How to cope with ghosting

What is ghosting

Ghosting has entered our popular vernacular in recent years - meaning to leave a relationship or situation without saying anything - to essentially act like a ghost and disappear. Primarily used in the romance/dating world, ghosting as a term is now being used everywhere. You can ghost your dentist, your hair stylist, your friends, and yes, your therapist. You can ghost a person and you can also ghost a situation - leaving a party without saying goodbye or moving without telling anyone. How come we ghost? And what are some ways to not ghost? Lets talk about it!

How come we ghost?

1. We ghost because we don’t want the discomfort of telling people our true feelings. It is difficult to tell someone that you don’t want to date anymore or you didn’t like the last haircut that they gave you. Its difficult to tell people you are moving or that you want to leave the company softball team. It can bring up sad, angry, and painful feelings. So we often avoid telling people how we really feel and leave them in the dark about what’s happened. We often associate sharing our true feelings with being “mean” or disappointing someone else.

2. We don’t like or feel uncomfortable with conflict. It might be related to point #3 below but maybe in your household growing up conflict always meant raised voices and saying hurtful things - maybe it meant violence. We associate conflict with “bad” - or straight up violence and we don’t want to go there.

3. We have poor role models around communicating our needs. Potentially growing up, you experienced people in your life where you had to guess or assume what they wanted or needed. Or maybe you were punished for saying what your needs were (or for getting someone else’s needs wrong). Inevitably, this would make it difficult to express to someone else what you really need.

   Ways to Avoid Ghosting

   1. There are ways to share your true feelings with out hurting someone else. I don’t think you need to share with every bad date you’ve been on - that the date was awful and you never want to see them again - but there are ways to communicate this honestly without being hurtful. Starting with “I feel” is a good beginning statement and gently letting the person know why you won’t be coming back/going out again/are leaving the party/moving etc. We can also recognize that others can tolerate being disappointed. It means they are human and have feelings (just as you do) about what you are doing.

   2. We can recognize there is healthy conflict. Not all conflict is “bad.” Conflict can be useful in two people coming to a better understanding of something. It may take some time to “delink” the association of conflict and negativity. Part of being in connected relationships with others sometimes involves conflict and it can be healthy for the relationship.

   3. We can look around us and find people that seem to model healthy communication and expression of needs. Maybe your parents were not the greatest role models but you have an aunt, a brother, a former teacher, or mentor that does express what they feel and need in a mature way. You can watch and learn from them - even ask them how do they do it. How do they people around you express their needs and feelings without doing a disappearing act?