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Hey there, folks.

It is Saturday, March 7th, and I have no idea with this episode of Amy and T.J. is about it. Welcome to this episode. This is one of these we do every once in a while. They can be fun. We don't, we should do them more often. But Robs has kept me in the dark about this new dating trend that's out there. And she wanted to get my honest, immediate, authentic reaction to it.

I really don't know what this is.

Yes. I love, you know, I don't know about any of you, but I love reading about new dating

trends or toxic dating trends. Even though I'm not dating, it's just kind of funny to see

where things are. And honestly, with my daughter's dating, it's just, it's so different than when we were in the mix. But there is a new, it's called a toxic dating trend. So this isn't a good thing. It's not a good thing. And it's something to be aware of. So if you're out there and I say this phrase, you may be like, uh-huh, been there, done that, seen it, experienced it. But I want to get what you

think this might be. It's called ghost lighting. Well, we have gas lighting, right? Right.

So ghosting, am I on the right track? What ghosting is is when you just bounce on somebody. So

ghost lighting, is it when, huh, what is it? You disappear but blame the other person for it? How does this work? Okay, that's actually you're on the right track. So it's a toxic combination of ghosting and gaslighting. So you got that right. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Ghosting and gas. Here's what happens. Ghosts lighters, they'll ghost. They'll drop all communication. You won't know where they went or why

they left. And then they'll reinitiate contact later and act as if nothing happened. And they didn't

do anything wrong. So they gaslight you after they ghost you. They don't come back and explain why

they've been gone. They just show back up and everything's normal. How do you want to grab a drink. Yep. So they guess. So here's what they do. They ghost. They show back up. And then they gaslight the person they were dating into believing they never ghosted them. What? You convinced someone that, oh, I wasn't going. I didn't hear from you. That kind of a thing. Oh, you never hit me back. Or remember we were supposed to go to this thing? I didn't hear from you. Now, how much time are we talking? Like a week, two weeks, two months, six months? It could be any period of time. So there was a dating expert who put it like this when she was trying to describe what ghost lighting is. This is so interesting. She said, what makes it different from simple ghosting is the

psychological twist. Ghosting is avoidance. Ghost lighting adds distortion by manipulating the fact,

so you're doubting your own reality. Which is gaslighting.

Correct.

So they were saying, here's what you look out for because when the ghost lighter

reinitiates contact and wants to reach out to you and hit you up, they'll do it on

social media likes first.

So it's kind of subtle.

They'll start liking your social media posts again.

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