"Your value doesn't decrease based on someone's inability to see your worth"
Ghosting in breakups as a means to an end of something intimate is a huge 'fad' at the moment. Perhaps it's millenial dating with the if 'it's broke, replace it' mentality or perhaps it's the next please ideology towards dating and relationships that generations x and y tend to be all over.
I talk about breakups, ghosting, healing heartbreak and overcoming anxiety relentlessly over in the press and on podcasts on my dating and relationship expert page Sarah Louise Ryan. You'll even hear me sharing my own story of ghosting after a 7 year relationship on Damsel In Dating Distress.
I have been doing my research with the boom of break-ups that seem to be surrounding all my late 20's clients and friends at the moment and I thought I would take a moment to highlight ghosting and ghostees so you know that when someone exits stage left like Houdini on you, you are not the first and certainly will not be the last, but I would certainly like to eradicate it as the norm.
So what is ghosting and when does it occur? Ghosting is essentially one party in a relationship or dating scenario who disappears, making a decision to do this quickly than deal with different possible outcomes of a breakup that they are not in control of. This occurs for a few reasons inclusive of lack of forthrightness, the ability to make a 'keeping it clean' exit so it doesn't affect their pride/persona and the obvious, not being emotionally equipped to deal with the physical/psychological pain of the ghostee post breakup.
Whilst there is no easy way to break up with someone and we are all certain there is no ideal scenario in which we would all be 'happy' about it, one thing is for sure ghosting someone or being ghosted, on the many different levels you can do this, is far from ideal. Ghosting can be a slow gentle fade into the night until they are physically gone or a full shibam of a disappearing act but nevertheless, both incur the same outcome; one party is gone. Here are a few things to help heal your heart or spot the signs you are about to ghost someone yourself.
#1. Avoidance. Ghosting someone can happen because the person that exits the stage has an avoidant personality and perhaps would rather begin something new without having to confront any negative physical/emotional attributes that comes alongside a relationship ending. The person doing the ghosting would much rather consider their own emotional/ physical discomfort above integrity, emotional intelligence and compassion for the other party in the relationship.
Hayley Quinn, another dating expert, stated to the Telegraph this about ghosting "it's easier to be evasive than confrontational...Rather than having to articulate, analyse and possibly – if the other party isn't in agreement – debate your reasons for breaking-up, going Awol seems like the path of least resistance.”
#2. Passing Or Failing. In the lead up to ghosting the ghostee may not have realised they will have been secretly put through their paces via a range of different scenarios/tests that they never knew they were undertaking. These instances are little milestones in the phase of decision making where the ghost will have let you pass or fail as part of justification for their upcoming actions.
#3. Someone In The Wings. Ghosting, and the latter stages of your relationship with someone, is an actual abandonment of honesty and any integrity there may have been. C