Toxic submariner daters resurface like nothing ever happened: Worse than ghosting

First, they vanish into the dating deep.Then, months later, they’re back in your DMs — like nothing ever happened.Welcome to the maddening world of “submarining” — a toxic, resurfacing trend where ghosters pop up from your past, acting like their sudden radio silence was no biggie.“They want someone to talk to and make them feel good about themselves,” Gigi Engle, certified sex coach and author of “All the F*cking Mistakes: A Guide to Sex, Love, and Life,” previously told Men’s Health.“It’s pretty unlikely that it’s because this person actually cares about you.”They aren’t exactly rare, either.Submariners — also known as “zombie daters” — typically ghost without explanation, only to boomerang back into your life like nothing went wrong. Think: “Hey, stranger” six months after you cried in your Uber home.“People may choose to resurface for a lot of reasons, but more often than not, it’s out of insecurity or boredom,” Engle said.Worse, they never acknowledge their vanishing act — no apology, no closure — just a creepy illusion that the last few months of your life didn’t happen.According to Dr.

Wendy Walsh, Ph.D., a psychology professor and relationship expert at DatingAdvice.com, it’s not just flaky — it’s prehistoric.“Evolutionarily speaking, having ‘backup mates’ is a very common human mating strategy,” she told PureWow. “Submariners often crave intimacy but are terrified of the vulnerability it requires,” she explained. “A submariner wants to put somebody on the back burner so they can reach out to them later when they feel lonely.”However, experts warn: Don’t bite when they breadcrumb.“You’ve already grieved them for a while; just let them go and move on,” Engle advised. “If someone is actually into you, they don’t disappear out of nowhere.”Submarining joins a long list of bizarre and brutal dating behaviors swimming around the app era — ghosting, love-bombing, fizzin...