There are many trends on the dating scene right now and most of them are quite disturbing. Ghosting is one of the worst. And while you may not prevent it from happening to you, there are some things you could consider if it does.
Ghosting, ending a relationship without warning and just disappearing into thin air, is easy to do. That’s why so many people resort to it. Why have an honest conversation with someone you’ve spent time with when you can act as if that person never existed?
Putting the moral issue aside for now, it’s important to stress the psychological damage such an abrupt ending can cause. The relationship doesn’t need to be that serious to feel disrespected, disposable and not worthy of a short explanation.
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Because it’s a form of social rejection, ghosting activates the same pathways in the brain as physical pain. Moreover, our brain dislikes ambiguity. And ghosting is all about that. Should you be mad or is it possible that something bad happened to that person? There’s no way of telling, so you feel like you’ve totally lost control.
But the worst consequence is that your self-esteem hits a new low. You are tempted to feel like the most stupid person in the world to have trusted this person. You feel powerless, because there’s no way of finding what you have done wrong. Or what should do in the future for the situation to not repeat itself.
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While there’s no strategy to avoid happening this to you, there are some things you can do for yourself once it happened.
1. Let yourself be upset about it
What else could you feel but anger, sadness, disappointment? Don’t repress your feelings, even if your pride may tell you to play the “I don’t care” card. You do care: you misplaced your trust and wasted your time and feelings. Allow yourself to feel just the way you’re feeling for as long you need to get the misery out of your system.
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2. Don’t expect an explanation or an apology
To expect and explanation and even an apology is totally normal. Of course you want to know what you’ve done wrong, what is the cause for the sudden rupture and what you could’ve done about it. The hard truth is that you may never know and going out of mind in trying to figure it out won’t help. Moreover, you are entitled to an apology, since you’ve been harmed. But the kind of person who resorts to ghosting is probably not the type of person who admits being wrong and apologizes for it.
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3. Learn something from the experience
You may not find out the answers you are looking for, but you have learnt something from the whole experience. You may want to reconsider the type of person you date or the trust you put in your intuition. At least, you’ve learnt that this kind of behavior is never the answer to a relationship crisis.
The only thing you shouldn’t take from this horrible experience is that you deserve being treated like this. You do not. Please, share this!
