I see you are a guy - I’d like to offer the idea that some men are actually scary and unpredictable as fuck
It’s easier for women (but some men too) to ghost men rather than risk a confrontation.
Outright rejection and explanations can quickly lead to violence. There is a genuine fear
Not saying you are any of those things, you are likely not. But all it takes is for one guy to stalk/harm/lose his shit when rejected directly for that fear to be present, speaking from experience myself and experiences of people I know, especially vulnerable ones.
This may not be the case for the person that ghosted you, but it has also helped be to not feel so personal about it when I am ghosted by folks.
Redditors' self-defeating attitude when it comes to women is so cringey and tiring to deal with. I say that as a person who was exactly like that when I was still a man.
Yeah it’s pretty bad. It’s very obvious that it’s a mostly male space, and that many of them have pretty much no women in their life at all. Like, posts on life pro tips about how you should have tampons in your house if you have a girlfriend that stays over. Like...yeah? Seems like such a big tell.
As a guy I have tried to ask about this with my female friends in a genuine attempt to understand and to help be on the lookout for when uncomfortable situations arise in the future, but the impression I get is that some women completely repress the unwanted or uninvited attention they receive from men, to the point where they're like, "what do you mean?" That kind of response made me pretty sad to hear, not only because I didn't learn how to be more helpful in those situations, but also from the psychology I was left to infer behind it. Naturally I have since dropped the subject with those friends.
All that just to say, not all women are comfortable talking about the subject with their guy friends, or perhaps even acknowledging the issue out loud to them. Forums like this can be helpful to the population of men who want to help, but lack knowledge that might seem obvious or basic to anyone who's been on the other side of the interaction.
Men are just as likely to ghost people as women are in my experience, so while this is probably a factor, I don't buy it as an explanation.
I'm leaning towards the idea that most people are cowards, although there is probably more to it than that. If you ghost someone all you have to do is forget about them and don't worry about it, no thinking or emotions of any sort involved. I seriously doubt it is that scary and difficult to get over enough to at least text someone for that many people. Either most people are such cowards they don't want to experience even that much emotion if not absolutely necessary, or they care so little about other people they don't care at all how their actions effect them if they don't have to see it.
Either that or most people are so oblivious to other people they don't get why getting ghosted sucks.
Anxiety alone doesn't explain why ghosting is so common. There are other factors going on.
some guys take “no” for an answer the way Bush takes 911
Like if your dad announced that Christmas was going to be every day from now on? I think your metaphor is flawed because 9/11 was the greatest thing that ever happened to Bush.
This is something that people have told me in the past but it is just something I genuinely do not understand.
A crazy person is going to be crazy regardless, how is telling someone to back off not lower the chance of a bad encounter compared to just blatently ignoring someone.
If she stops talking, there's nothing to focus upon
If she says "no," then they focus on reclaiming their pride, proving a point, defeating the feeling of rejection, proving her wrong, and so on
It's not unlike yelling "fuck you" at someone you were arguing with outside of a bar at 2AM--if you said nothing, there's nothing to hold onto, but now they're going to kick your ass
Not saying you are any of those things, you are likely not
Let's keep it 100 - people who complain about ghosting are always abusive and often violent. That's why they complain - they can't manipulate vulnerable people and trap them in shitty relationships
I don’t know about that. Feeling sad that you’ve been ghosted is an entirely human feeling of rejection, I don’t think that it makes you abusive and violent to feel shitty about being ghosted.
What does though, is how you react to it. Contacting the person to abuse them because you’ve been ghosted? Shitty and abusive and wrong. Complaining anonymously on the internet isn’t really
I don’t think it’s manipulation, if you like somebody and they disappear it feels bad.
"Ghosting" is and always has been a natural part of human relationships. People who feel bad about it are simply emotionally immature. Maybe they're just naive, but most people who make it a point to complain are manipulative narcissists who are PISSED that they aren't entitled to wear down their victims because of social norms/obligations like they could previously.
Poor, innocent romantics aren't the ones writing paragraphs about how ghosting sucks. Abusive assholes who want to make victims feels obligated to talk to them are.
Ummm this really isn’t a good look... I get where you’re coming from, but this just straight up isn’t true at all. Like, I’m pretty sure I’m not an abusive asshole...
