Letting Go of the Ghosts

I'm not going to write 'that article' where I beat around the bush and tell you that men who ghost you are shady because online dating is shady.

Um, duh.

We all know that, and that's not why you're reading this.

How do I know?

Because I've been ghosted... a lot. And I have done a lot of self-introspection as a result. I've also responded to women posting about this on social media. Their posts echo a lot of my own experiences, and I hope I offered them something helpful to chew on.

So, why do guys ghost? And why do we have this assumption that women don't? I mean, we totally do.

I have been the ghoster and the ghosted.

"Why do men ghost?" Sigh. I read this, hear this, all too often. Dudes hit you up on Facebook dating, Tinder, Plenty of Fish, whatever and then just... vanish. Or they just stop talking to you but are still showing up as being online. But the conversation dropped dead without any obvious reason.

Let me break it down for you: There is a reason.

Some dudes (females included) just want to find someone who will put out. We're all aware that happens. But why? What drives them? It's not simply that primal urge, is it? Honestly, some people do not want emotional connections. They're looking for no-frills, no-strings, no-drama. They might've already been there, done that, and found it was not for them. Some people simply do not develop attachments either.

The Internet is a great tool for those who have more insecure attachment styles. Hell, Eichenberg et. al did a study that found participants with insecure attachment styles were often pathological Internet users. More research suggests this has been a trend impacting adolescents for, gosh, about 20 years now.

21 years ago, I made my first visit to a chat room. Guys started talking to me, and I had this "Holy shit, people know I'm alive and want to get to know me!" moment. That was before I realized how creepy some of those users could be, that their motives were not always pure.

Online dating is something that happens in the click of a button or two. It has been simplified, broken down to a science. Dehumanized.

Sometimes, we forget that there is actually a person on the other end of the line because we don't see lines. Maybe our hearts are wireless now.

Dating - finding a human connection - simply is not something everyone wants.

But some people do and, when they might have found it, run like hell.

Some people crave intimacy yet fear it, and that can happen for a number of reasons. Those of us who fear abandonment also do a lot of abandoning without realizing it. We subconsciously think, "He/she/they are gonna just leave me anyway, so I should just cut them loose" then wonder - consciously - why we haven't heard from that person in a while. Did we do something wrong? Not necessarily, but we also didn't do something introspectively.

Some of us also have genuine socialized anxiety and fear judgment and persecution from others. If we feel we're getting close to someone and they want to meet, we might make excuses as to why we cannot meet up because we secretly don't want to risk being assessed.

Some folks are more at risk for intimacy fears than others. Victims of domestic abuse, sexual assault, rape, parental abuse or neglect, those grieving the loss of a parent or spouse, those who've been emotionally and/or verbally abused in past toxic relationships... We might not be as ready to date as we'd like to think we are.

I'm a proponent of a combination of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and spiritualization of the psyche - in other words, working on accepting one's faults, committing to whatever changes one feels necessary, and embracing the spiritual aspect of oneself to do some self-introspection. I firmly believe that this can help those of us with intimacy fears explore why we have them and resolve to be our best selves. Even some smaller scale studies show that ACT is beneficial in this capacity. But we also cannot ignore our spiritual sides.

When you do the work you need to do on yourself, you might find that you start attracting others who've done/are doing the same thing. When you haven't done that work, well, like attracts like. But, of course, that does not account for all ghosters.

The best advice I can offer?

Don't take it personally, but... do. Let that old ghost go, but look in the mirror and see if there might be a ghost in there too.

Sort yourself, but delete the hell out of those ghosters. I'm bottling up some Boo-B-Gone as we speak, so hit me up if you need some. And let me know about your experiences with ghosts (or being a ghost) in the comments below!