Ghosting
In this episode, Libby talks about ghosting, what it is, why it sucks, when it's justified, and how to cope. Libby also offers a kinder alternative to ghosting.
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Transcript
So I read this excellent comic by this artist. Her, her title of her Facebook page is called hell is other women. And in the about section, it says level six, problematic comics with a level four problematic name by a level 10 problematic female. But I, this, the particular comic that I'm referring to here is about ghosting. And it inspired me to do a podcast about ghosting because let's face it. If we're in the dating world, which many of us polyamorous folks are, we have probably been ghosted before. We may have even ghosted someone ourselves. So let's talk about it.
Okay. So first even tho it probably doesn't need defining for most of the people listening. I am going to define ghosting for my boomer friends or for folks who have been out of the dating scene since the creation of apps like Tinder, which some of you are so ghosting is when you have formed some kind of connection with someone and then one day randomly for no reason, the person just disappears. They stop returning your texts or any other form of communication. They don't show up for plans. You've made, just never hear from them. Again, ghosting most commonly happens in the early stages of a dating relationship, but I've also seen ghosting happen in other situations. Sometimes a longer casual relationship can just suddenly be ghosted. I've seen people, ghost friends, and sometimes will also ghost longer term invested relationships or family relationships. For reasons. I'll go into a little bit now to be clear.
Ghosting is a way of ending a relationship without telling the other person that that's what's happening. If someone has indicated that they don't wanna see you again, and then doesn't respond to communications that come from you, that's not ghosting. That's just not responding anymore. After they've told you, they don't wanna talk to you anymore. Ghosting is also not simply being shitty about maintaining communication between planned engagements. Some people are just not great at electronic communication, or aren't able to hold a back and forth conversation via a text for very long. And it's also not ghosting. If someone just hasn't replied to your text or email in just a few days, or if something happened to their phone and they lost your number or an emergency came up, which are reasons why communication might drop off. Most of the people that I've talked to about ghosting, they say that ghosting is really painful and really sucky for them.
But why does ghosting suck so much? Well, first I think it always sucks to have a lack of reciprocity. So if you are the sort of person who believes you would follow up with someone before ending a relationship with them to feel like someone else won't do that for you feels maybe rude, hurtful a sign that you're just not worth the trouble to them. Maybe it also might feel like it's just not respectful of the time and the energy you invested in the person who decided to then just ghost you. Like you spent, maybe you only had one date together, but you spent hours and hours talking and sharing and listening to them and holding space for them. Or maybe you went out to some fancy restaurant and you both invested a lot of money and you just sort of feel like, you know, I put in a lot into this person and maybe it's still a new relationship, but I, I feel like it's not respectful of what I put in that.
I'm not getting anything, anything back, no closure. It could also feel manipulative. Like they're leaving things open ended so that they could come back into your life at any time and just say what do you mean? And, and there is a phenomenon when a ghoster does come back after a long time of not communicating and then strings you along with messages or implying, they're still interested a practice that's known as bread, crumbing or benching. This person keeps you interested but has no immediate tension of picking things back up with you for real. But I think the big reason that ghosting sucks is that you just don't clearly know what the fuck happened. Rejection can certainly be hard and painful no matter how it's delivered, but it is especially hard, I think, to just not know why things had to end or even where you really stand with that person so that you can just move on.
Now, this can be extra awkward in an interconnected community. If someone ghosts you and then Ugh, you see them at a happy hour or a meetup, oh, what do you do? It's hella awkward. And oh God, what if they just start talking to you? Like nothing happened or smile at you. And you're like, what does that mean? That can just feel kind of even gas Lighty or just confusing. And if they ignore you or you know, just kind of pretend you're not there. Well, you don't wanna confront them or engage them, but you also might feel a little triggered by seeing them and sort of stuck in this feeling like you were led on or that you weren't fully respected. Or you might just be again, really just confused about what the heck you're supposed to do or how you're supposed to act around them.
And what if they are engaging one of your friends? I mean, it, I could just go on, but it's, it can be awkward. So why do some people ghost? Well, I did not do a scientific study on why people ghost, but after surveying a few folks and considering the reasons I might have ghosted somebody or would ghost somebody, I came up with this, this very incomplete list well, so first someone might ghost because they may just be uncomfortable turning someone down. They know how painful it is to be rejected and they don't wanna hurt anyone's feelings, maybe they're conflict-avoidant, and they just don't want to experience that discomfort. And so they think ghosting will avoid that. They also might really be comfortable with turning you down. They might wanna do that, but they just don't know what to say or how to say it.
