The Smart Woman's Guide to Ghosting - Part 1

When you hear the word “ghosting,” does it make you want to vow to never online date again? I have five tips to share in this first part of a two-part series that I'm calling “The Smart Woman's Guide to Ghosting.” 

Unfortunately, ghosting has become commonplace. Therefore, if you want to date online and you want to be purposeful about finding a trustworthy, marriage-minded man, then you need to know how to deal with it. 

In this post, I want to share about how to get the right mindset about ghosting so you can think about it in liberating ways. Then, if it does happen to you, you won’t get discouraged. 

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Shift Your Perspective

My first tip is to shift your perspective about yourself by not internalizing ghosting or taking it personally. I know this can be difficult, especially if you have an anxious personality or anxious attachment style since you may tend to elevate everybody else above yourself. (I’ve been there!)

It’s common for someone with an anxious attachment style to think everybody else is better than them. Anxious types often live from a place of guilt and insecurity. I'm raising my own hand here, because before I married, I had an anxious attachment style, and I took a lot of things personally . . .and ghosting would've been included in something I would have taken hard if it had happened to me.

It's Not Your Fault

Be careful not to blame yourself for getting ghosted. I recently spoke with a woman who had been texting with a guy she met online for a couple of days. They planned a date, but they had never actually spoken to one another.  

After they scheduled their date, he reached out to her – via text – and said something had come up with work and asked to reschedule. “Sure!” she said. So, they made a plan for another day. But then, he never followed up. He ghosted her. She felt understandably bad about it—and her internal dialogue went something like this: 

Why would he do that? I don't understand. We had this plan that we were going to go out and he said he had work problems. Okay, that's fine. I understand that. But then later he just dropped me, and I don't really understand why. 

When she shared her thoughts with me, I noticed she was blaming herself and her tone sounded self-condemning, “Why did he do this to me? What did I do wrong?” 

But then I asked her if she’d ever spoken with him, if they had a video chat, or any other more-personal conversation than texting. When she said, “No,” I said, “So he didn't know you.” 

“I guess you’re right,” she said. 

When she realized he wasn’t really rejecting her because he didn’t know her, it helped her let go of some of the pain. He only knew who she was through text—and that’s not knowing someone at all. 

If you can relate to this scenario, remember they're just ghosting you – not rejecting you. This is just one important shift in perspective you can adopt.

Communication Issues

What if someone ghosts you online but you have already met them in person? Maybe they do know you and you're feeling bad about it. That’s understandable. Another shift in perspective that you can adopt is to remember that every person is responsible for their own communication. Think about it from your own perspective. 

Can anybody make you communicate in a certain way? Or can anyone stop you from communicating? Absolutely not. We're all responsible for our own communication, which includes letting someone know if you're not interested. 

Don’t Make Assumptions

The next thing you don't want to do is fill in the blanks. I've talked about this before on my podcast, Single Over 30, (which you can find on Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, or Buzzsprout). When ghosting happens, we often don’t know why it happened.

We don't know why they didn’t show up or why they weren’t interested. So, we’ve got questions—or “blanks”---that haven’t been filled in about what occurred. 

So, to make sense of what happened, sometimes we try to “fill-in” those blanks. And, unfortunately, we often fill them in with info that isn’t accurate, that isn’t good, and that makes us feel horrible. “I'm rejectable.” “He probably found somebody who is more attractive than I am.” “He probably thought I was boring, and that I wasn't interesting to talk to.”

Please don’t do this. Be good to yourself, because the way you process pain at the point you experience pain will make a big difference in how you move forward. If you get ghosted, one of the mindset shifts you can take is to remember to take care of your heart.  

For example, if you think, “I'm just a horrible person,” change your thought patterns. Instead, tell yourself, “You know, it could have been something else, or maybe he's just not interested in me and that's totally okay. . .he's not right for me or I'm not right for him, but I'm right for somebody.” When you do this, you will be taking care of your heart. 

Guide your mind so your heart is protected because how you process pain when it happens can make a big difference in how you move forward. It can keep you from becoming cynical or jaded.

