We need to scare ghosting off for good
Living in a romantic ghost town? You’re not alone. This spooky phenomenon haunts the dating world, especially given the recent rise of online dating. We’ve all been there: you start talking to a new person, and it all seems to be going great. Maybe you’ve even gone on a few dates that seemed pretty successful. A day passes, then two; and before you know it, a week has passed, and your potential partner has slipped off the face of the Earth.
It’s a story most of us know all too well, and it can leave you analysing every single interaction and message sent, asking yourself what possibly went so wrong to have provoked such radio silence.
According to research by dating app Elate, 95 percent of people surveyed said they have been ghosted and 75 percent admitted to ghosting someone. People ghost for a variety of reasons, and Elate founder Sanjay Panchal told us he found that “the majority of people wanted to avoid the awkwardness of saying that they weren’t interested.”
Elate’s research also found that 37 percent of people ghosted because the other person said something they didn’t like, and 36 percent of people said they were purely too busy to reply.
Ghosting reveals a lot about a person’s personality
Dating app user and writer Jen Kaarlo, 36, said she had found it harder to deal with ghosting during the pandemic. “Being ghosted before the pandemic was painful,” she said, “but you had things to rely on to feel less sad about it, as you could go and see your friends and colleagues. Now we don’t really have those resources.
“I’ve been ghosted more times than I can count, but there’s a bit more of a sting now as I’m home 90 percent of the time.”
Kaarlo said the worst case of ghosting she had experienced was when someone disappeared after a few dates: “We went to dinner and got to know each other, there was a lot of time invested on both ends,” she said. “We slept together and he just disappeared; just fell off the face of the planet.”
Kaarlo felt that it had an impact on how she views future dating, especially after the pandemic. She said “I was just starting to dip my toe in the water and get back into it, but then I spoke to someone and they just disappeared. It is a lot harder to bounce back from, especially when you live alone.
“I don’t want to put myself in a situation where I’m setting myself up for disappointment,” she continued. “You’re left with a lot of unanswered questions and uncertainty.”
Student Lucy Connor, 23, said being ghosted made her more skeptical of using dating apps. She said “I downloaded dating apps to improve my self-confidence, but it’s had the opposite effect. It’s like you’re asking to be ghosted in the modern world of dating.
“It makes me not want to bother with dating again, because even when you think it’s going well, you can still get ghosted. It’s hard to trust anyone online.”
Relationship therapist Rhian Kivits feels that there are a number of different motivations behind acts of ghosting. “They may have made contact because they wanted the initial attention and the buzz, but now they don’t want to continue on with that contact because they’ve got their fix from new interactions,” she said.
“Secondly, they may have decided that the relationship isn’t for them, that you’re not their person, but unfortunately because of the discomfort of rejecting you and explaining themselves is too great they run away, and that person is in avoidance.”
Kivits believes that the world of online dating makes ghosting a lot easier. She said “there are a lot of narcissistic people out there, especially with online dating. They may be contacting multiple people that they’re narrowing down. You no longer exist in their world and it’s easy for them to delete, block or disappear because they don’t have an emotional attachment to how you feel, they don’t care.”
She also explained a similar phenomenon which she called “icing”. “Someone may decide that they’re not going to contact you,” she said. “Instead, they put you on ice. They think there is a chink in the door still because they never said no, but then they appear a few weeks later because whatever they were pursuing with someone else hasn’t worked out.”
“There’s a sense that they’re ghosting you but they haven’t really because they might come back. I think ghosting reveals a lot about a person’s personality,” she added.
There are loads of reasons people may ghost, and many have nothing to do with you, so never take it personally. If you feel like you need to contact someone via ouija board to get their attention, they’re probably not worth your time.