They don't really have the words or any kind of script they can follow. They might feel like really overwhelmed which might lead them to just ghost instead of communicating about it because they just kind of, they feel, they feel like they can't even grasp at any words, which is a little different than not knowing what to say. They might just like, sometimes people get overwhelmed and they kind of shut down and they're not capable of responding. And in that vein, if they're overwhelmed, they might mean to get back to you. To close the loop, but they might just forget or procrastinate, or if they're overcommitted, they just might have like a bunch going on. Or if they went on a bunch of dates all at once, they might be losing track of who's who, and then suddenly a month has gone by and they're going through their texts and they see yours.
And but now it's just too late to follow up. They'll feel like an and they'll have to confront that they never responded to you. So again, it's just sort of avoiding that discomfort. Now someone might go, perhaps, especially if they've had sort of a big change of heart, like let's say the last date you went on by all of the measures that you have went really well. And you were really, really excited and you were getting green lights all around, but then the person you went out with just realized that things weren't going in the direction they wanted or, or when they reflected on it, they just weren't feeling it. Even though they were acting like they were feeling it at the time, they likely can sense your growing excitement. And they just might feel some guilt about having led you on or having gone, taken things as far as they've gone.
And they don't wanna have to confront the ways that you might feel like they've let you, you down. The big thing here is that they know they have some responsibility for creating the enthusiasm and for creating your belief that this thing is going well, but they've suddenly changed their mind and they don't wanna face the consequences of that kind of abrupt reversal. Now those are all, some sort of, eh, eh, reasons to ghost someone. Here are some other reasons people might ghost that I want you to consider more strongly as being like really legitimate reasons. First of all, if you are ghosted, you might have possibly, and inadvertently the person ghosting you in some way or exhibited some kind of red flag behavior that just made it very clear to them or made it them believe that they want nothing to do with you.
And that maybe they're unsafe with you. This may be something that you need to know about even, and it may be something that you need to fix, or it may not be whether it's an early stage relationship, or even if it's not, if you have given them the impression that you might harm them in some way, they might decide their best move is to abruptly end the relationship and all communication with you. Now, sometimes again, this has nothing to do with anything you actually did, but in, in how they perceived what you did, some people may have passed traumas that make them feel unsafe, even if you absolutely would never cause them any harm. If you step on one of their triggers, they may just choose to drop contact with you as part of their survival mechanism. And honestly, though, that sucks. It's also not really their job to tell you why, even though it might suck for you, they are potentially in a state where they're still healing.
It's also possible that your behavior is, is legitimately harmful or maybe just creepy. And maybe you would really benefit from this person's feedback and maybe learn something and change. But even in that case, it is definitely not the job of a person who feels unsafe with you to be the person who helps you change your behavior. If you feel concerned about your dating behavior is regularly turning people off and you're getting ghosted a lot. And you want some better understanding as to why. What I encourage you to do is to solicit some feedback from your friends or seek the support of a professional counselor or coach or therapist. And when you're seeking this kind of help, help be upfront that you want this kind of feedback, some friends and even therapists and coaches may not tell you the truth and give you this honest feedback.
Even if they see it, unless you're clear that that is what you want, but worth their weight in gold is the person who will tell you gently and with love to help you see what might be getting in your way in some ways that you can improve tied to this. Another legitimate reason someone might ghost you is if you've given them some indication that you won't respect their boundaries. Now there are two flavors of boundary issues I'm gonna talk about here. And I wanna talk about them separately. This first one is important though. And so what I want you to ask yourself is when someone states that something isn't okay, or that they don't want to do something, do you respect that with no objections or do you tend to argue or admit eyes or fixate on that? Do you try to covertly or overtly push them or maybe even ridicule their stated boundaries?
I'll give you an example here of an experience I had several years ago, I was on a second date with a guy. I was very attracted to him, but I knew that I did didn't wanna have sex with him on that date. So I stated the boundary that for that date, I didn't wanna take my underpants off when we started making out, instead of like, just staying away from my underwear, he seemed really focused on that little bit of cloth. He, he never directly pressured me to take on off my underwear and never made me feel unsafe, but he was very fixated on my stated boundary instead of doing what I would have preferred, which was to just steer clear of it completely. I never contacted him again after, and I feel good about that choice because his behavior gave me the vibe that he's just on consent.
And if you are the sort of person who treats, someone's no as sort of a challenge, I want to tell you in no uncertain terms, you need to rethink that that's not only a pretty entitled position to take, but it's also firmly in the area where, okay, it's not that you're a rapist, but this does make you a pretty unsafe person to be with. And I want to be clear about two things. First people of all genders can be harmful around consent and not respecting boundaries in this way. And this kind of disrespect for boundaries doesn't have to be sexual. If you don't respect someone's boundaries around their diet, around their need, for sleep around their desire, to process with you in the moment that you wanna process with them. These are all things you need to rethink because you are basically saying that your needs are more important than other people's boundaries.
