Dating can be a minefield at the best of times. The How-To manual is on the figurative shelf on full display but just out of reach. Conflicting advice, often in the form of adages, can be maddening… should you ‘play it cool’ or simply ‘be yourself’? No-one intuitively knows exactly what to do. Finding a suitable partner is a painstaking process and even relationships themselves are far from sunshine and rainbows.
But for millenials and Gen-Zs, dating is proving increasingly frustrating – to the point where a huge portion are on the brink of giving up. Not only do seemingly successful dates lead to nowhere, but the people we date disappear on us too. If you’ve only been in long-term relationships or come from a different generation, you might not be familiar with ‘ghosting’. To ‘ghost’ is to suddenly cease contact with someone with little to no warning or explanation… it’s a practice which, though rarely done out of malice, can totally devastate the person on the receiving end. According to Bankmycell.com, in this bracket, eighty-two percent of women have been involved in ghosting and seventy-one percent of men.
While disappointment is an inevitable pitfall of dating and the act of ghosting isn’t new – only the term ascribed – for some reason there is a new attitude. Back in the day, you’d tell your friends to steer clear of that person who never called you back, because they obviously don’t know how to behave. If we’re to go by the media’s portrayal in many films and TV shows like Friends (we’re looking at you, Joey and Chandler), it would typically be perpetrated by a man following several dates with a woman, conveying serious interest, and perhaps even sleeping with her. Whenever Joey or Chandler did this the other characters would berate them, but somehow within the last decade or so it’s shaken off its controversy, and become socially acceptable for someone of any gender and at any juncture of the process. Ghosting is now perceived as a reasonable, logical way to terminate a budding or even fully fledged relationship. Honesty, decency and common courtesy can fall by the wayside, no questions asked. For many of us, it’s just expectable. Yet another form of unsolicited objectification. Only fairly recently have ‘ghost-ees’ started coming forward to scrutinize the damage it’s done to their confidence to be deemed unworthy of a goodbye, or even a simple acknowledgement… repeatedly being treated as disposable.
I will never forget my introduction to ghosting. I was an inexperienced, optimistic eighteen-year-old at university and had met this third year boy in a choir rehearsal. We immediately hit it off, he added me on Facebook and we started messaging. Within a few minutes he asked for my number: my exact thought was yes! He fancies me too! We then proceeded to text every day for months. He quit the choir shortly after so I only saw him face to face a handful of times and was keen to go on a date – that’s what people do in these situations, right? Months in, he still hadn’t asked, despite a steady stream of flirting.
I eventually concluded he was shy, so one day I thought I’d be proactive and modern and casually asked if he wanted to go for a coffee. His response was cagey. Eventually I got a ‘no problem’ much to mine and my best friend’s amusement. I deduced he was both shy and socially awkward. When I asked when he was free he stopped texting me altogether. No warning, no admission of the silence; he just… stopped.
He wasn’t shy. He wasn’t socially awkward. He was disinterested.
I’d been rejected before but not so abruptly after months of being chased. How could someone who’d pursued me so actively suddenly not be interested?
A week or so later a boy in a seminar asked me out. He was cute but I turned him down – I couldn’t get choir boy out of my head. I took that as a sign and plucked up the courage to ask him out for a drink. Maybe he’d got caught up in his studies. He responded swiftly saying I was ‘pretty and a great person’ but he wasn’t ready to date.
I remember thinking Huh? What was he trying to achieve all that time then? I was also struck by the fact that he was the one who showed interest first, something frequently discussed by ghost-ees when they detail their respective experiences.
Was it all just a game? A fun bit of screen time that he knew he’d eventually get bored with, like a video game you outgrow? A perverse concept… he knew so much: from my dogs’ favourite chew toys to the fact my mum grew up in the Middle East. It felt like we knew each other. And he certainly knew I liked him. What had he planned to say when this moment, whereby I admitted to harboring feelings, inevitably came?
I was incredibly confused. I called my best friend in tears and she was equally confused, angry on my behalf. I wasn’t aware these sorts of things happened. Messy breakups, cheating, yes… but this? I wasn’t familiar.
