Ghosting, benching and orbiting: relationships in the digital age
Ghosting, benching and orbiting: relationships in the digital age
Have you ever wondered what really lies behind behaviors such as ghosting, benching and orbiting in digital relationships? What can online therapy do?
“Human relationships have become fragile like disposable objects. Easy to obtain, easy to break, easy to replace.”
— Zygmunt Bauman, Amore liquido. Sulla fragilità dei legami affettivi (2003)
We live in a time in which meeting, getting to know one another and even falling in love is no longer an experience limited to physical space. Today, human relationships are born, transform and often end through screens, notifications, dating apps and social networks, becoming increasingly digital and increasingly less stable. Digital connections have become an integral part of our emotional lives, often overlapping with, blending into or replacing “traditional” ones.
Our way of connecting with others has been completely redefined by the impact of technology. Tinder, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook and many other platforms have made instant communication possible, potentially continuous, theoretically accessible at any moment. But this immediacy comes at a price.
In the digital world, words arrive quickly, but are often as light as air: they do not carry the weight of intention, responsibility or emotional presence. A message can be seen and ignored in an instant. One click is enough to block a person and make them disappear from one’s digital life. It is possible to dissolve into nothingness without having to face the burden of an explanation, the discomfort of a goodbye, or the vulnerability of a direct confrontation.
In the digital world, communication has become extremely fast, but often empty: it happens frequently, but without depth; it is constantly accessible, but rarely authentic.
In such a fluid and elusive context, building meaningful bonds is not only difficult: it has become an act of courage.
Digital communication has become increasingly fast but superficial, frequent but less deep, available but rarely authentic. Within this framework, building meaningful relationships becomes a challenge. And in this fertile ground, new modes of interaction – or rather, of emotional disconnection – are born and spread, which psychology is beginning to observe with increasing attention: ghosting, benching and orbiting.
These phenomena are not just linguistic curiosities or passing trends: they are the reflection of a relational culture that privileges immediacy over depth, quantity over quality, option over conscious choice. We are immersed in a culture of emotional disposability, in which even people become easily replaceable. When a bond loses intensity, when involvement becomes frightening or discomfort emerges, the response is no longer dialogue, but escape. Things are not clarified: one disappears. They are not faced: they are ignored.
These behaviors often generate strong emotional confusion in those who experience them: why did they seek me out, only to disappear? Why do they watch every one of my stories but no longer write to me? Why do they keep me there without deciding? In the absence of words, those on the receiving end tend to fill the gaps with anxiety, guilt and hope. And this can have a profound impact on self-esteem, self-perception and relational trust.
With this article I want to help you give a name to what you are experiencing, to recognize these ambiguous relational behaviors, and to understand their meaning from a psychological point of view.
I will speak to you clearly about ghosting, benching and orbiting, explaining:
what they really are,
why those who engage in them do so,
and above all how you can emotionally protect yourself from these dynamics that confuse and hurt.
Because deserving a healthy relationship starts with a fundamental step: clearly seeing what is not healthy.
Ghosting: emotional disappearance in the digital age
Ghosting is one of the most common – and most painful – forms of relational interruption in the digital age. With this term we mean the act of abruptly and without explanation ending a relationship (of any kind: romantic, friendship-based, professional), suddenly stopping responding to messages, calls or signals from the other person. In practice, “disappearing into nothingness,” like a ghost: hence the name ghosting.
What makes ghosting particularly destabilizing is not only the end of the relationship itself, but the way it happens: without words, without clarity, without closure. Communication is interrupted unilaterally and suddenly, leaving the other person in a state of suspension, disorientation and strong emotional vulnerability.
From a psychological point of view, those who experience ghosting may feel a profound sense of abandonment, accompanied by uncertainty (“Did I do something wrong?”, “Did something happen to them?”, “Are they trying to punish me?”) and a progressive collapse of self-esteem. The sudden silence is often internalized as a sign of personal failure or inadequacy. The prevailing emotions are pain, anger, shame and a sense of helplessness, since the absence of explanations makes it impossible to process the end of the relationship.
According to psychologist and researcher Jennice Vilhauer (2015), “ghosting is particularly harmful because it combines two destabilizing factors: the interruption of the emotional bond and the total loss of meaning regarding what happened. Our brain desperately looks for meaning, but cannot find it. This activates mechanisms of rumination, anxiety and self-punishment.”
📚 (Source: Vilhauer, J. (2015). Why Ghosting Hurts So Much. Psychology Today)
But why do some people choose to behave this way? The possible causes are varied and often interconnected.
First of all, ghosting can be an expression of a strong difficulty in managing conflict: those who disappear often do so to avoid the emotional responsibility involved in facing confrontation, explaining a choice, and sustaining the other person’s reaction. In this sense, it can be an avoidant strategy, apparently more “simple,” but in reality extremely dysfunctional and immature.