And that's just not the case. And if you're being ghosted because of this behavior, this is really understandable. People who are choosing to ghost, you are basically saying, I don't trust you to respect my boundary. And so I'm not going to go through the effort of having to set it with you. I'm just going to move on. the other flavor of boundary issue that might cause some people to ghost is more subtle and I'm not gonna draw as hard a lie around it, but it's really worth considering it might come up for you. If you tend to be both a little uncontained and also very self-empowered and assertive, sometimes this can show up as maybe you're a little intrusive, maybe a little overbearing. Maybe you tend to dominate conversations or overshare or do TMI without checking in first. Maybe you're just really intense and maybe occasionally oblivious when you're taking up a lot of space in a conversation.
I also wanna be clear guys, this is me, okay. This is I'm talking about myself. This is how I can be. Sometimes, although I've worked on it some people find it harder to assert themselves and their boundaries strongly with someone like you. And they might instead sort of feel steamrolled by that kind of behavior and that experience of feeling like they don't have any space. You might lead them to choose to passively rather than actively set the boundary around not seeing you anymore. AKA, they might choose to ghost you. Now that may feel like a cop out to you, but I'd like to offer that some people really do need you, especially if you're a very dominant self-assured person to make more space and invite them to set boundaries with you rather than requiring them to push back when you are not making enough space for them, or if you're making them uncomfortable, having to constantly assert yourself, having to constantly set limits can just eventually tire you out.
We actually, as people, we don't have endless capacity to do this, and this can be particularly true for someone. If they have to do that kind of thing all the time in other parts of their life. Like if you're a parent of small children and you're constantly setting limits with them, or you're in the service industry and you're constantly setting limits with your customers. And another aspect to consider here is that if you are someone with many AEs of privilege and you're engaging, it's someone who is more marginalized than you. If this person is having to constantly put up boundaries and fend off due to things like microaggressions or straight up racism and sexism and transphobia and ableism and fat phobia, or what have you, they might find the prospect of having to stick up for themselves in their life. Exhausting. If you tend to be a more dominant personality or a little intrusive, or just a little intense, I'm not saying that you definitely deserve to be ghosted, okay?
And I'm not even saying that you even really need to change necessarily, but it's also worth being aware of how you, you show up and how you take up space and understanding the impact that has on the other people around you. Now, you can certainly make the choice that you only wanna be with people who can meet you, where you are. And that's a legitimate choice. I would just say that you are also may wanna be aware of the people that you're missing out on, who might be great people for you if you learned how to make space for them, but either way in this case, it's not so much that people, you know, are ghosting you because they feel unsafe saying no to you. They just might find the prospect too tiring. And I think they're justified in taking care of themselves, even if that is at a cost to you.
A last reason that I consider a legit reason to ghost someone is if there's already been just so very minimal communication and investment between the two of you, and the other person isn't doing a lot of reaching out to you either. So this would be like, maybe you've gone on one date, but it was just like a really chill, like non date almost. Or maybe you haven't gone on a date at all. You've just corresponded back and forth on Ok Cupid or, or Tinder or whatever. In this case, I feel like going out of your way to end things with someone who might be perfectly fine, not hearing from you is probably unnecessary and maybe just adding insult to injury in some way. You know, now though, I think it's sometime justified. I don't think ghosting is the kindest way to end a connection with someone generally, but I also don't think it's that bad either.
I do think sometimes people conflate the pain of ghosting with the pain of just being rejected, being rejected often sucks. And we might imagine the blow would be easier if someone would just have the conversation with us about it so that we could at least have some closure around it. But my experience is that's often not true. Also ghosting might feel like an unclear message, but you may not be sure about the reason for the person ghosting you. There is a fair amount of information in their action there. And here are some things that ghosting might be telling you. And sometimes you can actually figure this out for yourself. And sometimes, you know, you can just make it up and it really doesn't matter, right? So first they're telling you that they're not interested now. You don't know why they are not interested, and it might be nice to, to have it really clear, no room for doubt that they're not interested, but at the end of the day, if they were interested, they would follow up.
Unless of course they aren't really ghosting you as per the reasons I gave earlier. They also might be telling you that they're afraid of conflict. Now, if you're a person who has a healthy relationship to conflict and recognizes that you need to confront things in order to have a healthy relationship, this person may be incompatible with you no matter how cool they seem. So it's better that you know, that this person isn't conflict comfortable so that you can move on to someone who is, they also might not be a person who can be honest with you. When the feedback they have is negative. If you are a person who craves authenticity in your relationships, this person may be a bad fit. If you really need the people, your life, to be willing to tell you when you up with them and not just leave you to kind of guess and figure it out, then, you know someone who's gonna ghost isn't, isn't a person you wanna be in a relationship with anyway.