I quickly moved on, writing it off as a one-off, shitty experience with an immature guy.
Ten years of similar situations followed.
For a long while I thought there was something about me that triggered their behaviour, and my self esteem plummeted, every romantic situation clouded by a sense of impending doom. But in my early twenties I began to hear the odd friend or friend of a friend relay an eerily similar experience. Then over the next few years there was an upsurge – a great many people were dealing with it all over the world, and they were equally baffled, and the media picked up on it. They were talking about being ‘breadcrumbed’, ‘aired’ and ‘lovebombed’… things even I hadn’t heard of. So, it turned out I wasn’t dysfunctional. Modern dating was dysfunctional.
At least half of the people I’ve dated have pulled similar stunts, despite professing to really like me. It’s hard to undo the insecurities and paranoias those practises fostered. If they’d given me reasons – closure – I’d be a different person today. I wouldn’t have to constantly remind myself that their reasons for cutting things off, and in such a callous fashion, most likely have nothing to do with me.
Don’t get me wrong – if someone isn’t interested in progressing things for whatever reason, it’s only right to end it. But the way in which we go about it bares a lot of weight, and the phycological effects of these practises becoming someone’s ‘new normal’ can be tantamount to traumatic.
There’s a discourse online surrounding ‘anxious attachment styles’ (we’ll call it ‘AAS’). An AAS is largely characterized by a fear of abandoment or rejection, be it in a familial, platonic or romantic context. Many people who have a wealth of experience with being ghosted etcetera go on to develop an AAS. The dialogue I’ve observed, aimed at hopeful daters and often conducted by dating coaches and therapists, tends to fixate on the idea that it’s an unhealthy and irrational way to function. While it would appear these people have good intentions and want to ease our suffering, surely it’s inaccurate to claim that our fears. As evidenced by statistics, there’s every reason to approach dating with high levels of trepidation. Perhaps therapy could provide coping strategies for the horrible feelings, but aside from that, I’m not sure it would achieve much. While this is an extreme comparison, you wouldn’t tell a soldier that their fear of being blown up is irrational… it stems from an external problem; the fear is based on the reality of their environment. If these harmful dating practices weren’t so normalized, far fewer people would suffer with this issue.
Perhaps if the target audience were people in committed, healthy, loving relationships who still suffer with AAS because they can’t move on from past experiences, these discussions would be more productive.
Now, let’s take a moment to play devil’s advocate. You might be wondering: ‘isn’t it just easier to quietly slip away?’ I’ve talked to a fraction of people who say they’d rather be ghosted – that if the ghoster’s reasoning is rooted in something they fundamentally dislike about the ghost-ee, they’d rather be left in the dark. The ‘flaw’ might be unchangeable, or the ghost-ee might not perceive it as a flaw and therefore resent the fact it was used against them. In such situations, it could create unnecessary animosity. Some people also find ‘break up’ conversations far more uncomfortable than being ignored. Do some ghosters see these as legitimate reasons? Is it possible that this isn’t always done with entirely selfish intentions? Is it conceivable that, in some cases, there’s a shred of compassion behind the decision to ghost? Perhaps. From what I’ve seen, the vast majority of daters deem it inappropriate and immoral, and I wish to make it clear that I am also of this opinion. I merely want to avoid demonizing every individual guilty of this. Like with almost everything, there are shades of grey.
I still don’t know what choir boy’s intentions were. I never will. But I know it didn’t have to end the way it did. All of my ghosters had a choice to not act callously in the name of whatever it was they were thinking or feeling at the time.
Perhaps the #bekind movement should expand not only to encompass an anti-bullying sentiment, but denote treating people well in every aspect of life, including – or even with a focus on – dating. Simply going on a date is one of the most vulnerable things a person (particularly a woman) can do, and regardless of whether you can see things working long-term, an acknowledgement that that person has taken a risk by putting themselves in a vulnerable and intimidating position for you, and given up their time, goes a long way. It would influence us to handle other people’s feelings, not just our own, with care and kindness. It could restore dating. For all its inevitable stumbling blocks and heartache, dating, for the most part, could be exciting again.
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