I’m about to tell you a story. And I know that for every one story I have, some of you have way worse. I always used to say that you couldn’t waterboard this out of me. That I would take this to the grave. But consider me underwater, because I am officially breaking my silence.
It starts where all the love stories start: Tinder. A fairy tale, if you squint your eyes a little. A Shangri-La for those “still figuring things out”. A World Wide Web for the emotionally unavailable.
I’m swiping through the vast, pristine pool of the Athens male population when his profile pops up. EMT. Loves running and cold brew. A little bit older. Not thinking too much of it, I swipe right and go to bed.
We match sometime in the night. By morning, there’s a message waiting. Something about my pictures, easy to respond to. I think about what to answer with while brushing my teeth, and tap out a tentative message while steeping my tea.
He asks what I’m studying. I ask about the race. He tells me he’s training for the Ath Half. I say that’s impressive and mean it. The conversation flows in that low-stakes way that feels safe. Familiar.
And it stays that way for three whole weeks. Normally, the expiration date for a match is about three days—four if you’re lucky.
At the start of the fourth week, I finally got asked out. Dinner and drinks Monday, location TBA. You know what? That should’ve been my first sign. He said he would pick me up at 8. And I believed that.
The day of, I text him my address and he replies with enthusiasm. I tell my coworker that I’m excited about the date and she’s also excited for me.
It gets closer to 8, and I text him my address. He hasn’t texted me back yet, but I figured that’s normal. I decide to wait it out, see if he’s running late. Crickets.
At about 9, I started taking down everything. I change into my PJs. Put up my hair and wash off my makeup. I turned on Criminal Minds and tried to drift off to sleep.
My phone remained silent for the next two days. Like I had imagined it all. I convinced myself that it was just an accident—maybe an emergency at work, maybe his phone died, anything but the truth. That he didn’t mean to.
The next day my friend told me, “That’s not normal.” And I think she was right. I tried to be the cool girl who didn’t care. On to the next one. But it ate away at me. Until one day, I couldn’t sit with it anymore. I called him.
And it wasn’t because I felt desperate or wanted to even see him at all. But I wanted to know if I imagined the whole thing.
It rings once. Twice. Three times.
He answers.
“Who is this?”
I pause. I didn’t think he would pick up.
“Hey, it’s Leti. We were supposed to go on a date Mon—”
He hangs up on me.
I stare at my phone for a second, stunned.
Then I text him. Not softly this time. I told him that what he did wasn’t okay. That disappearing like that, when we had something planned, wasn’t nothing. That I was calling to see if he was alright.
This was back when I still believed that people could feel remorse for things like this.
He blocks me immediately.
And just like that, the story shifts. It’s no longer a fairytale, instead it’s something closer to a ghost story.
This is the part no one talks about, what’s not accounted for when they say “don’t take it personally” when things like this happen.
But what part of that isn’t personal?
The conversations were personal. The time was personal. The plans were too. But somehow, the disappearance isn’t supposed to be.
And now the problem isn’t the hurtful thing he had done, it was how I responded. It was the fact that I had feelings about it at all.
I did too much. That’s what I was told.
When I think about what actually happened, I realize I wasn’t crazy.
I was reacting to something that hurt.
And unfortunately, this speaks to a much larger pattern than just this one man.
We’re in a kind of dating culture where men can avoid accountability while women are punished for having feelings about what was done to them. The expectation becomes that women should quietly absorb the discomfort, make sense of it on their own, and move on without saying anything at all. If she does say something, now she is the one who is in the wrong. She is the one who overreacted.
But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t do something to you.
It’s not always one big heartbreak. It starts off as something smaller than that.
A kind of death by a thousand cuts. Little moments that chip away at your self-esteem until you start questioning your own reality.
What you felt. What you saw. Maybe even your worth.
Is it fair? Not really.
And someone will tell you that this is just how things are. That it’s always been this way.
But why do we have to be okay with that?
If we spent as much time asking for accountability and basic respect as we do policing women’s feelings and reactions, I think dating would look very different.
And of course, there’s a caveat to all this. Not everything needs a confrontation. Sometimes, it just isn’t worth it.
But it all lies in the power of choice. If you feel like you need to say something, you should be allowed to. Silence shouldn’t be the price of someone else’s comfort.
Those feelings you have don’t just disappear. They turn inward.
And that’s how the haunting starts.