Has anyone ever seen a dim light in the night sky that would disappear?

I rarely post and mostly lurk on most subs but I’ve been inclined to post this question. I have had many strange encounters in my life including ones I have no memory of because I was too young(PM me if you would like to hear about the others). But one in particular I am curious if anyone else has encountered. There would be these dim “stars” that I would really only be able to see in the corner of my eye. So if I were looking directly at it I would barley be able to see it but when I would look adjacent to it it would appear as bright as the other stars in the sky. It would be still this entire time of viewing dim and bright but when I was able to place it and lock onto it this dim light it would seem to essentially ascend and dissappear. Now yes I looked up starlink and satellites because I’ll be damned if I was going to get crap on here for an ignorant mistake. This happened multiple times and my girlfriend at the time even witnessed it after mocking me too. Still no explanation for it bit the pattern was as soon as I locked onto it it would fly away. Has anyone ever encountered something like this? Is it a constant thing or has it stopped?

TLDR; Dim stars that appeared bright in peripheral vision would fly away after looking directly at it after a few seconds