The Truth about Ghosting
The Truth About Ghosting: Why it bothers us and what we can learn from it.
The dating scene is vastly different these days, with the speed and frequency with which you can meet people being at an all-time high, and the value attributed to each person considerably lower. Ghosting is the inevitable outcome and now a huge part of dating for many people. So, the question is why do people do it and why do we get so affected by it?
Firstly, ghosting is a simple avoidance technique meaning that the ‘ghoster’ can prevent having an emotionally open conversation, whether that is to avoid conflict or to prevent facing rejection themselves. It is the ‘easy way out’ and as it is a passive act rather than active, the ‘ghoster’ can fain a bit of innocence (‘oh I just got so busy’, ‘I didn’t want to hurt your feelings’ ‘I had always intended to tell you’), passive action is far easier to convince ourselves is ok. But that is enough about the people who ghost- focussing on them doesn’t actually help us progress or learn from the situation because we are simply blaming them rather than looking at ourselves. They’ve been sent to you for a reason so let’s have look at it.
Why do we get so offended by ghosting? When answering this question we often respond with how we believe someone should behave, but that actually has no grounding in reality. We can’t expect someone to react a certain way simply because we believe they should, they are currently playing out their trauma just as we are- allow them to do that and life goes a lot smoother. So, if it’s not about them what the hell is it about? It’s about us, as it usually is, if it is presented to you, it is very likely something that you need to look at processing. The first very clear emotion is anger, we believe it is because they haven’t acted in the way that we believe they should but it is more likely anger at the emotions they are bringing up for us- rejection, loss of control, fear of being judged, not being good enough, low self-worth, all the stories that come from that- ‘I will never be enough’, ‘I am not good enough to be loved’, ‘people will always leave me’ etc. do any of those sound familiar? Not all will resonate but many will find familiarity in a lot of them. To protect ourselves we can live in the anger and how ‘they’ should behave or we can get swallowed up by the stories of fear and inherent low self-worth. Neither of which are true, and both are preventing us from recognising the truth of the matter; we are all worthy, we are all equal and these emotions need to be felt and released so that we can reach a deeper level of healing and knowing.
Does this immediately resolve the issues that arise from being ghosted? No. Does it prevent us being ghosted in the future? Also no… at least not immediately. But once we begin to slip into this approach of seeing what each situation shows us, we start to quickly move through our healing journey and once we have learnt to process these emotions rather than avoiding them or sitting in them the moments of joy and peace can finally begin to blossom.
