The Era of Online dating and Ghosting

If you’ve ever had a close connect with a person and when you least expected it, they disappeared leaving you no clues of understanding why they left or their whereabouts – you have experienced ghosting before. Ghosting refers to when a person abruptly cuts off contact without any prior warning or reasons explained for why they left. When the person who is being ghosted tries to reach out for answers, they are often left with little to no response.  As it mimics a person fading into thin air, we call it ghosting.

Online Dating and Ghosting

Mayu had just landed her dream job and the first person she wanted to share this big news with was Greg, her boyfriend of six months with whom she lovingly had hoped to build a meaningful relationship with. As she leaves a message and just can’t wait to see what Greg’s got to say, she notices that the message goes unread. She returns back later that night to check on Greg if he’s doing okay – no response. For days on end she awaited a message or a call from Greg that never showed up. The wait was painful with Mayu having no idea of what had happened.  We call this ghosting.

Although common across other types of relationships, ghosting has been increasingly popular over the era of online dating. Like most everyday requirements made easy online, so has scenes of dating. Many youngsters now are exploring their options of finding their love interest online via dating apps and social media. While this may add many positives such as ease of connectivity and widening options of people to meet with, these online options of dating also comes with it’s lows.

Online dating platforms provide seemingly countless options of profiles with little effort in a miniscule amount of time and might lead to views such as “there’s always another option in a swipe”. This may leave the user hesitant to delve into the depths with a person of interest, even if they seem to share a good level of compatibility and liking, leading to an increase in ghosting as the interest upon a person fades off rather quickly.

Another reason maybe the ease of cutting ties when it comes to online applications where the need of  facing a difficult conversation can be avoided by a click to “delete chat” rather than facing the repercussions of letting a person know about their decision of moving away.

Why do People Ghost?

It is rational for a person to want to leave a potential or an invested relationship for many reasons such as:

• Unmet expectations
• Varied preferences upon the pace of progress in a relationship
• Differing expectations on levels of emotional or sexual involvement
• Lack of incompatibility (factors like life goals, values, priorities, lifestyles choices) or
• Major red flags (eg. excessing lying or unhealthy levels of suspicion, control or possessiveness).

While it is healthy to want to end a relationship for one’s own reasons, it is important to let the person know of this decision respectfully before leaving the scene. Unlike the common belief that people who ghost do so majorly out of lack of empathy, there are many other reasons that may lead to the choice of an abrupt exit.

• Lack of essential life skills such as inability to set and communicate clear boundaries, poor communication skills.

• Their emotional or mental state – Sudden or rising mental distress from reasons other than the relationship including loss of a loved one, family or work pressure and so on.

Painful experiences from the past may also highly affect a person’s urge to flee from an “almost relationship” such as a history of a traumatic relationship, maladaptive attachment styles, fear of closeness or fear of commitment. Such factors may reduce one’s mental bandwidth or willingness to take up accountability and bring on an inability to handle the stages of separation at it’s own pace.

How does it feel to be ghosted? 

Being on the receiving end of ghosting may cause a different level of impact on each person based on their level of closeness, dependency, longevity and enmeshment. In the beginning, a sense of shock and disbelief may set in, followed by anger, questioning and imagining probable reasons for their exit. They may then feel hurt and gradually move past the phase of grieving towards betterment. For many, being ghosted may feel like a personal loss and a period of sadness may follow through  before acceptance sets in.

Within the process of attributing reasons for why the person would have left, they may try to run multiple scenarios mentally in an attempt to figure out the causes. There may also be a tendency to blame themselves of probable actions that may have caused the drift. This phase can flare one’s insecurities such as body image issues or their current state in their career and may further impact their self image and lead to a temporary low in one’s self confidence. Many studies have shown how being ghosted decreases one’s ability to open up or build trust upon their next partner – aka trust issues. Through the process, they may also face immediate consequences of being ghosted including handling questions from their friends and family or needing to adapt to a new lifestyle that had once been enmeshed with the other’s routine.

