In honor of the upcoming Halloween festivities, we thought it’d be a good idea to share some ghost stories. Or actually: ghosting stories.
Let’s start off with the obligatory UD definition of ghosting, shall we?
The act of suddenly ceasing all communication with someone the subject is dating, but no longer wishes to date. This is done in hopes that the ghostee will just “get the hint” and leave the subject alone, as opposed to the subject simply telling them he/she is no longer interested. Ghosting is not specific to a certain gender and is closely related to the subject’s maturity and communication skills. Many attempt to justify ghosting as a way to cease dating the ghostee without hurting their feelings, but it in fact proves the subject is thinking more of themselves, as ghosting often creates more confusion for the ghostee than if the subject kindly stated how he/she feels.
We’ve all heard the stories. Everyone has a friend (or a friend of a friend) who’s gone through this. Y’all went out a couple of times. Had a great time. Some of you even might even have started feeling like this could be something serious. And suddenly… This other person stops calling. Then stops texting first. Then you get one-word replies. Then no replies at all… Leaving you wondering: “What the hell just happened?” After being ghosted, especially if you were already in the 3 tingles stage, you often feel hurt and rejected, which can all be very scary feelings. Especially if you don’t know what went “wrong” and start to doubt yourself. It’s a horrible, horrible side-effect of being ghosted and clearly the other person has no consideration for you or your feelings.
But *PLOT TWIST* perhaps the scariest ghost(ing) story is the one in which YOU turn out to be the ghoster. Kinda like Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense.
Think about it. How often have you seen a text from someone you hung out with a couple of times and thought: “I do NOT want to deal with you right now”? Or simply hoped that ignoring someone would make them go away? Or *gasp* screened their calls?
Full disclosure: as I thought about writing this, I realized that I’ve probably done this. Which is very lame of me. Wouldn’t life just be a lot easier if we had the guts to just go “Look this was fun, but I think we should leave it at this”? This Halloween, I dare you. I dare you to call yourself out on your own bullshit. Mmkay? Let me know how that goes.