blog/hope-for-relationships/202408/ghosting-the-mental-health-effects
BetterHelp Editorial Team. (n.d.). What is breadcrumbing and how does it affect relationships? BetterHelp. https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/relations/what-is-breadcrumbing-and-how-does-it-affect-relationships/
Navarro, R., Larrañaga, E., Yubero, S., & Villora, B. (2021). Ghosting and breadcrumbing: prevalence and relations with online dating behaviors among young adults. Escritos De Psicología / Psychological Writings, 13(2), 45–59. https://doi.org/10.24310/espsiescpsi.v13i2.9960
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