Ghosting leaves the victim no closure, no answers, wondering what they did wrong, and damaging their self-esteem, self-worth, and doesn’t let them move on. Did research, it’s hurts almost everyone regardless of attachment style. Studies have shown it’s correlated with no empathy towards the other person.

The Ethical Cost of Ghosting

Why the choices we make about communication matter

Sophia Sailer Apr 18, 2018·7 min read

Last summer I was given the unique opportunity to speak to someone who had ghosted me two years prior. This was in the setting of a podcast called Ghosted Stories (links at the end), and while the person was not someone I harbored serious feelings for, it was comforting none-the-less to get some clarity and insight into what logic people use to justify taking the route of non-communication.

My main takeaway both between that interaction and other conversations I have had with people who advocate for ghosting is this: Some people view all confrontation as negative, so when there is an option that sidesteps it that will always seem like the right choice to those people. Some just genuinely don’t have the capacity to consider the feelings of someone that isn’t already important to them. Maybe their parents were busy lawyers who didn’t love them enough. Maybe they just have trash where their empathy centers should be. Who knows. Either way, these are two very different types of people and unfortunately it is very difficult to tell which kind you are dealing with.

It is important to note that the reasons that one may decide that they no longer want to interact with someone they’ve been flirting with/sleeping with/dating etc…do not automatically stand as valid reasons for ghosting that person. Short of “I previously made a judgment error, and now I believe this person is dangerous and I am afraid for my safety” there is NOTHING that someone can do to “deserve” being ghosted, and no other set of circumstances that automatically warrant it. It is purely a matter of personal ethics, not of circumstance. I intend to prove why this is so.

“New phone. Who dis?” My 2016 Halloween Costume

I understand that when you don’t know someone very well the idea of willfully offering information that might upset them is extremely unappealing. I can see how it wouldn’t seem worth it to explain to someone why you’re not interested in talking to them anymore. It feels mean. They might even CALL you mean. They might tell other people that you’re mean. By contrast, saying nothing and leaving your motivations to speculation might feel much kinder, and you have removed the other person’s authority to speak towards your character with any certainty.

Here is why the argument that no information is kinder than upsetting information doesn’t hold up. It doesn’t hold up because no matter how intelligent you are, and no matter how much experience with dating you might have, you cannot crawl into another person’s consciousness and understand their emotional landscape well enough to predict how rejection is going to hit them, and when you remove their ability to communicate and get closure, you have introduced an unmeasured variable. You don’t know what they’ve been through. You don’t know if you are the first person to do this to them or one of many, and therefor you don’t know how much pain this might potentially cause them.

Now this next part I need you to pay very close attention to if you are someone who is reading this because you disagree with me: you are capable of hurting someone who doesn’t have strong romantic feelings for you. Just because you don’t agree that your actions are hurtful doesn’t mean that you are incapable of causing harm. Your intentions, or lack thereof, are not the only thing that matters.

If you’re comfortable with the idea that the act of ghosting might cause anxiety, self-doubt, and ultimately a lowered self-esteem to someone who has done nothing to you, then you have probably also decided that anyone who gets hurt that easily somehow deserves it, or will benefit from it by learning the hard way. If this is the case then you are trash. Please get out. And take your collection of Bukowski novels with you.

If the entire reason that you consider ghosting is BECAUSE you’re uncomfortable with the fact that you have the power to hurt someone more than seems appropriate for the nature of the relationship then… good. You’re human. It’s scary and it sucks and unfortunately it cannot be avoided. You’re going to fuck some people up and that’s OK. I’m not here to tell you that you’re not allowed to hurt anyone’s feelings.

What I am trying to get across is that you will reduce the amount of suffering you cause overall if you leave the channels of communication open. This does include telling someone that you don’t want to talk to them anymore! It doesn’t mean that you have to keep every short-lived sexual encounter in your texting history forever.

You just have to tell the truth. It doesn’t even have to be the whole truth if you feel the whole truth is too mean. You don’t owe anyone an explanation, but if you care even a little about not leaving a shit-riddled trough of malcontent in your wake then you should consider it non-negotiable that you owe people the chance to respond to your decision.

Yes I am trash, but a simple “I am not down with this trashiness please lose my number” would have been nice.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — –

If this still isn’t making sense please consider the following.

When you withdraw communication and move on with your life without ever circling back you are always sending the following message to that person:

I do not respect your time and energy.

