When dates just up and disappear
You may not believe in ghosts, but they assuredly walk among us.
The ghosts I’m talking about don’t trudge around the attic in heavy chains or send your grandmother’s bone china flying across the room, however. These ghosts are a little more ordinary. You’ve probably even encountered one. The dating world is full of ghosts.
Ghosting is the scarily common dating practice whereby the person you’re seeing disappears from your life without warning or explanation. They simply stop responding to your calls, texts and emails.
One day, you’re sharing a root beer float and petting cute dogs in the park. The next day, poof! They’re gone. Vanished, like a ghost.
A few months ago, social media expert Terra Loire, 26, met someone on dating app Tinder. Everything was great, at first.
“We went out a few times — just casual dates like brunch and drinks. (We talked) about life and bonded over our cats. He would text me all the time and was very thoughtful. He drove the emotional part of the relationship by being very forward with his feelings for me, which I appreciated.”
After a few weeks of schedules not aligning, they finally agreed on another date. He cancelled the day of, stating he was “tired.”
He was genuinely apologetic and promised to set up a date for the following week. She never heard from him again.
“Ghosting is frustrating,” Loire says. “Especially when I work very hard to be honest and allow the other person opportunities to express their interest or disinterest in healthy ways. That should eliminate the need to ghost in the first place.”
Ghosting is a cowardly and disrespectful move, to be sure, but in a world where we’re accustomed to ending relationships with the literal push of a button (defriending, unfollowing, blocking), it makes sense.
It’s is an easy and nonconfrontational way to get out of something that’s not working for you.
For the ghostee, it can be confusing, enraging and can even instil actual panic — did something happen to this person? Were they in an accident? Are they OK?
A friend recently asked me to check up on another friend of mine on social media to ensure he wasn’t dead. He had told her he would call her soon to plan another date and she never heard from him again.
According to recent Facebook photos of him drinking with friends, he was alive and well. He had simply ghosted.
Playwright Graham Isador, 27, has been both ghoster and ghostee.
After meeting an interesting and beautiful woman in another city, they kept in touch. It became clear to Isador after a return visit that they had very different expectations of the relationship.
Back in Toronto, he took longer to respond to her texts and was always “busy” when the phone rang.
“I didn’t handle that thing well,” Isador admits. “I avoided conflict. I let things drift into that ‘what happened’ scenario that is intensely frustrating. When you don’t know what happened, it’s hard to get closure.
“I was trying to think of a comparison and the best thing I came up with is: pulling the Band-Aid off. Pulling it off quickly is going to hurt a bit.
“But if the alternative is leaving it on until the Band-Aid grows gross and dirty and eventually falls off on its own? It’s pretty clear what to choose. I owe that girl an apology, but I think it is too late to get in touch now.”
Isador likely won’t make the same mistake twice, considering what followed.
“The next girl I got involved with ended up ghosting on me. So, you know, enjoy the schadenfreude.” Sofi Papamarko is a writer and matchmaker who lives in Toronto. Reach her at facebook.com/sofipapamarko