Although everyone’s experience of handling the impact of ghosting may be different, it is considered healthy to have a period of feeling hurt or low emotionally before recovering from it. Once a person moves on healthily, the experience may also leave them with better emotional resilience, clarity on personal needs and a more rational view upon relationships.

Does it affect the one who ghosts?

Ghosting many times happen to be a way to skip past a difficult phase of taking accountability of one’s decision. By resorting to ghosting instead of handling the situation upfront, they may miss building on key life skills such as holding empathy, ability to communicate effectively, setting healthy boundaries when essential, inability to face dense emotions and decision making skills. The process may also leave some guilt ridden or may find it emotionally painful to disconnect from a someone they shared a good connect with, knowing it may cause distress and may leave the other with a sour impression of themselves. If people may ghost for reasons that could be rectified or worked upon, they may lose out on meaningful relationships. If this becomes a recurring pattern, it can indirectly affect one’s own ability of holding lasting relationships.

Read More: Importance of Healthy Boundaries in a Relationship

Ways to cope from being ghosted

• Allow healthy grieving – As discussed earlier on, following an experience of being ghosted one may feel hurtful and it is healthier to allow yourself to feel the emotions instead of  denying or suppressing how you feel and to force yourself to move on right after it happens. Some time to process and move through the emotions that pop up will aid in better recovery.

• Aid in venting – Find ways to let go and to express how you feel by activities that you may cherish. Among the usually preferred are art, poetry, journaling or talking it out. You may even write a letter to the person who ghosted that is not to be posted but a strong way to express what you would like to tell the other and to bid goodbye.

• Keep busy – While it is okay to take time out from your hectic schedule in the initial days, following a gentle rhythm for your everyday activities will help engage your attention healthily and provide a structure to the day to aid in healing.

• Remind yourself of your worth – It is wise to resist the urge to take it personally. In most cases, the reasons behind such an exit is to do with the ghoster than the one being ghosted. It will be helpful to consciously remind yourself of your self-worth. This maybe a good time to think about your qualities that you are happy of and the ways you add on value to others around you.

• Reevaluate – When you may feel mentally ready enough, reevaluating your contribution, if any might lead to self betterment and be a pathway to greater self-awareness. Eg. How could you have handled it better from your part? What might you not want to repeat the next time when you find yourself in a similar situation? Etc.

• To avoid – The brain does not prefer to be in pain even if it is healthy to endure. There may be a tenancy to look for a quick fix to stop these difficult emotions and these may lead to unhealthy habits such as substance or device addictions, impulsive and unsafe decision making or opting for rebound relationships. Such temporary fixes may not allow for space to heal healthily with time to process and learn from the experience and may lead to recurrent patterns of self destructive ways of coping.

• Seek support if needed – Although it’s natural to feel low for a while, if it leaves a strong lasting negative impact that affects your everyday life or you find the patterns to be resistant despite your effort to move on with time, consider seeking professional care to cope past this stage and to move towards betterment.

If you feel like ghosting, try this instead.

As challenging it may be to give out the tough news, it is always better to leave after an explanation is conveyed. Handling testing times may allow for building key life skills and enhance value based living. Here are a few practices that may help with it.

• Practice empathy – trying to look at the other’s perspective or to step into their shoes might help you gain the will and remind you of the need to let them know before leaving.
• Prepare or plan ahead on the best way to clearly communicate the reason of wanting to close the relationship.
• Think of probable alternate responses, it’s consequences and ways to cope to feel prepared.
• After having expressed your reasons, there is a chance that the person may not adhere to your request of needing space. This may raise the need for setting clear boundaries and to be consistent with the same.

Hint. Believe upon their ability to understand, cope and grow from this situation rather than fearing their immediate emotional distress.

You may also consider professional support such as talking with a therapist, if needed. If you have tried to move on from being ghosted or have resisted and fought back the urge to ghost, this is certainly a reason to be appreciative of. Bravo!