There is never a circumstance in which someone respects you so much that they are comfortable never speaking to you again. Any example you might be able to find to the contrary would be an outlier. I have once or twice comforted myself by trying to believe that someone only ghosted me because they knew I was resilient, and could handle it, and needed to protect the feelings of someone more delicate. It is a furtive wish that I know deep in my heart is a lie.

If you accept that ghosting contains this message, then you must also accept that ghosting contains all of the subjects interpretations of and reactions to this message. This is where things get a little murky.

Of course you cannot hold yourself responsible for another person’s pre-existing emotional state, but if you actually mean to defend the practice as a form of kindness than you must fully consider the reality of how this particular behavior might impact the other person. Their experience leading up to the event matters. Their potential trauma matters. Their mental health matters. Your silence is only as kind as their ability to process it in the best possible light.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — –

Ghosting is considered a symptom of technology and the way it has impacted our communication habits. I am not here to tell you that online and app based dating is ruining dating. First of all I am not qualified to make any statements as to what a healthy dating scene is supposed to look like. Second, I squarely disagree with the notion to begin with. These tools have helped me overcome my anxiety and have shown me that my worth as a sexual being and as a partner is not a function of my ability to make an impression in a group, or to be noticed in a room full of strangers.

I have the social constitution of a formerly domesticated cat who has been lost in the woods for slightly too long—with enough coaxing I am more than happy to curl up in your lap but my first instinct is to hide in the shadows, eat spiders, and hiss incoherently. Online and app dating help me skip the coaxing phase and go straight to the part where the other person can decide to dislike me based on my personality rather than based on my patchy coat and oozing tear ducts.

I will defend Tinder, OKCupid, and any other free tool that helps people like me feel a little less untethered in a city full of overachieving, ridiculously good-looking, impossibly well dressed people. However, I can see how, especially in a city like New York, the endless bounty of options will reduce ones sensitivity to the feelings of the individuals they may encounter. So while I encourage you to swipe freely and follow your passion (as it were), I implore you to deeply consider the ethical implications of what you are doing when you engage with someone and then need withdraw. Being alive is hard and lonely for some people. If you don’t experience life that way than la-di-fucking-da for you. Buy yourself a cookie. Just take five seconds to tie your lose ends and do what you can to not be part of the problem.

https://www.ethicssage.com/2018/12/has-ghosting-become-an-acceptable-standard-of-behavior.html

Has Ghosting Become an Acceptable Standard of Behavior? – Ethics Sage

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Has Ghosting Become an Acceptable Standard of Behavior?

12/26/2018

Why Ghosting Can Be Harmful to Your Health

I have previously blogged about the ethics of ghosting. I revisit the issue in this blog because I just read a piece about a college student who developed an “exit survey” for those who ghosted her online after dating. She asked questions like: What is wrong with me? At what point did you know this wouldn’t work out? What could I have done to enhance this experience for you?

She received more than 20,000 Likes. It was a brilliant attempt to figure out what she may have done wrong or where she was lacking and how this affected the ghosting party’s decision to ignore her. She did receive some responses, most of which mentioned superficial things: “Come to more bars with me.” “Give me a shoulder massage.” If this is the emotional level of the person doing the ghosting than it’s probably just as well she didn’t hear back from them.

Ghosting often occurs after dating someone for a period of time and then, quite abruptly, that party cuts off all communication. There is no explanation and any attempts to find out the reasons fall on deaf ears. The longer the dating relationship, the more harmful it is to the health of the party being ghosted.

Ghosting can leave emotional scars and do damage to the recipient’s self-esteem, especially if they have a fragile ego. Should you care about how your avoidance affects others? Yes, if you want to be a good person; someone who is caring, considerate, and empathetic. After all, as The Golden Rule commands: Treat others the way you wish to be treated. There are other versions of the Rule. The one most appropriate in ghosting is: Don’t do something to someone else that you would not want done to you. The reason I like this version is it denotes a positive obligation to treat others ethically.

Research from the online dating site Plenty of Fish found that of 800 millennial daters between the ages of 18-33, almost 80% of singles have been ghosted. Why does it happen so often? One reason is communicating on social media sites is impersonal and a form of communication that makes it easier to ignore the other person and be oblivious to their feelings.

