Why We Obsess Over An Online Love Who Ignores Us

What makes us obsess over an online love who ignores us most of the time? We probably tell ourselves, often, that it is because this online love we found might change in time. Or, we feel that this person could be the love of our lives and that we should never give up because we’ve found this kind of love. Actually, both of the reasons mentioned are wishful thinking. Science says that there’s a more psychological reason why we keep obsessing over people who do not like us back.

Why We Obsess Over An Online Love Who Ignores Us | Anastasia Date

Our Online Love And The Extinction Burst Phenomenon

Psychology says that we are preoccupied with the person who is ignoring us because of a process called extinction burst. To put it simply, it is a barrage of unwanted behavior. This is how it happens when we communicate with our online love:

  1. We chat with the person we are interested in online.
  2. This person breadcrumbs us into thinking that he or she is interested. This person replies, sends us cute messages, as well as heart emojis.
  3. We feel giddy, of course. We become hooked.
  4. Steps 1-3 repeats in a continuous manner.
  5. The communication ceases. The online love who we thought was interested in us is no longer replying to our messages.
  6. We become obsessed – we check our inbox often, we send messages to this person often, we demand answers.

This is extinction burst. Because the stimuli (we send messages to our online love) resulted to our desired outcome (our love responds in a positive way), we keep doing the stimuli over and over again with the hopes to produce the same outcome.

What Does It Mean?

In most cases, you cannot escape the phenomenon “extinction burst” because it is part of a psychological process. What you can do, however, is ease your experience by:

  • Deleting the contact information of the person.
  • Blocking the person.

In conclusion, you shouldn’t mope around thinking that this person is “the one”. What you are going through is just a normal psychological phase which you will, eventually, move out of. It’s not your fault you are obsessing over someone. What a relief, right? For more dating tips, do visit our blog and check out more of our posts.

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