In other cases, there may be a deeper emotional immaturity at the root: the inability to sustain relationships that require constant presence, transparency and authentic emotional involvement. Those who practice ghosting may be driven by an unconscious need to flee as soon as they perceive a deeper bond, experiencing involvement as a threat to their freedom or identity.
Finally, a form of relational anxiety may come into play: those who ghost fear judgment, the other person’s disappointment, or their own inadequacy, and choose to disappear to avoid facing emotions they feel unable to contain. In this sense, ghosting can also be read as a symptom, rather than a deliberate and conscious action.
Whatever the motivation, the result for those who experience it is the same: a sudden, inexplicable, destabilizing cut that leaves a void full of questions. And when narrative closure is missing, the pain tends to become chronic, fueled by the obsessive search for answers and the often unachievable need to fill that silence.
Benching: the illusion of waiting in the gray zone of relationships
If ghosting is a sudden disappearance, benching is an intermittent and ambiguous presence. The term comes from sports language: to bench someone means to keep them there, ready to enter the game but never actually letting them play.
In the relational context, benching occurs when someone continues to keep the bond alive — through occasional messages, indefinite promises or ambiguous signals — without ever truly committing or allowing the relationship to evolve in a concrete and transparent way.
Those who experience benching find themselves in an emotional limbo: the relationship does not end, but it never truly begins either. There is enough attention to generate hope, but never enough involvement to make the other person feel truly chosen.
It is a relational space made up of silent waiting, future fantasies, constant interpretation of minimal signals (a like, a reply after days), where the other person seems present, but only when they want to be — and on their own terms.
The psychological consequences of benching are far from light. Often a deep frustration emerges, because the person feels continuously “almost” important, but never fully so. Over time, a form of chronic waiting can develop, in which attention crystallizes around that uncertain relationship, preventing openness to new and more authentic bonds.
In many cases, benching acts as an amplifier of emotional dependency: the intermittence and unpredictability of the other person’s behavior activate the dopaminergic circuit of intermittent reward — the same one that fuels behavioral addictions, such as gambling.
As American therapist Lindsay Gibson (2015) notes:
“Emotionally immature people tend to keep others attached through a combination of hope and disorientation. They give you enough to keep you from leaving, but never enough to make you feel loved.”
📚 (Source: Gibson, L. C. (2015). Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. New Harbinger Publications)
But why do some people engage in benching? A frequent motivation is the desire to keep options open: keeping someone “warm” in case they are needed in the future, without giving up other contacts, flirts or opportunities.
In other cases, benching arises from a constant need for validation: knowing that the other person is still there, waiting, available, makes one feel desirable and “powerful,” even if there is no real intention to build a relationship.
The problem is that those who are “benched” tend to blame themselves: “maybe I just need to be patient,” “maybe they’re going through a difficult time,” “if they reach out a bit, it must mean something…”. In reality, benching is a subtle form of emotional control, and recognizing it is the first step to getting out of that gray zone where hope blends with discomfort.
Orbiting: when they watch you but don’t talk to you. The new illusion of digital connection
In the landscape of modern digital relationships, orbiting is perhaps one of the most subtle and disturbing phenomena. The term comes from the English verb to orbit and indicates a relational mode in which a person, while not seeking any direct contact with you, maintains a constant digital presence around your life: they view your stories, like your posts, watch your content but do not write to you, do not speak to you, do not engage in any concrete interaction.
It is a form of “apparent closeness” that creates real distance. A presence that seems to say: “I see you, but I don’t choose you.”
Orbiting leaves those who experience it in an emotional fog that is difficult to clear, made up of doubts, waiting and silence. The person who was believed to be distant continues instead to appear every day in the form of views, hearts, passive interactions. This behavior fuels ambiguity: is the relationship really over? Is it a coincidence that they watch everything I post? Are they looking for a way back? Or do they just want to maintain power over me?
In the absence of clear words, the mind searches for explanations and meanings, often generating false hopes or self-blame, slowing down (or completely preventing) the process of letting go — of truly releasing the bond.
From a psychological point of view, orbiting interferes with emotional closure: it is difficult to process an ending when the other person continues to orbit in our digital space, like a ghost that does not want to fully leave. The result is a suspended feeling, an emotional incompleteness that can become a source of anxiety, dysfunctional attachment and relational stagnation.
Behind orbiting there can be different motivations, often unconscious and complex. In some cases, it is an unconscious form of control: remaining visible in the other person’s life without taking any responsibility. In others, there may be curiosity: wanting to know what the other person is doing, who they are seeing, how they are, without exposing oneself or committing. In still others, internal lack of clarity prevails: those who orbit may be confused about their feelings or simply unable to truly end a relationship, using digital distance as a middle ground between closeness and disappearance.