Violent and intimate crime rates have been trending downward for decades so "genuine fear" is a poor explanation for the recent phenomenon of ghosting. In fact, I'd posit that you got causality exactly ass-backwards. Ghosting is only possible in the modern era because the threat of violence has been minimized. It really only works with people that you can adequately expect not to encounter on the street.
It's difficult to ghost someone in your social circle, at your work, at school, or at church and it's practically impossible to ghost anyone who knows your address. So ghosting was practically impossible to accomplish in premodern times as it requires the capability to break communication routes at a distance. Even as the home phone was introduced, you still needed to perform the "emotional labor" necessary to make a clean break because there was no caller ID and an emotional ex could still fill a answering machine tape. Also there was the matter that if they knew your last name, there was a handy book updated yearly with your phone number and personal address. Blocking calls and getting unlisted from the phone book required enlisting the aid of a third party so (as long as you weren't dating a clear psycho) it made sense to put forth the effort dealing with an aggrieved partner or associate because avoiding them would require effort anyway.
But modern e-communication made it possible to ghost a partner and avoid the emotional fallout with ease. E-mail could be filtered. Caller ID came standard on cell phones. Blocking calls and texts could be done without even talking to your service provider. You don't even need to unfriend people on social media anymore to snooze their feed and block updates. Meanwhile, HR has made it verboten to date within the office and social pressures are making it weird to date within your social circles and online dating has become the norm. Why settle for someone nearby and muck up your existing relations with romantic drama when your perfect match exists out there in the sea of ghostable strangers?
Of course I could be completely mistaken. I was still in high school when cell phones started entering the middle and working class market and I exited the dating market just as match.com starting advertising on TV. But I do have recent experience in the job search market and see these same ghosting strategies exhibited by recruiters, hiring managers, and ATS systems. Meaningful feedback is unnecessary because there is zero chance there will be any future human interaction with the unsuccessful candidate.
Edit: Wow! Thanks chapos! 3 hours later and only downvotes. Glad to know I'm completely wrong but I was hopeful that the chat would pull together and explain how and why my understanding of community, interpersonal responsibilities and relationship maintenance, emotional and physical vulnerability, and violence is incorrect and possibly even dangerous.
Thanks for the dunk. I guess I can understand that fear being entirely genuine but perhaps I understand it as being somewhat irrational and disproportionate given historical context. And perhaps it makes sense if you have no faith in your fellow man, believe in the disproven bystander effect, and insist on handling all matters in an atomic and autonomous way. Surely I'm not suggesting that people rebuff their lackluster, misanthropic suitor alone in a blind, darkened alley with total disregard for personal safety. But since we cannot prosecute and execute every creep and moron for minor social infractions then we should be able to provide them guidance towards pro-social behaviors.
And certainly I'm not saying everyone can be rehabilitated and it's your responsibility! You shouldn't have to enlist an ally or comrade to tango with a violent jerk, sexual deviant, or dangerous stalker nor take them on yourself. All I'm saying is that you cannot dismiss each and every 'ghosting victims' here as deserving of that act. If they legitimately do not know what happened and why they were ghosted then they'll never get the opportunity to grow their emotional intelligence, address the issue, and contribute to their future relationships and communal responsibilities in a more meaningful way.
I understand your explanation of how dealing with unresolved past trauma may be a legitimate reason for you to ghost someone who accidentally triggers your PTSD. If someone intentionally triggered your PTSD I wouldn't even call it ghosting if you immediately broke all contact. But libertarian-brained nonsense is believing that you never have to explain your behavior and have zero responsibility to educate and correct your fellow man.
Thank you for this dialog. I don't want to just be some dumb reply-guy so I'll let you have the last word.
If they legitimately do not know what happened and why they were ghosted then they’ll never get the opportunity to grow their emotional intelligence, address the issue, and contribute to their future relationships and communal responsibilities in a more meaningful way.
Tough shit. They need to figure this out for themselves. No one is obligated to give toxic shitheads who get ghosted the "opportunity to grow their emotional intelligence", you fucking creep
I see you are a guy - I’d like to offer the idea that some men are actually scary and unpredictable as fuck
It’s easier for women (but some men too) to ghost men rather than risk a confrontation.
