“Ghosting” is a term for the phenomenon of suddenly ceasing total communication in a relationship. The party doing the ghosting seems just to vanish into thin air, leaving the other person wondering what they did wrong. This Vogue article gives a humorous but insightful explanation of why ghosting occurs.
Ghosting often happens because people want to avoid conflict and confrontation. It may seem easier to avoid telling someone you’re just not interested, but ghosting often drags out the end of a relationship in unnecessary ways and leaves the ghost-ee hurt and confused.
Some people ghost because they’re not sure what they want from a relationship and aren’t patient or mature enough to find out, or they aren’t sure of their feelings. But as this article points out, being on the receiving end of having someone we care for suddenly vanish feels like a serious betrayal. You may start out with concern for their safety, wondering where they are and if something happened to them. You may question if they have been hurt or if you should pursue them. It can be difficult to determine when you should let yourself get angry- without knowing what has really happened we can rationalize and minimize the situation, blaming ourselves for the ‘ghosts’ irrational and thoughtless behavior. Frankly, it’s just plain rude.
Ghosting gives you no cue for how to react. It creates the ultimate scenario of ambiguity. Should you be worried? What if they are hurt and lying in a hospital bed somewhere? Should you be upset? Maybe they are just a little busy and will be calling you at any moment. You don’t know how to react because you don’t really know what has happened. Staying connected to others is so important to our survival that our brain has evolved to have a social monitoring system (SMS) that monitors the environment for cues so that we know how to respond in social situations. Social cues allow us to regulate our own behavior accordingly, but ghosting deprives you of these usual cues and can create a sense of emotional dysregulation where you feel out of control.
If you’re considering ghosting someone, take a minute and examine your responsibility to the relationship. If you got into it, take at least a second to get out of it. Be mature about it and focus on what the other person might think about even if you are too frightened to deal with their emotional reaction.
We used to complain about people breaking up by text, now ‘ghosting’ is one step removed from that. At least take the time to send the person you’ve been involved with a text. Disappearing may seem easier, but it’s really quite cowardly.
If you’ve been ghosted, the best thing to do is to continue doing what makes you happy and to focus on being courageous in the face of the other person’s disrespectful behavior. You will get over it. Trust me, you didn’t want to be involved with this person anyway.
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