Love in the Time of Ghosting

If ghosting isn’t a familiar topic, here’s a good run down of the basics of ghosting. But essentially, it’s when one person decides to remove themselves from a relationship or conversation by disappearing indefinitely and without any explanation.

Generation X were the early adopters of online dating. Before then, couples were formed through friends, parents or the community. For each pair, there was a point of reference. People were accountable and perhaps somewhat responsible. Ghosting was nearly impossible because there were points of contact to keep the ghost in check.

Now the apps open daters up to virtually endless possibilities that the community safety net rarely exists.

Who I’m seeing, are both the ghosters and what compels them to do it, and the ghosted and how it impacts their self-esteem.

Not to generalize but for this sake I’ll throw a thought out there. For the ghosters, it often boils down to a need to dissociate from the situation. This does not include people who need to exit uncomfortable or dangerous situations. I’m referring to the person who no longer wants to pursue someone else, but they cannot and do not want to consider the ramifications of their impact and actions.

Sometimes they believe they’re doing the person a kindness by not letting them know how they feel. Sometimes the fear of having a conversation to let the other know they don’t want to go out again, feels like too much. I can find empathy for those. It’s the ones who treat dating as a numbers game and there’s someone else in the pipeline that they dismiss one’s feelings for an opportunity with another, that I take issue.

For the ghosted, the first piece that generally comes up is a call back to attachment styles. Because, at the core, we are looking for love and acceptance, feeling rejected even by someone we hardly know, can still trigger a complicated pattern of receiving and/or earning love from our younger years. And because most people using these apps are doing so to find love and real connection, our attachment style is quickly activated.

Attachment is one of the first behavioural systems we develop. The form it takes affects our ability to love and care, and informs our sexual and intimacy patterns of behaviour (Collins and Read, 1990). We first learn how to receive love from our parents, which informs our first development of an attachment style; so naturally how we receive love another time, from a romantic connection, will be informed by that initial experience.

For example, a child is wired to essentially worship their parents. If the child felt easily dismissed or was abandoned by a parent, their bodies and subconscious recognize that abandonment as love they want to hold onto. Placing that into a romantic context, if someone you’re interested in romantically disappears, the stronger the likelihood is that same inner child will identify that as love and will be more familiar with abandonment and similar responses to try to hold on will come up.

Collins and Read (1990) reinforce this. They suggest romantic love is a second chance of learning attachment, much like the first time. If complicated or absent relationships are what you know, it’s likely what you’re going to continue to seek and accept.

Depending on the individual’s attachment style, an action like a quick and unexplained disappearance from a dating app, can trigger those wounds; but because it’s familiar waters, they’ll want to try to keep swimming in them rather than getting out entirely. Or, to keep the analogy going, it will feel hugely upsetting to be taken out of the water when they’re not ready.

The propensity to vaporize online is contributing to a greater social problem. In the absence of nonverbal and other socially relevant cues, we rely on social media and apps to help us convey what we’re truly trying to say and create a greater comfort level and intimacy, initially, than face-to-face settings. Disappearing from these platforms also conveys something – generally it is interpreted as something hurtful and internalized as “the fault” of the person left behind. Ghosting or leaving someone to question themselves (if they’re at all sensitive) can be confusing and anxiety-producing.

I know writing this is not going to create great change, but it’s important to try to start to understand why we feel the way we do and what impact we can have on another. The swipe of your finger – regardless of direction – can make you feel loved or rejected. Remember that next time you’re connecting with someone. That is a person. A human. They have feelings and want to feel loved, just like you.

Sources Cited:

Collins, Nancy L. and Stephen J. Read. Adult Attachment, Working Models, and Relationship Quality in Dating Couples. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol58(4), Apr 1990, 644-663