Outright rejection and explanations can quickly lead to violence. There is a genuine fear
Not saying you are any of those things, you are likely not. But all it takes is for one guy to stalk/harm/lose his shit when rejected directly for that fear to be present, speaking from experience myself and experiences of people I know, especially vulnerable ones.
This may not be the case for the person that ghosted you, but it has also helped be to not feel so personal about it when I am ghosted by folks.
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Girl...friends?
-every single redditor
Redditors' self-defeating attitude when it comes to women is so cringey and tiring to deal with. I say that as a person who was exactly like that when I was still a man.
Yeah it’s pretty bad. It’s very obvious that it’s a mostly male space, and that many of them have pretty much no women in their life at all. Like, posts on life pro tips about how you should have tampons in your house if you have a girlfriend that stays over. Like...yeah? Seems like such a big tell.
As a guy I have tried to ask about this with my female friends in a genuine attempt to understand and to help be on the lookout for when uncomfortable situations arise in the future, but the impression I get is that some women completely repress the unwanted or uninvited attention they receive from men, to the point where they're like, "what do you mean?" That kind of response made me pretty sad to hear, not only because I didn't learn how to be more helpful in those situations, but also from the psychology I was left to infer behind it. Naturally I have since dropped the subject with those friends.
All that just to say, not all women are comfortable talking about the subject with their guy friends, or perhaps even acknowledging the issue out loud to them. Forums like this can be helpful to the population of men who want to help, but lack knowledge that might seem obvious or basic to anyone who's been on the other side of the interaction.
Men are just as likely to ghost people as women are in my experience, so while this is probably a factor, I don't buy it as an explanation.
I'm leaning towards the idea that most people are cowards, although there is probably more to it than that. If you ghost someone all you have to do is forget about them and don't worry about it, no thinking or emotions of any sort involved. I seriously doubt it is that scary and difficult to get over enough to at least text someone for that many people. Either most people are such cowards they don't want to experience even that much emotion if not absolutely necessary, or they care so little about other people they don't care at all how their actions effect them if they don't have to see it.
Either that or most people are so oblivious to other people they don't get why getting ghosted sucks.
Anxiety alone doesn't explain why ghosting is so common. There are other factors going on.
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Yeah I get that. Still, a text would be nice...
this.
some guys take "no" for an answer the way Bush takes 911
Like if your dad announced that Christmas was going to be every day from now on? I think your metaphor is flawed because 9/11 was the greatest thing that ever happened to Bush.
but I'm not Bush in this metaphor, so it still works
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This is something that people have told me in the past but it is just something I genuinely do not understand.
A crazy person is going to be crazy regardless, how is telling someone to back off not lower the chance of a bad encounter compared to just blatently ignoring someone.
Provides a point of fixation
If she stops talking, there's nothing to focus upon
If she says "no," then they focus on reclaiming their pride, proving a point, defeating the feeling of rejection, proving her wrong, and so on
It's not unlike yelling "fuck you" at someone you were arguing with outside of a bar at 2AM--if you said nothing, there's nothing to hold onto, but now they're going to kick your ass
There is actually, the fact that she's not talking.
Yeah, wouldn't it make more sense to give a text saying they don't want to continue and then ghost?
Men bad
Some men bad and it ruins trust in the others because you can’t always immediately tell who is bad.
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Let's keep it 100 - people who complain about ghosting are always abusive and often violent. That's why they complain - they can't manipulate vulnerable people and trap them in shitty relationships
I don’t know about that. Feeling sad that you’ve been ghosted is an entirely human feeling of rejection, I don’t think that it makes you abusive and violent to feel shitty about being ghosted.
What does though, is how you react to it. Contacting the person to abuse them because you’ve been ghosted? Shitty and abusive and wrong. Complaining anonymously on the internet isn’t really
I don’t think it’s manipulation, if you like somebody and they disappear it feels bad.
"Ghosting" is and always has been a natural part of human relationships. People who feel bad about it are simply emotionally immature. Maybe they're just naive, but most people who make it a point to complain are manipulative narcissists who are PISSED that they aren't entitled to wear down their victims because of social norms/obligations like they could previously.
