Has ghosting now become the normal?
‘I don't understand,” I wailed to no one in particular. “I don't understand!”
I'd been holed up in my apartment for nearly five days in December, battling the flu with chicken soup and romantic comedies. By this point, I was feeling well enough physically to return to work the next day. But emotionally, I was a mess.
I knew ghosting was common. It had happened to me after a second or third date, which stung. But never like this: For three days, I hadn't heard from the guy I'd been seeing for over a month, who was fighting the same bug. The mental guessing game was nearly as debilitating as the sickness I'd just weathered: Had his illness worsened, landing him in the hospital? Had some other terrible thing happened? Or was he sending me the message, silently and ever so slowly, that we were through? If that was the case, why was I worrying about him?
That night I was crying so hard my neighbors could probably hear. I wasn't just upset that a promising relationship might be ending. I was distraught for all of us who are dating, that breaking up via silence is somehow acceptable. It might be excusable after a date or two, perhaps a smart move if your safety is at risk. But disappearing when all you're fearing is a difficult conversation? That's normal now.
Enabled by technology
It's easy to see how we got here: Our culture of busyness and flakiness, created and enabled by technology, allows us to avoid tough situations every day, and not just in our love lives. Email and texts fall through the cracks, sometimes accidentally, sometimes because we don't know what to say or are afraid to tell the truth.
Once it became easy to cancel plans, or push them back 10 minutes with a quick message, it became just as easy to vanish from someone's life. What are we really so afraid of?
My ghost and I didn't start as strangers on the internet. We were seated next to each other at a Shabbat dinner for Washingtonians in their 30s, and we quickly bonded over having grown up in California. We met for drinks the next week. On our second date, after dinner, he dropped me off in a Lyft, and gave a hug. Later, we were texting, and I told him that next time he could even kiss me good night. He ended up coming back to my place that night, and we had our first kiss. I told him it was one of the most romantic things anyone had done for me in a long time.
“I don't always do the right thing,” he said, “but I usually try to fix it.”
“That's all that matters,” I told him.
I've been dating - and writing about dating - for nearly two decades. In that time, looking for a partner online has gone from weird to a bit embarrassing to totally normal. In fact, more couples now meet through the internet than through friends or family. It's a lot easier to find a first date.
With all these options, we're putting less care into how we deal with individual people. Back in 2011, I wrote about how romantic it might be if we actually called each other to schedule a first date. (So retro!) In 2012, I was disturbed by how ordinary it had become to break up by text or email that I wrote a guide to the art of digital rejection.
Bad at breaking up
Now, we're so bad at breaking up that many of us aren't doing it at all. Though people have been disappearing for ages, and while Merriam-Webster found traces of the current definition of “ghosting” starting in 2006, it's only been common over the last few years. A 2019 YouGov survey of U.S. adults found that 30% of them had ghosted a romantic partner or friend.
Yes, friends ghost one another. Relatives do, too. Workers ghost their employers. Presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren has even offered advice to a ghosted Elle magazine reader: “If he wants to go silent, let him go. He is not the one for you.”
“Most people have a sense that it's kind of wrong to do it for any kind of relationship that was more than just a date,” says Andrea Bonior, a clinical psychologist in Washington. Still, “the more it happens, the more people justify doing it. . . . It's established a sense of normalcy around it that wasn't there 10 years ago.”
Rosie Walsh came up with the idea for her novel “Ghosted” after a 40-something friend's love interest went poof. The book has sold more than 1 million copies, which Walsh credits in part to ghosting's ubiquity.
Lori Gottlieb, a psychotherapist in Los Angeles and author of “Maybe You Should Talk to Someone,” says ghosts typically aren't proud of their behavior - they just don't know how to have a hard conversation. “They're like virgins to this,” Gottlieb says. When she's encouraged a patient to have a breakup talk by phone, they often report back it was “amazing,” Gottlieb adds. “It's awkward and not fun, but people really appreciate the gesture of: You took the time and you cared.”
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