If you're thinking negative thoughts, it may prevent you from moving forward to get the kind of relationship you want. It can even cause you to emotionally shut down. So again, take care of your heart and don’t fill in the blanks. 

Prepare For It, But Don’t Expect It

You may have heard about a social experiment that was conducted in 2018 by a woman named Natasha Aponte. Along with a team of five hundred people, they tricked thousands of men on Tinder into meeting Natasha for a date. These five hundred people messaged 7,500 men, making these guys think that Natasha was messaging them, and invited them to a date in Union Square in NYC. 

What happened was that 2,300 of these guys said they would show up, but only 1,000 of them did. That means 1,300 guys didn't even show up for this “date.” Clearly, ghosting is something that happens, and when we get our heads around this and look at ghosting stats, it can be liberating. Clearly, it’s not all about you. 

This is a part of our culture now. It's sort of like expecting that we'll get rejected in life. If you’re thinking, “No! Don't reject me! I can't handle it,” it will put you in a position of relational weakness and it will make you feel horrible. 

But if you say, “Okay, I understand that online dating can be messy” you’ll feel more encouraged. Part of expecting online dating to be messy doesn’t mean you become cynical or suspicious of every guy you meet. 

It just means that you recognize that ghosting can happen and that you evaluate each man on a case-by-case basis. Then when you don’t get ghosted, awesome! Even if a man doesn’t turn out to be your guy, maybe you’ve made a new friend.  

Realize It Comes with the Territory

In Part 2, we’ll cover some of the reasons people ghost online, but remember that online dating has its limitations, and these limitations encourage ghosting. For example, online users get distracted. Maybe they're talking to you and then someone else comes along and they don't circle back with you. Maybe they get busy, and they don’t get online again. Maybe they move. Maybe they realize they’re not interested in dating like they thought so they end up ghosting you. 

There can be many reasons men—and women—ghost. Of course, these reasons aren’t justified, but always remember that there are limitations for online platforms and those limitations simply lend to ghosting. 

Remember the Golden Rule

In 2016, PlentyofFish conducted a survey (1) and found that 78% of singles have been ghosted. This survey just goes to show that ignoring people is commonplace. PsychCentral (2) says that somewhere between 13 and 23% of people have been ghosted online. Let's conservatively say it's 20% – that means of the 40 million people who are on online dating sites, 8 million people have been ghosted. That's a lot of people! 

If you’re ever tempted not to explain that you’re not interested, don’t be a ghoster. Granted, “I’m-not-interested” conversations can be difficult. 

However, make your goal not to give anyone “rocks” when your interaction with them ends. What I mean is, through our interactions, if someone has a negative experience with us that goes unresolved, we give them a “rock.” It’s heavy. It’s painful and they are now carrying it around with them and they must figure out what to do with it. Don’t give rocks. 

Be honest and if you’re not interested. Choose relational integrity.  I’m not saying you should make yourself emotionally available to a scammer or apologize or explain yourself to someone who’s not safe. You don’t owe that kind of person any sort of explanation. But in a normal situation online, if you’ve talked to someone and you decide you’re not interested, just let them know. If this is difficult for you to say, I talk more about how to do this in Episode 6 of the Single Over 30 podcast: How to Tell a Man You’re Not Interested (without feeling awkward or guilty.)

Be Encouraged

In closing, I really want to encourage you. Yes, ghosting is a thing online. Yes, it can be a real pain. And yes, it can hurt. But I hope that as you think about these things, it will help you to change your mind set about it:

• Shift your perspective and don’t internalize it and make it all about what you did “wrong.”
• Try not to fill in the blanks.
• Don’t contribute to the problem yourself. 
• Recognize the reality of how many people do get ghosted online and prepare for it to happen at some point.
• Understand that online platforms make it easy for ghosting to happen intentionally or not.

If you want to online date, this is something you can get through. If you don't want to deal with it and you'd like a more straightforward way to meet someone special, head on over to morethanmatching.com. It's an alternative, reasonably-priced, comprehensive way to meet your special person.

_{1) [https://blog.pof.com/2016/03/pof-survey-reveals-80-millennials-ghosted/]}

_{2) [https://psychcentral.com/health/reasons-youve-been-ghosted]}