I think most of us take the maxim of not burning bridges a bit too seriously. We’re now opting for the immature move of not ending relationships via dead silence instead of amicably conversing about why it needs to end.
Although it’s rude and disrespectful AF, ghosting has become pervasive over the last decade particularly in romantic relationships, though it can and has happened in platonic friendships, it stings more when romance was involved.
I’m no stranger to it and unfortunately, I’ve given and gotten. My first experience was by my teen ‘BFF’ who was my flat neighbor in Umoja estate, she lived on the 2nd floor and me on 3rd. We were joined at the hips and thus spent all our time together helping with chores, gossiping, assessing potential mating candidates but mostly browsing through Cosmo magazines and daydreaming about the life and bodies and clothes and perfumes we wanted to buy when we got older as if money was synonymous to age.
One day, with no prior warning, as I later found out is common for the ghosted to experience, she ceased all communications with me. No calls or texts of mine went answered and worse still was when she’d pass me at the main gate in her comings and goings and pretend that I didn’t exist even. It stung!
But not as much as it stung a decade later when a lover turned around and shut me out. One minute our minds, our hearts, our bodies were entangled in passion, and the next he was gone, it was as though he got hit by a bus. After a week of not hearing from him, I called my friend with worry thinking that something horrible had happened to him and I needed her help to check the obituaries, call all hospitals and police stations just to rule those out. She was diplomatic and let me stew in denial whilst she knew what had happened. Active IG posts and blue ticks on Whatsapp confirmed that the idiot was not dead but had indeed ghosted.
Henceforward, I was fascinated by the notion of ghosting in the dating game and went on a quest to find the whys and hows it happens.
It is, however, important to recognize that when leaving an abusive relationship, ghosting is encouraged as a tact to keep you safe both physically and emotionally.
Now, due to the lack of closure, the ghosted in most cases is usually left confused as to what to feel, wondering if the ghost is ok, especially if it happens in the middle of a pandemic. But after realizing that they are alive and supposedly well enough to be active socially, they turn the worry inwards and spend inordinate amounts of time assessing and dissecting everything they could have done wrong. Conversations, chats, actions, body language and words exchanged, taking the entire relationship and breaking it down to find out…what the fuck could have happened!!!
What fascinated me most was how one could turn around and treat the other party with such cruelty and so heartlessly, because unless the person has suddenly died, it violates the most fundamental social contract of mutual respect.
Fortunately, as I found in my quest, it is never the ghosted’s fault, rather it depicts underlying psychological issues the ghost may be suffering from such as avoidant type of personality due to possible parental rejection or carrying the weight of their insecurities with regards to facing fears. It also shows the lack of maturity required to hold themselves as stable contributors to society seeing as they have no capacity to empathize in dealing with your emotions. Emotions that they undoubtedly led you to believe was ok to feel.
It is unfortunate that we now treat this tactic as the norm, we even laugh and make jokes about it, despite how emotionally damaging it is not just to the ghosted but that it is enabling the immaturity displayed by the ghosts.
We expect and hopefully give kindness and thoughtfulness in everyone especially adults who are grown enough to have relationships and so it is worrying when we condone such shitty, intentional behavior.
Ghosting isn’t new, unfortunately. And as I had said earlier, it does not just happen in romantic relationships, though this is where it hurts most. It’s a disrespectful behavior of ending any relationships, regardless of what or how long it was and should be nipped at the bud.
So what do you say to a ghost?
Well, my teen friend reached out 7yrs later to apologize and reconnect, and though I appreciated the apology, so much time had passed and we’d blossomed into different people with different values that reconnection was not possible.
My decade later boyfriend? Unfortunately, he remains immature.
There are different approaches to dealing with a ghost and it’s all dependent on how deep you’d gotten into it. You can ignore them or return like for like, or if they come back. Call out their bullshit, demand an explanation. See if they are self-aware enough to recognize their own toxicity, then smack them right across their face. Ok, maybe don’t do that.
What do do when you’ve been ghosted?
Rage, at first that is, let yourself feel the anger. How dare they politely ask to be in your space but lack the decorum to say that it’s over. Denying you the right to evaluate the ins and outs and come to the same agreement? Feel free to write them vicious letters but do not stoop to low and send it, at least try not to.
Once raging is over and you can think calmly. Recognize that the deeper issue is that they are emotionally damaged, probably from all the bad karma, so if you can muster it, sympathize with them. Remember that is not you but them. Cliché as that sounds.
Samburu Girl 