What is Ghosting and Why it Needs to Stop?
Emotional Cruelty. Those two words are sufficient in my opinion, to sum up, the cowardly act of Ghosting. You begin dating someone, you both meet, talk, have a good time (sometimes a really great time), and one day out the blue, the partner disappears.
You try calling them, probably worried about their whereabouts, and may even begin worrying about their well-being. Your five calls go unanswered, your texts do not get replied back to.
Your heart shatters in a million pieces because you thought that things were going so well and suddenly they vanish into the thin air.
You could have been dating this person for a few weeks or months, but they simply decide to remove themselves from your life without owing you an explanation. Cowardly, isn’t it?
You may never be able to find a reason for being ghosted. You were at your best and putting in your greatest effort to develop a special bond, but the partner just did not care.
Well, the crux of this argument simply points out the fact that the issue does not lie with you but with the partner who avoided breaking up and chose to disappear.
While the exact answer or explanation for ghosting remains unfound by psychologists, many have pointed out that those personalities that avoid a confrontation and have a reluctant attitude towards closing problems, choose to ghost their partner, probably as a result of an inability to form attachments and have faced rejection in the past.
What is interesting to note here is the fact that Ghosting is not restricted to long-term relationships. Many times, people casually dating around, friends, or even employers have the ability to ghost people. People who tend to avoid drama also are more prone to ghost other people.
While ghosting is an easy approach without any explanations, accusations, and emotional scenarios, it is not a great one. One must realize that while it may be easy for them to avoid the mentioned situations, it may become mentally tormenting to the person on the receiving end of it.
The act of ghosting is emotional torture, to say the least. It may not be a serious situation for the person doing this, but the person who is ghosted goes through a wide range of emotions ranging from hurt to aggression.
The person who gets ghosted and broken up with remains clueless and hurt, without having any idea about what has happened or where things went wrong. With the advancements in social media, the trend has occupied a central place in the dating scenario.
While it is understandable that coping with any loss, especially that of a personal relationship without any reasons or justifications offered, there are many ways to move past it. The first one primarily being acceptance.
The first step towards overcoming this hurt will always be accepting the fact that no matter what, the person decided to ghost you. The next step in this cycle would be putting a stop to future expectations.
One may wonder every now and then that their partner is bound to come back to them, but this expectation should entirely be removed from one’s mind and heart.
Going out again, spending time with your loved ones including your friends and family is crucial if you decide to move on.
Sharing your feelings and the mental pain that the act of ghosting caused you and entirely opening up about it will only make you stronger.
It also becomes crucial to realize that if coping becomes hard, professional help is always available and therapists may provide you with better techniques to deal with the situation at hand.
Maintaining your self-respect and dignity is one thing you should never compromise on. The ghoster should be left alone which may or may not lead to them realizing the consequences of their actions and then regretting it later on.
It is always helpful to draw boundaries to protect yourself from being hurt by immature people who do not deal well with emotions.