Poor, innocent romantics aren't the ones writing paragraphs about how ghosting sucks. Abusive assholes who want to make victims feels obligated to talk to them are.
Ummm this really isn’t a good look... I get where you’re coming from, but this just straight up isn’t true at all. Like, I’m pretty sure I’m not an abusive asshole...
Abusers never think that they are...
Violent and intimate crime rates have been trending downward for decades so "genuine fear" is a poor explanation for the recent phenomenon of ghosting. In fact, I'd posit that you got causality exactly ass-backwards. Ghosting is only possible in the modern era because the threat of violence has been minimized. It really only works with people that you can adequately expect not to encounter on the street.
It's difficult to ghost someone in your social circle, at your work, at school, or at church and it's practically impossible to ghost anyone who knows your address. So ghosting was practically impossible to accomplish in premodern times as it requires the capability to break communication routes at a distance. Even as the home phone was introduced, you still needed to perform the "emotional labor" necessary to make a clean break because there was no caller ID and an emotional ex could still fill a answering machine tape. Also there was the matter that if they knew your last name, there was a handy book updated yearly with your phone number and personal address. Blocking calls and getting unlisted from the phone book required enlisting the aid of a third party so (as long as you weren't dating a clear psycho) it made sense to put forth the effort dealing with an aggrieved partner or associate because avoiding them would require effort anyway.
But modern e-communication made it possible to ghost a partner and avoid the emotional fallout with ease. E-mail could be filtered. Caller ID came standard on cell phones. Blocking calls and texts could be done without even talking to your service provider. You don't even need to unfriend people on social media anymore to snooze their feed and block updates. Meanwhile, HR has made it verboten to date within the office and social pressures are making it weird to date within your social circles and online dating has become the norm. Why settle for someone nearby and muck up your existing relations with romantic drama when your perfect match exists out there in the sea of ghostable strangers?
Of course I could be completely mistaken. I was still in high school when cell phones started entering the middle and working class market and I exited the dating market just as match.com starting advertising on TV. But I do have recent experience in the job search market and see these same ghosting strategies exhibited by recruiters, hiring managers, and ATS systems. Meaningful feedback is unnecessary because there is zero chance there will be any future human interaction with the unsuccessful candidate.
Edit: Wow! Thanks chapos! 3 hours later and only downvotes. Glad to know I'm completely wrong but I was hopeful that the chat would pull together and explain how and why my understanding of community, interpersonal responsibilities and relationship maintenance, emotional and physical vulnerability, and violence is incorrect and possibly even dangerous.
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Thanks for the dunk. I guess I can understand that fear being entirely genuine but perhaps I understand it as being somewhat irrational and disproportionate given historical context. And perhaps it makes sense if you have no faith in your fellow man, believe in the disproven bystander effect, and insist on handling all matters in an atomic and autonomous way. Surely I'm not suggesting that people rebuff their lackluster, misanthropic suitor alone in a blind, darkened alley with total disregard for personal safety. But since we cannot prosecute and execute every creep and moron for minor social infractions then we should be able to provide them guidance towards pro-social behaviors.
And certainly I'm not saying everyone can be rehabilitated and it's your responsibility! You shouldn't have to enlist an ally or comrade to tango with a violent jerk, sexual deviant, or dangerous stalker nor take them on yourself. All I'm saying is that you cannot dismiss each and every 'ghosting victims' here as deserving of that act. If they legitimately do not know what happened and why they were ghosted then they'll never get the opportunity to grow their emotional intelligence, address the issue, and contribute to their future relationships and communal responsibilities in a more meaningful way.
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I understand your explanation of how dealing with unresolved past trauma may be a legitimate reason for you to ghost someone who accidentally triggers your PTSD. If someone intentionally triggered your PTSD I wouldn't even call it ghosting if you immediately broke all contact. But libertarian-brained nonsense is believing that you never have to explain your behavior and have zero responsibility to educate and correct your fellow man.
Thank you for this dialog. I don't want to just be some dumb reply-guy so I'll let you have the last word.
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Tough shit. They need to figure this out for themselves. No one is obligated to give toxic shitheads who get ghosted the "opportunity to grow their emotional intelligence", you fucking creep