‘Ghosting’ is a casual term for when someone suddenly stops all forms of communication with a person they have been talking to or dating, with no explanation whatsoever. Entirely withdrawing from all forms of communication is known as ghosting. In this day and age, the notion of ghosting is so popular and normalized that it can leave people feeling let down, disregarded, and disrespected.
There are many reasons why people choose to ghost. Let’s talk about some of the most prominent ones:
Conflict Avoidance
Conflict and confrontation are conveniently avoided. The fear of disappointing someone could also lead to people ghosting.
Easy
People who ghost don’t know how they feel, and instead of working through their emotions, they find it easier to let go of the communication entirely. It doesn’t take much effort to block people online.
Lack Of Interest
When people are not invested or interested in pursuing a relationship any longer, for whatever reason, they choose not to be upfront since they believe it will cause the other person less pain.
Self-Doubt
They decide to leave a relationship because they know that they cannot meet the other person’s wants and needs, and they are ashamed of that. So they quit quietly.
It is important to understand that there are situations where ghosting is acceptable. An example of this is when boundaries are crossed repeatedly. It is best to leave the relationship and ‘ghost’ someone if you have talked with them about your boundaries and they still choose to cross them. In this case, you don’t owe them an explanation. It is a good way to seek well-being and sanity if the relationship negatively influences your life.
In this day and age, where online relationships are so prominent, ghosting can make you feel alienated, lonely, and secluded. Ghosting can affect your self-esteem and make you feel like you were somehow in the wrong, even when this is usually not the case. It can negatively affect your future relationships because you can constantly suffer from the fear of being ghosted.
How to move past this?
Here are some ways to do so.
- Don’t blame yourself by default. It is important to go over the relationship and reflect on what you think might have been your mistake or theirs. But don’t take the blame right off the bat and think things like “yeah, I deserved it” because you are not aware of their thought process at the end of the day. There is no evidence of who should take the blame, so it shouldn’t be on you.
- Don’t lose self-respect. Yeah, it’s natural to want to know what happened and why someone has cut all contact with you all of a sudden. Going on a rampage trying to find some contact with them and stalk their platforms online will only make you feel worse.
- Build your self-esteem. Your self-esteem can take a massive hit after you’ve been ghosted, and it’s very important to build that back up for your day-to-day activities. Here is how you can do that: https://thoughtcatalog.com/sabrina-alexis/2018/02/how-to-recover-from-being-ghosted-with-your-self-esteem-intact/
- Remember that their actions and behavior are a reflection of them, not of you. Did they ghost you? It’s fine. That’s a reflection of their behavior. Not yours. Their actions say nothing about how much you are worth.
- Change the way you think about the situation. Put a spin on it! If they ghosted you, you could say a lot of things about them straight off the bat. They have a lack of communication skills and have problems with confrontation. They probably weren’t the right person for you anyway!
Image Courtesy: Photo by Anthony Intraversato on Unsplash