Ghosting — Who Does It & Why?

Today, I want to talk about ghosting — what is ghosting, who does it and why do they do it?

Ghosting is when someone disappears without explanation.

Poof they’re gone like a ghost. That’s where it comes from.

It can be a really emotionally painful, even devastating, experience and it can really set back your self-esteem if you’re not careful.

According to statistics, nowadays with online dating and whatnot, they say about 80 percent of people have experienced ghosting. So the vast majority of people have experienced this phenomenon.

Why do people do it?

I want to talk about three different kinds of ghosting situations that I’ve noticed.

One of them I think is a lot more harmless than the other two. The other two are the ones you really want to look out for.

The first kind of ghosting is when it’s really early in the dating game, like maybe you’re on Tinder or some online thing and you just start texting with this person.

You’ve never met them and suddenly they’re gone.

Maybe they met someone else. Maybe they didn’t like something that you said or did. Maybe something else is going on in their life. Maybe they just panicked and decided they didn’t want to do this whole online dating thing.

There could be a myriad of reasons you didn’t have a connection, and you might find that you’re doing this kind of early-dating ghosting as well and that’s okay. This situation hurts the least because you had no investment in this person yet, so it doesn’t feel like a hit to the ego. You let it go, and you move on to the next.

If somebody does this to you, if you’re just in the texting phase, let it go and move on to other options. You don’t need to look too much into the reasons.

You might find that you have done this yourself in online dating. You may have ghosted someone before you actually met the person when they disqualified themselves either through disrespectful or low-value behavior.

Maybe they asked you twice at the last minute to go out with them and you’re like, ‘I just don’t make last-minute plans like that, my calendar gets booked in advance’ and they use some kind of sneaky way to shame you for that, to put you down in a very subtle way for not being available to them at the last minute after they waited to see if anything better came along.

Maybe you even saw neediness in their behavior or insecurity. For example, say you’ve just met this person that day or the day before and they’re asking you every day several times a day what are you doing, where were you or they’re contacting you all day long.

Or maybe it’s flaky behavior. Maybe you just met, you have a little texting, you set a date together and you put time on your calendar for this person. They’re still texting you and then suddenly right before the date they’re no longer in contact. Then suddenly they pop back up after the date, after the fact, later that day or the next day or a even week later and they have some reason for whatever’s going on. I would just cut that person out already. That kind of flaky behavior is going to be a pattern.

Other examples of when it’s perfectly acceptable to ghost on someone:

You just met through texting online or something and maybe you even met this person in person and you gave them your number and they’re texting you. Then maybe they send you an unsolicited dick pic right away. You just met this person, ‘whoa’! Just cut them off just block them immediately.

Or maybe they’re starting to get entirely too sexual too early. Literally, you just met this person, maybe that day or maybe a few days ago and they’re already either very directly being sexual or they’re beating around the bush. Maybe they do it in in some sort of way like, ‘what’s the most exciting or interesting thing you ever did/ever happened to you?’ and you tell them some story about some adventure you’ve had or whatever. Then they tell you, ‘oh you know I went to this Eyes Wide Shut sex party and there were 300 people there and everybody was fucking everybody’. Just ghost that person, because they’re basically telling you what they’re interested in.

Hopefully you can learn how to screen these people long before you even start messaging with them. Usually you can tell by the picture because the picture tells you a lot about what that person is portraying.

Maybe it’s something really, really subtle. Maybe you put one picture up where you’re not really showing much of yourself and you’re talking to this new person. Now this is probably more likely to happen to women than men, and let’s say the guy says, “send me more pictures I want to know you better”. No you don’t, you just want to see my body. If you wanted to know me we would be having a conversation, we would be meeting for coffee and actually getting to know each other.

So go ahead and ghost that person.

I don’t really think this form of ghosting is all that toxic, in fact I think it’s kind of acceptable nowadays especially in the online dating realm when nobody has made an investment of feelings yet and you’re just trying to see who qualifies before you meet anyone in person.

The next two forms of ghosting are toxic and can be devastating.

The second type of ghosting is when you’ve been dating this person for several weeks or several months and then suddenly you never hear from them again.

This kind of ghosting is usually done by emotionally immature people.

They are emotionally unavailable. They are weak people. They are cowards who are so afraid of facing their own emotional discomfort that they can’t even think about you and how you would feel if they suddenly disappeared without explanation like that.

What you’ll find is so-called “nice guys” and “nice girls” do this because they’re afraid of confrontation and having difficult conversations.

I’m not saying all nice people do this, I’m saying the typical nice guy/nice girl might do this because of their own fear of confrontation. They don’t want to have the other person think they’re not nice by breaking up with them so they just don’t deal with it.

This person is just blinded by their fear. They are so terrified and they likely think this is an acceptable way of ending things because they just didn’t know how to tell you. They’ll often even admit that if you get a closure conversation or email down the road.

Say you don’t hear from them for a week and you’ve accepted that they’re gone. Then a week later maybe you send them an email or something just to get closure. They will often write you back saying, ‘I just didn’t know how to tell you’.

They’ll often admit why they suddenly disappeared like that and they’ll be able to give you a little bit of closure in that way.

It still feels like a betrayal because it is a betrayal of respect.

It destroys the trust. You might have spent several months or more building trust with this person, deepening intimacy and having an emotional connection. Maybe you’ve seen each other several days a week. You really really care about each other, and you might even love each other.