Now, this person also may struggle with direct verbal communication. For some people that's fine for some people. Non-Verbal communication is the way that they communicate and it works well for them. But if verbal communication is very important to you, and it is often very important in polyamorous relationships, this person may not be up for meeting the needs you have around communication. This person also might be afraid to say no to you. And again, that's worth taking stock of your own behavior and asking yourself if you have made enough space for the people in your life to comfortably say no to you, are you respecting boundaries? Are you non-reactive? Are you able to take rejection? Well, but if you believe that you do respect people's boundaries and take rejection pretty well, you can let go and honor that this person is uncomfortable with communicating their boundaries to you.
And you can also move on by setting your own boundaries, which should likely be that you don't wanna form deep connections with people who are on uncomfortable setting their own boundaries, this person ghosting. You might also be saying that they just don't have it together right now to follow up with you. It might not be in your imagination that the date went really well, but the person might just be super disorganized or massively overcommitted. I mean, oh my gosh, overcommitted. That happens all the time in non-monogamy. Some people like their eyes are just bigger than their stomach. And that's the way it is. I have a friend who said that, you know they believe that, you know, if the person really, really likes you, then they'll find the time and the space. And I can tell you that time is a fine night resource, and you can connect to a lot of different people and have really deep connections, but you can't necessarily follow through on every single one.
And if you need someone who's available, capable of consistently following up with you has the space for you and their life is ready to deepen their relationship. This person is telling you, they're not that so ghosting or any form of rejection can be really hard to move on from. We often tell ourselves that if we were just better in some way, or if we just done something different on that date, if we just hadn't said the wrong thing in the wrong way, if we could just explain ourselves, then the person would be the person that we need them to be, or they would've just responded to us differently in the way that we wanna be responded to and ghosting someone where there's a lot of investment and connection can be absolutely devastating. However, no matter what the reason is that the person has ghosted us, it is important to practice letting go and moving on.
It sucks that they're not there to help us, but we can still do that work. Even if the ghosting is some signal that we need to make some changes in our own behavior, that work remains with us. And we need to let the person who is letting us go go. But of course, ghosting is in no way. The only option we have for ending a relationship, I teach a whole class on ending, deeply invested, longer term relationships. And as long as you believe your boundaries are going to be honored and that the person you're ending things with won't, do you any physical harm for ending things? I encourage you to go through some kind of formal breakup process and, and not just for you and your partner or friend or family member, whoever, but also for the community and other people that you, but what if you need to just break off a casual or short term or low investment relationship, what then a big formal breakup process doesn't really make sense?
And it's also totally legitimate to not want to go into any kind of, sort of detail about what you do. And don't like about someone, I mean, rejection being rejected is painful. Rejecting someone is also painful. We don't wanna say anything negative about other people most of the time. And I don't know about you, but sometimes I just don't wanna see someone again. And I don't necessarily have a good or clear reason and why it might be something like the way they smell or the sound of their voice. None of these things are fair, and it's not gonna be useful for the person to know that cuz they're not gonna be able to change it anyway. Or maybe my reasons just don't make any sense. And they're just not gonna hold up if I have to say them out loud, but my reasons are my reasons, your reason, maybe your reasons, the thing that matters is whether or not you're clear that you don't wanna continue the relationship.
So if you're clear that you wanna break things off and it's a pretty low investment relationship or it's new, what have you, and you don't wanna ghost because you feel like that would be unkind. Here is a formula that has worked well for me before I share it, I really have to give credit to the person who shared it with me, which is my partner, Anna, this formula that I'm sharing is 100% from them. I am totally ripping it off, but with their consent, however, I have also used it myself. I've tried it in the field and I have found it works really well and better than some of the other options that I've heard. So here we go first, thank them for the time you've spent together, say what you've enjoyed and genuinely appreciate whatever they've put into the connection you have. This is different than paying a compliment.
You're not praising or traits or characteristics or anything about them. Don't say things like you're really great or you're really smart or you're so interesting because that will honestly probably sound pretty hollow and insincere since you're dumping them. Instead, I want you to say what you've genuinely enjoyed about what you've done together, about the experiences you've had or something that they have added to your life. Second state clearly that you don't wanna continue the connection. So you can say, Hey, I don't wanna continue to go on one-on-one dates with you or I don't want to see you anymore, and I'm not gonna continue the communication. I don't wanna keep texting you, et cetera. And it's important here to be very clear with your language, make sure you're not saying things like, I don't think I wanna continue, or I think this might not be a good fit or other kind of soft, uncertain language.