I think it goes deeper and points to a lack of civility in society. It’s a lack of respect for another’s feelings. It’s driven by the pursuit of self-interest. It ignores the fact that the ends do not justify the means. How we get to our goals in life are just as important as getting there. Ignoring another’s feelings while breaking up a relationship is the easy way out. It shows no moral courage to act that way. Indeed, it’s the lack of moral courage that drives the inaction.

His Holiness, The Dalai Lama, is quoted as having said: “Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions. Happiness is the result of the kind of person we are, the decisions we make, the consequences of our actions for ourselves and others, and whether we meet our obligations to ourselves and others as members of a civil society.

If we accept that definition, then the practice of ghosting falls short of being the kind of person that will be happy. For sure, it is not a practice that would bring happiness to others.

Some may say they are too busy to communicate? They don’t want to explain their reasons. It may be emotionally painful. Others may say they do not feel unhappy when ghosting others. They may rationalize that others do the same to them. I learned long ago from my parents that two wrongs do not make a right.

We are responsible for our behavior. Our character forms based on the motivations for our actions and ability to carry out ethical decisions with ethical action. Ghosting is a form of ethical blindness in that the offender fails to see the ethical consequences of a decision.

If you are tempted to engage in ghosting, ask yourself how you would feel if the other party ghosted you? What if it happened on a job interview where the interviewer never got back to you after the first meeting? You wouldn’t know where you stand and that’s the point of why ghosting can be harmful to your health and, definitely, to others.

The truth is the party doing the ghosting is self-centered. It’s all about them.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on December 26, 2018. Visit Steve’s website and sign up for his newsletter. Follow him on Facebook and Like his page.

Posted at 08:00 AM in Civility, Millennials, Social media ethics | Permalink | Comments (2)

Tags: dating, ghosting, life skills, millennials, personal ethics, social media ethics

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Why Ghosting Can Be Harmful to Your Health

If we accept that definition, then the practice of ghosting falls short of being the kind of person that will be happy. For sure, it is not a practice that would bring happiness to others.

The truth is the party doing the ghosting is self-centered. It’s all about them.

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As someone with severely anxious attachment style, (traced to my dad when I was very young), and newly found out; that the way my sister has been treating me for 22 years was verbally abusive, had to cut her off after many many clear warnings to treat me with respect. It was a self m/fulfilling proohecy, clinginess caused many people to ghost me, making it worse every time. The last one shattered me, we were true friends, close and trustef. I believe he cared at the time and Im still at a loss as to why.

I disagree with the popular notion, “No one owes you anything”, “no one owes you closure. In the words of this friend who ghosted me (when speaking of putting yourself first) “it’s just an excuse for being selfish.” I hold myself at least to a higher standard. I would never want to do any damage to anyone knowingly. It’s a matter of respect.

I believe no one should intentionally hurt anyone. People with anxious attachment, like me, ghosting is so much worse… But if the world was like that, it would be a wonderful place However, the world is full of people who harm others: Rapists, murders, genocide, Trump, Biden 😂

I actually just faced my fears and successfully rolled back a committed monogamous relationship with amazing guy to just no labels, because I had started the relationship when I wasn’t ready. I was stressed over this for months for hurting him. I was terrified to hurt him. I waited til he came back in person, told him face to face, and we left with hugs, and an intact, meaningful FTF friendship.

My most hurtful experience with ghosting, the one that hurt most, and I have no idea how long it would take to heal, was just a friend trusted, cared for, and loved with all my heart. Always will.

I moved back to Hawaii, when my mom had less than a month to live. This friend was there for me through most of it, he promised to not abandon me, (As I told him all this about me and he promised to be there for me and not abandon me)… This one BROKE me more than anything else. The timing (mom dying), the harshness, as he used same exact technique I told him that my ex husband used to torture me, except that ex-hubs would respond in emergencies. This person, who I only have the deepest compassion and care for…. He did write something to the effect of be strong or float. Last time I ever heard from him.

Since I never got a reason, especially since he said don’t assume, always ask; I have no closure. I tried to be mad and only got mad at myself for not being mad. 😂. I know he’s broken from the past. I felt a strong connection with him, and I was the only person, as far as I know, that he was able to open up to. So I was worried about his loneliness and that he had no one and all kinds of stuff 😂. This is me, 87/90 on the empath scale. Only forgiveness and healing wishes for him.

Broken into a billion pieces, I choose to rebuilt myself and just keep getting better, turned my life around, no more letting my trauma hurt me. I will be better, one step at a time.