It destroys the trust and in an instant it’s gone.

This can be very painful, it can leave you with a lot of unanswered questions not just about that relationship but about yourself, wondering what you did wrong.

You might even tell people about this and they might make snap judgments like ‘well you have a broken picker’ — No you don’t.

There is nothing wrong with you and this says nothing about you.

I hate that phrase, if you’ve ever heard that, ‘you have a broken picker’. That’s something I’ve actually heard abusive people say to shame the victim. I’ve also heard non-abusive people, but cowards, say this when they are just too afraid to take the risk of meeting someone new because they’re terrified that they have a broken picker and it’s really easy for them to sit on the couch and judge you in that way.

This form of ghosting says a lot more about the person who ghosted you than you.

That person might have been really nice for months and you had no reason to suspect that they would do such a thing out of the blue.

You’ve seen them handle their business with other people and when they ended things, they resolved it, they had conversations. You had no reason to suspect this was coming.

The attitude at the end of this one is ‘good riddance’.

That person just saved you a lot of time and heartache down the road, as the relationship gets even more serious and they can’t handle the tough emotions or situations that will inevitably come up in life and relationships.

The third type of ghosting, which is by far the most toxic is the form that the narcissist, the psychopath or other manipulative person does.

This could happen weeks, months or even years into a relationship.

This is the person who is most likely to come back.

In fact there’s a new term now for this it’s called “zombieing”.

That’s when a person comes back from the dead or we also call this hoovering in the narcissistic abuse arena.

So the ghosting in this case is actually a manipulative tactic like an extended “silent treatment” which is used to push you away and then pull you back.

They push you away. They cut you off. Maybe you try to get in contact with them, but they’re nowhere to be found yet you see they’re still on social media. They’re alive, they’re clearly not in the hospital or anything and then suddenly one day, they come back.

When you hear from the ghost again you can bet your money that is a manipulative person.

This is the most confusing and cruel form of ghosting because they come back like nothing happened.

Often their next attempt to contact you is some kind of text like ‘hey’ and that’s it. Or even something exaggerated like ‘hiiiiiiiiiiii’ or with a bunch of exclamation points or even emojis.

Don’t answer that. If you answer, you’re telling that person that you have no self-respect. You’re giving them the green light to do it again and they will. This is their pattern.

If you start that conversation with that person they’re gonna have some kind of excuse and you might be tempted to accept it. Just be done with them as they have shown you that they cannot be trusted because they do not respect you.

So what is ghosting not?

I saw this in one of the comments recently and I’ve heard it a couple times, people say ‘what about when we cut off the narcissist or the psychopath, is that ghosting? Is ghosting the same as No Contact?’

Ghosting is NOT No Contact.

No Contact is a boundary that you set to protect yourself from a manipulative, abusive person who has proved that they are incapable of having a normal breakup conversation

Why?

Maybe you have seen signs of physical violence. Maybe they’ve already been physically aggressive with you or maybe you’ve already seen signs that they will psychologically try to keep you and manipulate you into the relationship like guilt-tripping, pretenses of change, crocodile tears, blaming you for something you didn’t do, twisting your words around and making it difficult for you to end that relationship or to end it peacefully.

So how do you deal with ghosting?

One — never ever take back a ghoster. They will only do it again and I am referring to the 2nd and 3rd category of ghosting. They’re gonna do it again. The first time you had no idea it would happen.

That wasn’t your fault but how do you prevent it from happening again?

As soon as someone ghosts you, erase them from your life and start moving on.

Remember it’s not about you. It’s about them. So don’t blame yourself or question your worth. Remind yourself that you are worthy.

You’re gonna have to remind yourself over and over again if you’re hearing that script that you’re not worthy, that something’s wrong with you. Remind yourself you’re worthy.

Let yourself be angry at them. It’s normal to be angry, then allow yourself to process that anger so it doesn’t eat you up.

Do not chase them. Keep your dignity and walk away with grace and gratitude that they did you a favor so you didn’t waste any more of your precious time on them. Keep reminding yourself this when you’re tempted to run that negative script in your mind.

Don’t fear new relationships or getting back out there again just because one or a few losers that you met along the way did this to you.

Re-examine your standards and be sure to upgrade them. At the end of every relationship, you want to do a processing where you re-examine those standards and see where you need to upgrade them.

Was there something about that person that set off a red flag? That would be in the case of ghosting number three, where the narcissist or the psychopath disappears and then comes back like a zombie.

Did you see the red flags of that coming? In that case maybe there were some. Maybe you just didn’t know how to recognize them. That’s okay, it’s not your fault but note what they are so you can spot them in the future.

Create a new standard for yourself for cases where this may happen, for example:

“I’m out. I’m not going to accept that sort of treatment again.”

That whole silent treatment then seducing you back, the push and pull, that’ll often start really subtly before they totally ditch you the first time.

Accept that sometimes we just can’t predict what people do and that’s not your fault.

The actions other people take are not your fault.

If this has happened to you, if you’ve experienced ghosting in one or more of these three different ways that I mentioned today and you want to share something about that go ahead and leave a comment here to share this with somebody else who’s been ghosted. They might still be questioning themselves. They might still be really struggling with their self-esteem after the ghosting, blaming themselves for what happened. You can help remind them that it’s not their fault.