The Gift of Ghosting

I know some of you won’t agree, but I think ghosting is a gift. Not a gift you want.  More like a gift you don’t want, but ends up being a good thing in the end. Of course, it doesn’t feel like a gift at first.  It feels horrible. We thought the relationship was going somewhere.  We invested.  We got excited about it. And then—nothing. Crickets. Gone. It hurts. 

We all have a deep need to be seen.  Ghosting leaves us feeling as if we were never seen.  And that we never mattered. So how is it a gift? Here’s the thing. If we get ghosted, the relationship wasn’t going to make it anyway. So we can find this out the hard way—with a slow fading away or an on again/off again dance which keeps us guessing for months (or years). Or we can get ghosted. Which feels hideous in the moment.  But gives us the gift of clarity. At least when we’re ghosted, we know where we stand. No mixed messages.  No room for misinterpretation. It’s done. And we can move on.

For more on ghosting, check out my podcast episode on the subject:“Ghosting: Cowardice or Kindness?” And BTW, my guests on the show take a VERY different position on ghosting.

I know some of you are wondering about “closure” as it relates to ghosting. I’ll speak to that in a subsequent post.

Thanks so much to Fiorella Biancardi who read this post on Instagram and created this beautiful graphic!  Find her work there @loveover.insertcoin