So you’ve been talking to this person consistently, you hang out every so often, or you’re hooking up. It seems like you have a good thing going, maybe even headed down the path to a relationship. And then as soon as you get your hopes up — there’s radio silence. They stop reaching out, you don’t see each other anymore and they won’t answer your texts or calls. You have no idea why or what happened. It turns out you’ve been ghosted.
*Courtesy of giphy.com
Most people can relate to this experience or know at least one person who has been ghosted. Ghosting is when someone ends a relationship by cutting off all forms of communication without any apparent justification or reasoning. This term came into popularity in 2011, but this phenomenon has been going on for centuries. Despite its prevalence, it’s honestly pretty distressing that ghosting is such a common occurrence and needs to stop being normalized. Here are a few reasons as to why ghosting is wrong and super annoying:
It’s immature
Ghosting is probably the easiest way out of a relationship because it takes zero effort. But just because it is the easiest way definitely does not make it the best. Ghosting someone is ignoring all responsibility and all obligation to that other person. By ghosting others, you are avoiding feelings for the sake of convenience. The lack of communication is childish.
It doesn’t allow for improvement or redemption
Without expressing the fact that your feelings have gone cold, you leave the other person thinking that things are still going great. They have no idea that there are certain aspects you aren’t vibing with and are turning you off. While you should never ask a person to change for you, every relationship requires compromise, but you can’t get there without communication. You need to give the other person the chance to understand how you are feeling to open up the opportunity of working through things together.
It’s just plain rude
Would you just not answer your boss or co-workers when they need to talk with you? How about your friends, family, or even the person just taking your coffee order? Of course not! It is so blatantly rude there is just no way. So then how could you do the same thing with someone you were starting to form a connection with? You took that person’s time, so even if a lifelong bond isn’t made at least pay that person the respect that they deserve by communicating your lack of interest in a future with them. It allows that person to know for sure that anything between you and them has ended and they don’t have to go on wondering.
It hurts the other person’s self-esteem way more than a confrontation would
Just because you aren’t communicating the way you are feeling doesn’t mean that ghosting doesn’t communicate anything. First off, the other person is forced to accept that you fled like a coward. The constant questioning and doubting before coming to this conclusion can drive someone crazy. And then, after finally admitting defeat, they have to face the emotional toll of a breakup without any closure. Ghosting someone communicates that they nor the connection you made together aren’t worth the time or effort of calling things off. Typically, it’s so much harder to recover from ghosting than a typical breakup because there is no opportunity for questions to be answered or any way of knowing why things went wrong.
*Courtesy of giphy.com
So friends, communicate. It is everything.
If you ever find yourself a being ghosted, while it really sucks, know that it’s not your fault. The other person needs to work on their communication and confrontation skills. If this is how they are handling the first issue in your relationship, then you deserve better anyways. :)