As psychotherapist and author Esther Perel explains:
“In modern relationships, we often find ourselves trapped between two fears: the fear of being too close and the fear of being too distant. And so we stay halfway: not present enough to build something, not absent enough to let go.”
📚 (Source: Perel, E. (2017). The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity. Harper)
Orbiting, precisely because of its ambiguity, is a behavior that is difficult to identify as toxic, because it does not break explicit rules, does not insult, does not openly abandon. But what it does is just as insidious: it keeps the illusion of the bond alive, making it difficult to move on and regain emotional balance.
Recognizing orbiting as a passive-aggressive relational dynamic is the first step toward freeing oneself from it. A like is not a relationship. A view is not presence. A bond, to be authentic, needs words, actions and intentions, not digital shadows orbiting around what they are unwilling to build.
Silent wounds: the psychological effects of ghosting, benching and orbiting
At first glance, ghosting, benching and orbiting may seem like minor relational episodes, trivial incidents of the digital world. But on a psychological level, their impact can be deep, persistent and underestimated.
These behaviors, although different from one another, share a common matrix: relational ambiguity and lack of communicative clarity, which leave the other person in a state of emotional suspension. It is precisely this ambiguity that generates the most silent, yet most insidious, emotional wounds.
In ghosting, pain manifests as a sharp blow: a sudden disappearance that leaves silence and disorientation behind. There are no explanations, no words accompanying the goodbye — only absence. And in that absence, the mind scrambles to find meaning, the heart refuses to surrender, while the body responds with real symptoms: insomnia, tachycardia, a sense of emptiness that settles under the skin. It is an ending without closure, and for this very reason, harder to accept.
In benching, pain is not a clean cut but a slow erosion. It is the waiting that wears you down, the feeling of being close but never truly inside the relationship. One clings to crumbs of presence, indefinite promises, messages that keep a thread of hope alive. But that thin thread turns into an invisible cage: self-esteem thins, while an emotional dependency takes shape toward someone who is there, but not truly.
Orbiting, finally, is a presence that does not disappear, but assumes no responsibility. Those who orbit remain on the margins: they watch, monitor, make themselves visible but never truly return. It is a wound that cannot heal, because every view, every like, every digital trace reopens the doubt: are they thinking of me, or are they just checking that I’m still there?
On a neuropsychological level, all three of these dynamics are based on dysfunctional interruptions of the attachment system. Our brain, designed to seek coherent and predictable connections, goes into distress when faced with ambiguous and discontinuous relational behaviors.
As neuroscientist and psychologist Louis Cozolino explains:
“The mind develops through predictable relationships. When these relationships are inconsistent or break abruptly, the brain interprets the experience as a threat to safety. Relational pain activates the same circuits as physical pain.”
📚 (Source: Cozolino, L. (2014). The Neuroscience of Human Relationships. Norton)
The effects often include:
hypersensitivity to rejection,
generalized relational insecurity,
distrust toward others,
difficulty opening up to new bonds,
guilt and self-blame,
obsessive or compulsive behaviors in digital communication (e.g. constantly checking whether the other person has seen or reacted).
In other words, these relational micro-traumas act in a subtle but powerful way: they undermine the ability to trust, create fertile ground for attachment anxiety and, in some cases, leave marks similar to those of a major emotional breakup. And since there are no social rituals to legitimize this pain (it wasn’t a “real relationship,” there was no goodbye, no one sees it), those who experience it often feel misunderstood or exaggerated, worsening their suffering.
From confusion to clarity: psychological strategies to protect yourself from those who do not truly choose you
When we find ourselves entangled in dynamics such as ghosting, benching or orbiting, it is easy to lose our sense of self. The absence of explanations, intermittent communication or ambiguous digital presence push us into a state of vulnerability in which insecurity grows, the mind fills with questions and the need for confirmation can turn into emotional dependency.
For this reason, it becomes essential to develop psychological protection strategies that help us recognize, regulate and interrupt these dysfunctional patterns.
The first strategy is to give a name to what you are experiencing. Naming means recognizing: “It’s not my fault, I am experiencing a form of passive-aggressive communication.” Giving a name to what has been lived — ghosting, benching, orbiting — is already a first step toward liberation: it means stopping feeling wrong and starting to understand. It shifts the narrative from “What did I do wrong?” to “What relational dynamic is being activated?”
The second strategy is to recognize early signs of emotional ambiguity. Vague messages, long unexplained silences, purely digital involvement, promises not followed by actions: all of this is information. When someone is scarcely present but always ready to reappear, or seems “interested but not too much,” it is important not to romanticize, but to observe with clarity. Even silence communicates: behavior speaks, even without words.
