Scarleteen

So there are plenty of good reasons to cut people off, and remove them from our social media (see abuse, manipulation etc). It isn't aways possible to give them explanations too... and yet a lot of my friends talk about 'ghosting' as a bad thing, and something they regret because they were avoiding difficult conversations.

I feel like part of this comes from having more remote relationships where social media 'helps' mediate breakups, or name relationship status... But also it seems to come from a fear of rejection from both sides. Both 'being the bad guy' and recieving rejection (which doesn't need to be a bad thing), but which some people overreact to, and behave aggressively around (which is not ok).

What do you all think?

Is ghosting even a good term? It does seem to conflate communication avoidance with setting boundaries, which to me are different things.

It does cover a variety of situations, but I don't think that's a bad thing. It just describes the action, after all. "Breaking up" doesn't make a distinction between situations where someone didn't want to put in effort and situations where the relationship wasn't a good fit and situations where someone ended the relationship with no warning and to the complete shock of someone else... it just describes a relationship ending.

And trying to use separate terms for "cut contact for own protection because of own boundaries" and "cut contact for selfish reasons to avoid discomfort"... I don't think that would work because the line can be blurry. Yes, there would be obvious situations at the extremes where clearly it's one or the other. But sometimes the story of a breakup from one side is "I was dumped because so-and-so claimed to be too busy while barely spending time with me to begin with" and from the other side is "I ended it because so-and-so kept begging for more time with me when I have lots of other stuff that's also important to me" and that's just the way it is, you can't put it in a defined 'right thing to do' or 'wrong thing to do' box. Ghosting is the same way I think.

It's a term I've seen people use to cover a LOT of different scenarios, so I think that adds to some confusion and mixed feelings on my part. I tend to think of "ghosting" as primarily a way to end casual/new relationships before they really get started but I've seen people talk about ghositng longer-term partners too, so I think it's one of those phrases that means slightly different things to different people.

I do think that when there isn't an issue of abuse or worries about personal safety, it's a kind thing to tell someone at the very least "I'm not feeling a real connection" or "I'm not interested in continuing our relationship" before dropping contact. Even if you don't want to do a deep dive into the WHY of your decision, it's polite to let the other person know a decision has been made vs. letting them wonder for a while before eventually figuring out, from your silence, that you've decided to drop communication. You don't owe it to someone to do that, but I think it's a good idea if you can manage it.

Having said that - I absolutely went on a first date with someone that was so awkward and uncomfortable that I cut our next conversation short and then uninstalled the chat client I had used to talk with him so I would never communicate with him again, so...I am not blameless here. This was a long time ago but I still cringe a bit when I think about that.

Mo wrote:I do think that when there isn't an issue of abuse or worries about personal safety, it's a kind thing to tell someone at the very least "I'm not feeling a real connection" or "I'm not interested in continuing our relationship" before dropping contact. Even if you don't want to do a deep dive into the WHY of your decision, it's polite to let the other person know a decision has been made vs. letting them wonder for a while before eventually figuring out, from your silence, that you've decided to drop communication. You don't owe it to someone to do that, but I think it's a good idea if you can manage it.

I so agree. We could do with a bit more honest communication that area.