Instead say things like this is not a fit for me. I don't wanna continue people who don't want to be rejected will cling to anything that leaves room for the possibility that they're not being rejected. So don't leave them any room. This may feel mean or harsh, but in my view, it's actually kind. And if you're feeling like you're being harsh, look, you've already expressed appreciation for what they've given you or for the time that that you've shared or what they've invested and that can help soften this part. But it's really important to be clear third, tell them how you'd like to be connected in the future. You, you thought I was gonna say, pay them another compliment, huh? Well, this is known as a sandwich for what it's worth. If you've never heard of this, this is a, you know, you pay a compliment and then you tell them the bad thing and then you pay them another compliment to me, this feels insincere.
A rejection with compliments on the other end is still a rejection. It sandwich is still full of. The thing I like about this last step, which is different is that telling them what you like in the future gives them the valuable information about what to expect from you. If they say run into you at a bar or a party or on the street. And let me tell you, if you're both polyamorous, the chances are so high that you are going to run into each other again, because polyamory is a small world. It is very kind to give the person the information about what you're up for. Should you run into each other again? So you can say, Hey, I am cool with friendly chatting. If we run into each other or Hey, to keep this from being awkward, I will probably just be polite, but distant.
If we're in the same space or I'd be happy to hook up if we just happen to be at the same play party, but I do not have any interest dating and I'm not going to wanna like intentionally create any opportunities for us to be together and, and Hey, that's it, that's it. That's all you have to do those three things. And it's really useful to keep it very short. And here are some don'ts for you. In addition to not using softer uncertain language, don't give them any reasons why, unless you really wanna crush them or them off, which I, I don't think you wanna do, but when you're breaking things off with someone general, you no longer have any stake in their personal growth or improvement. And if you're clear that you don't wanna continue the relationship, letting them know how they can improve, might just give them some kind of false hope that they could regain a relationship with you if they change, which might just not be true.
So giving them feedback, I would refrain from that. Actually, even if it's good feedback, even if it's useful, also, don't try to make them feel good about this or make them like you. At the end of it, they might be disappointed or even angry, and they are allowed to feel those things. Your only goal here is to give them the information that they need to move on, not to make sure that they don't have any negative feelings at all after this, make sure you also respect their space and their need for clarity. And generally don't initiate any further contact with understand that any further contact that you initiate is just gonna be confusing. So unless of course you've drawn some kind of line about where you wanna go forward and that includes some intermittent communication, just I would avoid it. So I wanna share with you how this has actually worked for me in action.
So I'm gonna give you an example. I ran into of this woman at a happy hour and I'd had a crush on her for a while. And so I approached her, we started flirting and flirting led to us making out on the front patio and it was so hot and she was so hot, but some little things that happened in that encounter left me feeling clear that I definitely didn't wanna carry anything any further with her. I had definitely initiated the flirting too. So I felt like it was on me to be clear that my feelings that I had indicated were the case that I was interested in, her had changed. So I told her that I really enjoyed making out with her and talking to her that I didn't want to spend any more one on one time with her in the future. And I told her that if we happen to be in the same space, I'd be happy to see her and chat, but that I didn't want the relationship between us to go any further than that.
I delivered this information over text, and I think that's fine for this kind of thing. I think it might even be kinder to give someone a text, but you gotta feel it out for yourself. And I, I really want you to check and see like what would be best. But I think if it's a low investment relationship, you know, ha inviting someone out for a date just to dump them might feel like a big misuse of their time. I also think that, you know, letting this person receive their rejection when they are not with you, so they don't have to show you how much it hurt that can actually, you know, help them save face. And I mean, I'll be clear that, you know, when I've been rejected, I get like way overly emotional about it. Cuz I get way too excited about people sometimes and you know, not having to feel embarrassed about that can be good.
So I, I think sometimes it's good to reject people over text. You don't wanna break up with somebody of, in a long term relationship over text that feels again, sort of not honoring the investment, but in, in the lower investment relationships, I think it's fine. So to recap, ghosting can suck. Rejection always sucks, but sometime there are legitimate reasons to ghost. And even if there aren't ghosting gives you really valuable information that you can use to move on and let go. Instead of getting stuck in rejection feelings and anger and bitterness, if you don't want to ghost other people and you want to be kinder, a handy script to use is one. Thank them for the time you've had together. Two, tell them clearly that you don't wanna move things forward and three, let them know what you would like from them or with them in the future.