Another essential step is to restore the centrality of one’s personal value. The other person’s responses (or absences) are not a reflection of our worth. We do not have to earn love through waiting, patience or emotional performance. An authentic relationship does not arise from uncertainty, but from shared clarity and the willingness to truly be present. Cultivating self-esteem also means learning to choose those who choose us.
On a practical level, it can be very helpful to learn to set clear digital boundaries. Blocking, muting, disabling notifications is not an act of cruelty, but a gesture of care toward one’s mental space. It is not necessary to “be strong” by remaining exposed to the virtual presence of someone who has hurt us: strength also lies in knowing how to protect oneself.
As psychotherapist Terri Cole (2021) suggests:
“A boundary is an act of self-love: it is how we teach others how we want to be treated.”
📚 (Source: Cole, T. (2021). Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free. Sounds True)
Work on emotional regulation is also crucial. Techniques such as mindful breathing, journaling therapy (writing what one feels), compassionate inner dialogue or mindfulness can help manage waiting anxiety and the compulsive need to check the phone. On a deeper level, embarking on a therapeutic path can provide concrete tools to recognize old relational patterns (such as anxious or avoidant attachments) and consciously choose healthier relationships.
Finally, it is useful to shift one’s focus: from the person who confuses us, to the network of relationships that nourish us. Investing in bonds that make us feel good, in passions that give us meaning, in habits that strengthen our identity, is the most concrete way to escape the trap of “waiting for the other to choose me.”
Ultimately, it is not only about protecting oneself from those who confuse us, but about learning to courageously choose relationships that confirm us.
What can online therapy do?
Those who experience situations such as ghosting, benching or orbiting often find themselves in a state of emotional confusion and relational disorientation that is difficult to explain, and even harder to validate. In the absence of “concrete evidence” — because often it was not an official relationship or a formal breakup — the pain is minimized or ignored, both by the external environment and by the person themselves. Yet the impact can be profound: low self-esteem, hyper-analysis of received signals, anxiety, mental rumination, difficulty trusting again. This is where online therapy can represent a safe and transformative space.
One of the first benefits of a therapeutic path is the possibility of legitimizing the pain experienced. The therapist helps the person give a name to the experience and understand that what they went through is not “exaggeration” or “drama,” but a true form of relational disconnection that can have psychological consequences similar to abandonment. The possibility of telling one’s story without being judged, in a containing and structured setting, allows the event to be reprocessed with clarity and compassion, reducing the tendency toward self-blame.
Secondly, therapy allows for the reconstruction of the internal narrative of the relationship. The professional helps the person exit the cycle of “why didn’t they reply anymore?”, “what did I do wrong?”, and shift attention to how the other person behaved, what they communicated (even in silence), and what impact this had on one’s self-esteem. Through this narrative work, personal power and the ability to set emotional boundaries are recovered, interrupting the cycle of emotional dependency.
Online therapy also makes deep but flexible work possible. For many people, especially those who feel vulnerable, the digital setting offers an initial psychological distance that makes it easier to open up. Being able to access therapeutic support from one’s home environment can lower emotional and practical barriers, creating continuity of work even during moments of fragility or isolation. A well-constructed online therapeutic relationship can become a secure base from which to rebuild one’s sense of self, especially after experiences of feeling invisible, ignored or manipulated.
Through psychotherapeutic work, the person can also explore their attachment models and recognize whether there are recurring relational patterns that lead them to tolerate ambiguity, pursue emotionally distant people or minimize signs of disinterest. The goal is never to blame, but to increase awareness in order to foster healthier and more protective choices in the future.
Finally, the therapeutic path helps reconstruct a more authentic relational outlook. After understanding what happened, processing the pain and strengthening personal identity, it becomes possible to begin imagining — and then creating — bonds based on clarity, reciprocity and real presence. Because, ultimately, therapeutic work is not only about healing a wound, but also about rediscovering the right to relationships in which one feels truly seen, chosen and respected.
“You deserve relationships in which you don’t have to ask yourself whether you are enough. You deserve clarity, presence and respect. Everything else is not love, it is confusion disguised as connection.”
Bibliographic References:
Bauman, Z. (2003). Amore liquido. Sulla fragilità dei legami affettivi. Laterza.
Vilhauer, J. (2015). Why Ghosting Hurts So Much. Psychology Today.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/living-forward/201507/why-ghosting-hurts-so-much
Gibson, L. C. (2015). Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. New Harbinger Publications.
Perel, E. (2017). The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity. Harper.
Cozolino, L. (2014). The Neuroscience of Human Relationships. W. W. Norton & Company.
Cole, T. (2021). Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free. Sounds True.
For information, write to Dr. Jessica Zecchini.
Email contact: consulenza@jessicazecchini.it
WhatsApp contact: +39 370 32 17 351
