Ghosting is the practice of ending a personal relationship with someone suddenly and without explanation ultimately withdrawing from all communication. If you’ve recently been ghosted you are left feeling confused, abandoned, and overcome with self-doubt. Ghosting has been around since the beginning of time, however now with technology we are able to know sooner and more overtly. With smartphones, instant messaging, social media, texting, and dating sites, we know when someone has received our message or voicemail but has chosen not to respond. One of the worst feelings is when you see on your text messaging that the person read your text hours ago and chose to not respond leaving you wondering why. The “why” is the thing that keeps us guessing, looking for answers, it’s what keeps us up at night. More often than not, after we’re ghosted we usually do all the wrong things. We reach out to the person numerous times, getting no reply and feeling worse about ourself. We tend to turn our sadness inward and look for fault in ourself and we fear meeting new people in fear that they will ghost us as well.

In an effort to help anyone who has experienced or will experience ghosting, I have compiled 5 instrumental steps that you will want to adhere to, in order to feel better about the situation and get back on your proverbial emotional feet again.  

1.Don’t call or text them again. Out of sheer self-respect for yourself you must adhere to this rule.

2. If they walk out of your life like this, they are obviously not good for you. Consider yourself saved because they would’ve ultimately hurt you anyway better now than later. 

3. Watch out for cognitive dissonance and for mentally rationalizing the situation. When someone ghosts you, you may begin to believe that everyone is bad, or that the people you meet on dating sites are bad. You may rationalize the behavior or try to sweep it under the rug. Or like most of us, you turn it on yourself and find fault within you. There must be something wrong with me otherwise they wouldn’t have ghosted me. 

4. Realize that it’s not about your value. Being ghosted encourages us to feel self-doubt, what is wrong with me? When someone ghosts you it shows that they have the problem not you. They don’t have emotional intelligence, and they may be afraid of commitment. This is an obvious indicator that they would not be a good partner and you’re better without them.

5. Often when we get abandoned we tend to turn around and abandon someone else. Remember: it’s best to be honest, people deserve the right to know and remember how bad it hurt you to be ghosted. Don’t continue the cycle, instead own up to your feelings and be honest, the other person deserves to know how you feel.

Ashley Berges