You met someone. You had those early relationship butterflies that made you feel excited and nervous, the best kind.
Maybe it was something you hadn’t felt in a while. You thought things were going well. You might have even had pending plans together.
Then the person who had you feeling giddy goes silent. There are no answers to messages or calls, no explanation as to what made them want out of the situation bad enough to disappear. You’ve been ghosted.
Nowadays, the majority of people in the dating world have been ghosted. Maybe you have even ghosted someone else in the past.
So, why would a person ghost you? We’re going to see why someone would opt to ghost out of their dating situation.
Reasons why ghosting happens
Now, I can’t speak specifically to your ghost. Still, since ghosting has unfortunately become a common tactic early on in the dating game, there are some common reasons why someone would decide to ghost their new dating partner. Check them out and see which type of ghost you think you’ve got.
It’s easy
Confrontation is hard. Some people avoid it like the plague. Many ghosts just don’t want to deal with an uncomfortable confrontation.
Having a conversation—in person—in which you reject someone can be difficult for both people. It’s much easier to just disappear without a word. However, there is a clear, better option.
Ghosting is a traumatic experience that leaves the “victim” feeling confused, lonely, insecure, and often helpless.
How cruel to do that to someone!
While confrontation can be uncomfortable, especially when you’re telling someone you don’t want to see them anymore, it’s a necessary part of life.
Learning how to confront difficult situations is a huge life skill, not just in the dating world. If you are dating, then you need to learn how to deal with the sticky situation of letting someone go. A ghost is unwilling to do that.
The attraction faded
I’m sure we’ve all experienced this. You go on one or two dates, maybe you’ve had some great banter or the physical attraction was fire, and then poof!
It’s as though the attraction has ghosted the dating pair.
It’s a bummer if it happens to you both, but at least it’s easy to walk away from. However, more often than not, it will happen to only one person: our ghost.
Your ghost was probably genuinely feeling the situation at first. Then, either gradually over a couple of dates, maybe after sex happened, or because of a specific scenario, they started to lose interest.
This is harsh, but some people are playing games when it comes to dating.
Many people are into chasing, and once they get what they want, either your attention, your enamor, or something physical, they are no longer going to be interested in you.
You had a disagreement
So you guys were vibing on the first date and feeling excited about the possibilities. The second date rolls around and someone brings up a hot topic and things get heated—not in a sexy way.
You don’t see things through the same lens.
Maybe you move past it and have a decent rest of the date, but that quarrel or difference in worldview may have just sent your date running.
We live in a ghosting culture. We also live in a “cancel culture” era.
Certain things are non-negotiable for people. Rather than talk out the difference in opinions or views, your new dating crush decided to just ghost you after the incident.
In an ideal world, you’d have left the date knowing that it was done. Unfortunately, ghosting is the easier and much more common result.
They got busy
Life happened, and they couldn’t keep up with it all. Maybe dating went off of their priority list to keep up with everything else.
I once went on a first date with a guy who had two young children and four businesses in two different cities at the time.
We had a good first date, and I sent him a message afterward, to which he waited a week to reply.
In that week, I’d panicked about the first impression I’d made, accepting that he just didn’t like who he’d met and that I’d been ghosted. When I got his voice note a week later, I realized just how crazy his day-to-day life was.
Ghosted or not, it’s most likely not about you, although we like to immediately default to obsessing over every little thing we did, which would have sent them running without a word.
Ghosting is about the ghost. Period.
While dating may be a priority in your life right now, it’s not that way for everyone. And if it’s not, and things get hectic, dating is an easy thing to ditch to regain some much-needed time for other things or yourself.
They felt threatened
The only option to get out of an abusive relationship may be to cut all communication completely: enter the ghost, who is in the right.
This is really the only legitimate reason to ghost someone: they’ve threatened your physical or emotional health. Some relationships can go awry—really awry.
If you feel you didn’t emotionally or physically threaten someone, it could also be that a situation with you might have triggered some past emotional trauma that your ghost hadn’t dealt with. You never know what someone else has truly gone through.
While not the most common reason for ghosting, bad situations can happen in dating. The safest option may be to ghost someone completely.
Who usually ghosts?
Some personalities are more likely to be ghosts. What’s unfortunate about that is that we tend to attract the same types of people, meaning that if you’ve been ghosted by a person who was “your type,” it probably won’t be the only time it happens to you.
However, knowing some red flag signs to identify the most common ghosts is a good dating skill to have. It may help you avoid another ghosting situation in the future.
Narcissists
Yep, narcissists love to ghost out of dating scenarios. Being able to identify a narcissist is a useful skill.
Even if they don’t ghost you, this probably isn’t the type of person with whom you’re going to have that loving and caring relationship that you’re seeking.
So, what does it mean to be a narcissist? Narcissistic behavior is defined as such a high level of self-involvement that the person disregards others’ feelings and doesn’t understand the effect that their behaviors have on others.
You might see them as someone who is only using others for self-gain.
With a top narcissist qualifier being a lack of empathy, it’s no wonder that they are likely to be serial ghosts.
Keep an eye out for narcissists in your dating life. It’s better to catch the signs and say goodbye before they have the chance to vanish on you.
Most ghosts are emotionally unavailable. But what does that mean? Emotionally unavailable people have a hard time dealing with and expressing their emotions.
Since relationships are based on emotional connections, emotionally unavailable people have a hard time maintaining healthy relationships.
Emotionally unavailable people tend to be inconsistent, avoid being vulnerable, and often lack empathy. Sounds like a roster of tendencies that will only lead to disappointments in the dating world, right?
Dating is a vulnerable experience, and the longer you date someone, the more you both open up. Some people just aren’t in the emotional or mental space to do that. Rather than communicate that, they may just disappear.
Let emotionally unavailable people walk out of your life. It will only help you in the long run.
Confrontation evaders
Ahhh yes, there are many. Those are the people who just cannot and will not deal with conflict. Maybe you’re even one of them. Most people dread confrontation. It’s uncomfortable, maybe even awkward, but it is a necessary part of life.
People who can’t deal with conflict head-on are likely to ghost someone at some point. Think about it; it’s the confrontation evaders’ dream. No need to deal with a sticky scenario, they just disappear.
Many people avoid conflict. It doesn’t make them bad people, and they may even feel guilty about it afterward.
However, not everyone is at the emotional maturity level to have a healthy, happy relationship. Someone who can’t have the hard conversations most certainly is not.
This type of ghost will be hard-pressed to find genuine connections if they can’t ever get over their confrontation.
It’s not about you
Ghosting is about the ghost. It’s a terrible feeling to be ghosted. However, try not to let it consume you.
Don’t try to chase down a ghost. It will only lead to more feelings of rejection. Look for closure on the situation in other places.
It may help to realize that ghosts are dealing with their own things. Whether they have too much happening in their lives, are emotionally unavailable, or just weren’t feeling a connection with you, they decided to vanish.
That’s not on you; it’s on them.
Dating is about connection and respect. If someone can’t respect you enough to give you a goodbye text at the very least, then let them go.
There are lots of other people out there who will see your value. Try not to dwell on the ones who didn’t care to be there for whatever reason.
