Ghosting. The empowering feeling of purposefully ignoring someone who wants your attention, without warning or reason provided, even if they try to reach out to gain clarity.
Sounds kinda f*cked up, right? Because it is.
Whether it’s a friend or someone you’re “talking” to, ghosting needs to be stopped for more reasons than just the fact that it may hurt the other person’s feelings. Rather, because we, as women, need to do better about speaking our mind on why we want to end communication. We need to be confident in our thoughts and words, rather than letting a “Opened 1 Day Ago” speak for us. We need to grow in our powerful voice, even if letting silence speak is easier for us.
Personally, when I’ve ghosted guys before it’s been for one of three reasons.
- They had bad intentions
- They were annoying me
Or
- I just did not want to talk to them anymore
Simple enough. I have the right to not want to talk to people that have intentions I don’t have, that annoy me, or that I don’t want to talk to anymore. Sometimes ghosting is easier than explaining why I don’t want to talk to them. It’s not deep. It’s harsh, but with a world of over 7 billion people, I figure it should be understood not everyone is going to vibe with me, just like I am not going to vibe with everyone.
Yet, as I go through each day of my life, talking with friends and talking with my therapist (shout out Rhonda), I’ve come to the conclusion that ghosting, while it may hurt the person you’re ghosting, hurts you more.
When you ghost people, you become complacent with not communicating to resolve a problem. You gain a laugh from your friends, but you don’t learn how to speak your mind on what you’re thinking. You shy away from addressing your thoughts or concerns with that person, (as to avoid conflict, drama, or being seen as “extra”) but instead, get labelled externally as a “ghoster” and get comfortable avoiding voicing your thoughts internally.
Now, I’m not saying some people don’t deserve to be ghosted. If you let someone know you no longer want to talk to them and they continue to persist, the delete and block button work wonders. If someone is harassing you, being mean, etc., you know what to do.
But the circumstance I’m talking about here is when you just aren’t interested in someone anymore, whether it be romantically or friendly, and you don’t communicate why. Our generation has gotten so used to avoiding complexities about relationships that we end up digging ourselves into deeper struggles than need be. It doesn’t have to be so complicated and awkward.
The way I like to live is by empowering people to be confident in themselves and to speak their mind. So as for ghosting, instead of relying on ignoring one’s messages for them to get the point, be honest and communicate. There’s nothing wrong with saying, “Hey, honestly I don’t think we are going anywhere but it was nice getting to know you,” and with that, communication is cut. Obviously, you can mesh out the message as you actually communicate, but I think there’s something badass about honesty and communication. It makes you better and stronger as a person, it makes you more confident in your thoughts as a woman, and maybe (just maybe) it will help the person you’re ghosting, too.