Most regular users of the site, I think, have been ghosted from time to time. Conversations that start out in a promising way quite often end up going nowhere (for no discernible reason) to such an extent that the expected outcome of most interactions here and on rival sites is ghosting.

Having been at the wrong end of a particularly extreme incident of ghosting within the last week, I thought that it might be worthwhile to share experiences of such episodes, such that we might, perhaps, all help each other to identify red flags and otherwise improve our understanding of the motivations involved.

First of all, a clarification. I regard ghosting as suddenly and without warning or explanation ending all contact after a substantial period of established regular and at least somewhat intimate communication. I do not regard not responding to a first message as ghosting, nor a brief conversation trailing off, nor an interaction that was clearly (to both parties) intended from the outset to be short-term coming to its natural end. It is also not ghosting to end contact after one or the other side has behaved reprehensibly, in the view of the person ending communication, and that person has, before ending the communication, made it clear that he/she believes that the other has behaved reprehensibly. In that case, the person with whom communication has been ended is left in no doubt as to the reason for the communication to have ceased, and it is thus not without warning or explanation.

I will start with the recent example, and then give a brief account of a much older example. Both of the examples are much abridged, so much detail will be lost.

The recent example was this: a user of this site, a woman in her early 30s from the USA, with a profile that had been established for 3 years on this site, contacted me in chat. I was not looking at the chat at the time, so I missed the message, so she sent me a message instead, saying that she liked the part of my profile that said that I am looking for the kind of person who would like to go for a long walk and then eat so much that she can barely move. We kept missing each other on chat and exchanged a few messages about what we were looking for. We eventually met up in chat and had a good conversation.

She said that she had talked to quite a number of people on this website, but that she had lost interest quickly because they were too extreme: she was keen on maintaining an active lifestyle (she was fond of hiking, for example) and wanted to gain a somewhat limited but still fairly substantial amount of weight. She also said that she had been talking to one person and was about to meet him when she discovered that he was married; she had contemplated going through with it, but had decided against it in the end. In all the 3 years that she had been here, she had not actually gained any weight as she wanted to do that with somebody and had not found anyone yet.

We started communicating offsite using an open-source messaging protocol called Element that I had recommended and that she had downloaded just to talk to me.

I had stated in one of my early messages that I was looking for somebody local. She had then stated that her job was one that did not require her to be in any particular location and that she would be prepared to relocate if she met the right person - she later (after we had talked more) talked about coming to London for three months to meet up and explore gaining and feeding with me. I briefly wondered whether she was some sort of financial scammer, but that did not fit: she made clear that she was fairly wealthy, that she would be paying her way and renting an apartment rather than expecting me to put her up and even said that her paying for her part of the meals that we ate was important to her and part of her fantasies. I had suggested that it would be unwise for her to plan such a long trip with us never having met, and suggested that we meet briefly first; she replied that that seemed like a good idea, and would consider a long week-end to "feel each other out". She asked what my intentions would be after the three months, and I said that I would seriously consider a long-term relationship if we got on really, really well. She said that she would consider that, too, but that, even if not, we would have a fun erotic adventure in those three months.

She was evidently very much into submission/domination, with her taking the submissive part. I had told her in an early message that I was happy to engage in a sort of playful dominance in the bedroom, but that I liked a strong, independent woman and that I was not into controlling somebody's entire life.

TBC (character limit)

That is very sad indeed. I can only imagine this to be a very difficult time for you.

Ohh, that one! I think that I might have read the first few chapters of that. That was quite nicely done.

A 400 page erotic novel on the theme of feedism? Goodness me - that's quite the endeavour!

May I ask what it is about? Obviously, only the sort of information that you would find in the blurb - I'm not asking you to give anything away.

You are right - searching a little found some dating back to 2019 or so. Most interesting.

Very interesting. Those have all been published in the last few months. Is this a recent phenomenon?

Interesting. This stuff is more mainstream than I had imagined. Do you have links to any of this?

I am intrigued. Is there currently any feedist literature on Amazon?

Yes, that's always the trouble. But social skills are for more than just dating, so it's never a waste.

I would suggest working on learning social skills. These are learnable (even though they come naturally to many people), but learning does take time and effort.

It won't necessarily fully solve your problem (these things are inherently hard for everyone), but it may help.