You have been chatting for a while, it seems that the connection goes even beyond online, perhaps you have already met up. Nothing seemed to foresee that this person, just with the snap of the fingers, would disappear from the map, and you would not be able to contact her/him again because she/he has blocked you on all social media platforms.
A whirlwind of whys overwhelms your mind, why does he/she disappear if everything was apparently going well? Did anything happen to him/her? Was it all a lie? Have I done something that could bother him/her? Has he/she suddenly met someone else better than me? will he/she ever reach out to me again?
Anger, frustration, and anxiety keep you from resting or focusing on your chores. You go over everything that happened and you need to find answers. Answers that you don’t seem to get and you do not know if you will ever get them. Perhaps you want to find him/her by all means. You even convince yourself not to trust anyone ever again. Your desire to love and be loved has collapsed and this relationship becomes a complex and suffering world.
What happened? I’m afraid… you’ve been ghosted. Disappear without explanation. All your life there have been people with whom you had or thought you had some connection and suddenly, they disappear. Nowadays it is easier to do it since we can block people on social media with just a single click.
The avoidance coping style is currently expanding more and more by means of new technologies. The person who ghosts does not suffer any consequences from his/her act of disappearing without showing his face, so he/she realizes that he/she can do this over and over again without any repercussions. On the other side, the person who is ghosted becomes frustrated and thirsty for revenge, and perhaps, may even want to make up for it by doing it to someone else. Hence, we find out that there are more and more broken-hearted people, with fear of committing and who do not know how to handle their relationships, how to set limits or let go of a relationship in a healthy way, etc. And suddenly, more and more people become incapable of getting involved in relationships and being able to deepen a relationship as a couple, to love and be loved.
Ghosting can occur with a partner, a lover, a friend or people with whom we seemed to have or to be building some kind of bond. However, it has been observed that it occurs more frequently in the field of romantic relationships and in those under 30 years of age. But nobody is exempt from being able to do it or suffer it.
It is important to highlight that ghosting is very different from “zero contact” that, in some couple therapies, is recommended to overcome a sentimental breakup, and that by mutual agreement it is stipulated not to have physical or virtual contact to promote mental and emotional detachment.
Ghosting can also take place with people we only know virtually and even with whom we have also had physical contact. The more we have become involved in the relationship and the more expectations we have generated about the idealization of the other person, the more it will hurt to find ourselves, suddenly, abandoned without warnings, without answers and with a truncated relationship, which represents a duel in our lives and a challenge to our self-esteem.
If you have been ghosted, we recommend the following:
1. You have the right to feel exactly how you feel.
It is an uncomfortable situation in which many variables play a role, such as the expectations created, hormones, not understanding or having access to answers that satisfy you, the suddenness of the matter, etc. Therefore, give yourself permission to feel as you are feeling without forcing yourself to feel things you don’t feel yet.
2. Accept what you don’t understand
You probably think that until you understand why that person has done what he/she has done, you will not be able to move to the page or be calm. You are faced with the challenge of accepting what you do not understand. And this is a very valuable learning, since in life we will be in many situations that we do not control or understand but that happen (from someone deliberately hurting an animal, that a “bad” person earns more money than another that is “good”, that someone else is given the job you wanted, to some women can having children while others cannot). There will be a lot of situations in which you will have to practice accepting what happens without losing your mental health.
3. Get to know yourself.
Do you feel better telling all your friends? or only to some? Does writing down your thoughts calm you? Do you prefer to stay away from your phone and PC for a while? You are the expert on yourself, and you know better than anyone else how you can help yourself to accept this event.
And if you still don’t know, try to see if it is better to you to talk about it or not, to listen to music, to put all the things you shared with that person in a box or throw them away, etc.
It is a good time to work on your self-knowledge and personal development.
4. Don’t justify the other person’s behavior.
One thing is to accept what happened and a different one is to justify the other person, feeling guilty for being ghosted. No one deserves to go through this situation. This is not about looking for someone to blame, but about taking responsibility for each of our emotions, thoughts and decisions. And now it’s your turn to take responsibility for your thoughts and emotions. What the other person does or feels is no longer your concern.
5. Do not extrapolate this issue in your life.
Do not extrapolate this specific issue in your life to overshadow the other areas of your life that are going good, such as your work, your relationship with your friends or your diet. This issue is not the protagonist of your life. Take the opportunity to dedicate time and energy to those other areas of your life, such as your hobbies or your studies, that you are perhaps leaving neglected by getting obsessed over this topic.
If you feel that this issue is making you suffer and you do not know how to handle it, you can consult a mental health professional who will guide you in the process of accepting what happened, showing you the learning that there is for you and giving you guidelines to maintain your self-esteem high.
