In the past few years, a new phenomenon has emerged in dating. Actually, it’s a very old phenomenon, but it has a shiny new name and is amplified by the advent of dating apps and other technology. It’s called ghosting.
Ghosting is the practice of telling someone you’re not interested in them by… well… not telling them anything at all. For example, if someone you’re seeing suddenly stops answering your phone calls, responding to text messages, and for all intents and purposes disappears off the face of the earth – that’s ghosting. People of all genders and sexual orientations do this, but it seems to be a particularly common behavior among straight men.
Why do people ghost? Folks who make this decision often justify it by saying they don’t want to hurt the other person’s feelings. After all, no one likes to be told, “hey, I just don’t see this going anywhere.”
But of all of the clients I’ve seen who have struggled with this – and there have been many – I’ve never heard someone say, “I’m so glad he ghosted me. I feel so much better not having to have a conversation and be rejected.” So why do people actually ghost other people?
Ghosting is About Avoiding Vulnerability.
Although there are exceptions, as a society, we do not value uncomfortable conversations enough. Anyone who has been reading this blog for a while knows that I will shout to the rafters that assertiveness is an act of kindness. I believe that we need an uncomfortable conversations revolution!
And rejecting someone is absolutely an uncomfortable conversation to have. We all know that being rejected is very vulnerable. It taps into our deepest “am I enough?” insecurities. But what we don’t talk about is that rejecting someone is also very vulnerable.
If I decide after a date that I don’t like someone, I can call them up and tell them that. I can say, “thanks for going out with me last night, but I don’t really feel like this is going anywhere.” And then what? Hopefully they’ll say, “thank you for letting me know, I wish you the best.” But they can also react with an infinite number of other possibilities. Here are some terrifying ones:
- They can laugh at me and say, “you idiot, you actually thought I’d want to go out again with you?”
- They can burst into tears, beg me to give them another chance, and exclaim that that they’re going to die alone and it’s all my fault.
- They can scream “AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH YOU BIG JERK, I HATE YOU!!!!” and then slam down the phone, leaving me blinking with disbelief, rubbing my sore ear, and feeling grateful that I obviously dodged a bullet by breaking it off.
So if I’m going to make a call like that, I need to take a moment and ready myself to be vulnerable. I need to understand that this conversation could go any number of different ways, and I need to accept that. When I make that call, I am tabling my own need for emotional safety. I am acknowledging, “this is hard, but I’m going to lean into the idea that we are all messy human beings trying to muddle through the same stuff. And if it were me, I know that I’d want some closure here.”
Because completely ignoring someone is just about the worst thing you can do to them.
Ghosting Taps Into Our Greatest Attachment Fears.
Behavioral psychology teaches us a simple lesson: Attention is attention. Any 3-year-old knows this intuitively. The best is hugs from parents and teachers. Barring that, next best is being yelled at. Because being ignored is absolutely, positively the worst thing.
In fact, if you’re a parent trying to get your child to change a bad behavior, research shows that the best thing you can do is praise the good stuff and ignore the bad stuff. It’s called “extinguishing”. If you yell and shout and stomp your feet and threaten to cancel Christmas, your child thinks, “wow, this is powerful stuff. I’m pretty small, but I can make adults have pretty big reactions!”
What does this have to do with dating? Well, we all have a little kid still inside of us. All of the things that are true about attachment in our childhoods are also true about the way we connect as adults.
Fast-forward to adulthood and you have what John Gottman calls Stonewalling. Stonewalling is a fancy word for ignoring. If you’ve ever been on the pursuer side of a pursuer-distancer dynamic – that is, you want to talk things through but your partner walks away or refuses to answer – you know that stonewalling is just as painful for adults as extinction is for kids.
If you’re thinking about ghosting someone, you might say, “well, ignoring a kid having a tantrum in the middle of the grocery store is the best way to get them to stop – and I want Samantha to stop texting me… so isn’t ghosting the best way to achieve that?” Well… sure. If you’re an authority figure trying to teach someone decorum, that’s a very appropriate approach. But if you’re someone’s equal (and I would hope that you view dating this way), it’s disrespectful and pretty cruel.
Ghosting is making a deliberate choice to tap into someone’s greatest attachment fears – the idea that they are unlovable, not worth the effort of saying “no thanks,” and destined to be alone.
Ghosting is Not About You.
The most common reaction that I hear from people who are being ghosted is the idea that it’s about them. “What’s wrong with me?” they lament. “Maybe I talked too much about myself. Maybe I didn’t show enough interest in professional golf. Perhaps I’m too fat or ugly. Maybe all of my fears are true and I’m genuinely worthless.”
But ghosting genuinely isn’t about the person being ghosted. Sometimes one awesome person meets another awesome person and there’s just no spark. This can happen because of mismatched interests or values. It can happen because two people are in different stages in their lives. Or it can happen because the pheromones one person exudes don’t ping on the other person’s biologically based “that person smells yummy” sensor. There are a million reasons two people might not connect.
Or maybe you genuinely are making poor choices in your dating life. Maybe your anxiety gets in the way of your ability to be your best self. Maybe you disclose too much too quickly, or you hold your cards too close to the chest. If you find that you’re having a lot of trouble connecting to other people, it might make sense to take a bit of time and examine if you’re getting in your own way a bit.
(Or if this is the case, it’s also possible that you’re actually totally fine but you have a “type” – and that type is someone who just isn’t great for you.)
But that’s different than ghosting. Ghosting isn’t about whether someone likes you or not. It’s about whether they’re courageous enough to sit down and have a conversation with you about it. It’s about whether they respect you enough as a fellow human being to give you the opportunity to have whatever reaction you’re going to have, or to ask questions about what went wrong. And that is 100% about them.
So no, ghosting does not reflect a shortcoming in you. It’s not about your worth, or your value. It’s about the other person’s lack of willingness to lean into discomfort.
Ghosting Tells You A Lot About A Potential Partner
I don’t know about you, but one of the criteria I value most in a partner is willingness to lean into discomfort. In a long-term relationship, there are inevitable bumps in the road, and I want someone by my side who is willing to lean into the hard stuff, even when it gets tough.
So taking that as a given, imagine it’s five years from now and you were never ghosted by That Person. Instead, That Person responded to your texts, and effusively told you they had a great time. They asked you on another date and you went out, fell in love, and eventually got married. Things are pretty great, you think, until one day you get home and find a note: “I’m staying with my parents for a few weeks. I can’t stand the way you chew with your mouth open!” Wouldn’t it have been kinder for that person to say several years earlier, “Darling, could you please try not to chew with your mouth open? It makes me uncomfortable.”
But that’s a vulnerable thing to say. And perhaps the above is a silly example, but that person who ghosted you because they thought it was a mismatch… they’ve shown you that they’re not particularly interested in having uncomfortable conversations. So if someone has ghosted you – by all means, feel hurt, feel angry… and then, perhaps, feel grateful that you dodged a bit of a bullet.
Featured photo courtesy of Sodanie Chea – CC 2.0