A new study by matchmaking service Tawkify has highlighted a growing trend in the dating world: emotional oversharing on first dates. The study, which surveyed 1,014 active daters, found that many young people “floodlight” – share deep personal stories early or – not out of radical honesty but from a desire to combat loneliness, which can inadvertantly serve as a red flag that kills their dates stone dead.
Experts define floodlighting as a tactic that accelerates intimacy to test a potential partner’s emotional capacity or create a false sense of closeness. It often shifts dynamics to feel one-sided, turning the other person into an emotional caretaker – whether done intentionally or as a result of the other person’s insecurities making them struggle with normal connection-building.
According to the findings, 58% of respondents have reconsidered dating someone because of early oversharing, while 35% admitted to ghosting partners who disclosed too much too soon. More notably, 38% said oversharing made them trust the other person less, compared to only 27% who said it built trust. The issue appears to be especially prevalent among LGBTQ+ daters. Over half (54%) reported being floodlighted in the past year, and 56% experienced what they described as trauma dumping – compared to the 34% floodlighting and 30% trauma dumping that their heterosexual counterparts experienced.
Other common overshared topics include things like breakups (46%). childhood trauma (45%), mental or physical health issues (45%), insecurities (41%), family issues (40%), addictions (30%) and financial struggles (32%). Gen Z was most likely to find early vulnerability attractive (55%) but also to overshare out of loneliness (39%). In fact, many of the people surveyed said that they overshared specifically to spark an emotional connection quickly through being vulnerable.
55% of Gen Z said they find early emotional honesty attractive, the most of any generation. However, 22% of daters said that the connection built through oversharing made them feel obligated to continue the date/relationship, while only 13% actually felt an increase in connection and a mere 11% were flattered by the other person being so vulnerable. In fact, 38% of the users surveyed said that this floodlighting actually decreased their trust, and 44% were outright uncomfortable or emotionally ambushed.
With dating fatigue already being an issue among many Gen Z users, something as overbearing as floodlighting could be just another factor that makes the experience a struggle for users to stick with long-term. Tawkify’s data showed that, in a dating culture where trust is most often built through consistent communication and respect for boundaries, emotional pacing is more effective than sudden vulnerability – at least in the majority of cases.
