Do ghosters come back?

Lane I agree that at the end of the day the guy is not responsible for how I feel. I’m coming to the conclusion that people come and go and that’s just how life is. However I don’t think I’ll ever accept ghosting as a way to break off with someone.

I always get back to people professionally and socially. I’d never leave a person hanging on an invitation and I think it’s poor form to do so.

Also, professional encounters and “first dates” are in many ways different from people you have dated for a couple months. Someone has invested in you, with their time, and in the man’s case, most likely some money. It’s rude to leave them hanging.

Professionally, I only know of ONE person in my network that regularly blows off meeting requests and she is poorly regarded by her peers as a flake. So being blown off at work or by my friends isn’t something I’ve experienced.

In the world of dating today it would be nice if every guy who was no longer interested said so.

The reality is we aren’t always going to get that from them.

Do I think that’s the best practice no but, try not to let that get to you. Just say to yourself his loss, he missed out, and next.

Many of them at some point do come back around out of boredom,things not working out with someone else, sex, and on a very rare occasion a genuine second chance(I’d rule this one out since he barely knew you).

Whatever you do don’t give people like this any more of your time.

Someone else will come along who won’t go poof.

A few months may not seem a lot and caring for this person may be silly but I think that’s where the anxiety is coming from. You just don’t know what happened to them.

i dated a guy for 3 months. In the beginning he was very persistent to meet me and made a bunch of effort. I ended up meeting him and for 3 months straight we were kind of inseparable. I met his entire family, parents, sister. And even one week before he said he ‘needed time’ i met some of his best friends!!
We had an amazing time together throughout the 3 months, even though he was into different things than me, i loved and appreciated how we got along so well. We took a small trip together, and he would very often talk about the future with me, having a child and what the name would be! He knew i was scared of getting hurt, and he would often say, ‘lets take it slow’ He dropped hints of buying a house and even getting a dog together, etc. Out of the blue, right on what would have been our 3 month, he started to ignore me. He wasnt responsive to my messages…i ended up texting him 3 times and calling him twice before he told me ‘ i think i just need some time. im so sorry’

We had future plans, plans for next week to go camping, events planned in september and even in october!

WTF this guy had been thinking about a future, although we never said we loved each other, my feelings were starting to develop and grow. i really cared about this guy and i was always vocal. he knew about personal things i was going through (a separation) but i always made him my priority, i always made him know and did my best to make him feel that despite what i was going through, he was my number one.
I realize it only lasted 3 months, but honestly this is the most difficult separation i’ve experienced. he disregarded me for a few days until i had to pry out of him what was going on, and then he only responded with ‘i think i need time. im so sorry’ why would he lead me on? :( my heart is broken because i was filled with so much illusion on what could have been.
i pray that he comes back around. why do i feel such desperation? i pray every day he comes around. even if its just to give me an explanation. i need closure. i dont understand what i did wrong. if i did something wrong, i always told him to be vocal and to communicate with me. this hurts so much and im not sure how i’ll get over it. i saw a great future with him even though i was never very super vocal about it, (because i was scared) but i obviously showed long term interest.

Mari, I’m sorry this happened to you but the fact of the matter is you moved way too fast!

True love takes a lot of time to develop, I would say at least a year or more before you can truly say you know this person enough to TRUST what he says because he does it. You need to be with each other in a lot of different situations, including hard/difficult one’s before you can know if you mesh in the way PARTNERS need to mesh in order to make it over the long haul because real relationships are nothing like “Hollywood Movies” they can be very hard and difficult at times and its how you lean and support each other during those times will ultimately determine if your relationship can survive or not…this one did not.

The EARLY days (first 4 months) are based on INFATUATION (read up on it) where your hormone’s are running amok and living in chemically induced fog but eventually those chemicals die down and reality sets in, you start thinking “is this really the person I want to spend my life with?” and that though alone can kill the buzzjoy one’s feeling and start the process of pulling back and then out. This is very common and why you really need to keep your wits, head out of the clouds, during the courtship process.

You should never take any stock in what someone says until they back it up with ACTIONS on a consistent basis over a long period of time to the point you can fully trust them—this is how trust is built! The problem with men, in general, is they think “in the moment”, what feels good in that moment in time BUT those feeling may pass at a later moment in time. This is why you need to adopt the formula “WORDS + ACTIONS = TRUTH” in your life by carefully listening, watching and observing a man before you can know if their words have actual meaning or not—his did not because he never ACTED on them.

In a nutshell, take what a man say’s with a grain of salt. View it with skepticism and don’t take them literally until he shows you time and time again that he backs his words up with action over 90% of the time (have to leave some wiggle room for things outside of his control) over many, many, many months before you can truly know if he’s ALL IN or not.

I have been ghosted a couple of times and it is the worst feeling ever! I agree that it is much harder to get over it than if the person would just break it off with you. It also allows them to keep the door cracked because they dont feel like they officially shut it. To answer the question posed, “do they return?” One returned less than a week later, only to ghost again after a week. After the second time, I sent a text and told him not to contact me again. I was a wreck after the first time and after giving him the benefit of the doubt, he did it again. I was not going to allow it to happen again!

His excuse was that he is a conflict avoider and thought I would be mad because he flaked on our date. The second ghosting also occurred after “sleeping through” our plans again. I suspect that he was dating someone else as well, which was leading to these afternoon snooze fests. That’s another thing to be alert for, most people do not knock out cold for hours during the middle of the day. If they don’t have a night job or some other reason for sleeping like that, I wouldn’t believe it for a second.

Anyways, I was promised that it wouldn’t happen again and it did. This guy is a POS and isn’t someone that I would want in my life in any capacity. If you cant trust someone to be there or to communicate with you when they have concerns, then they are just an emotional drain.

Lane said, and we keep talking about this topic! “will STAND BY MY BELIEF that someone you spent a brief amount of time with is under no obligation to formally end something that never got off the ground. ” – so you met with a person a few times, there is some potential expectation that you’d might meet again, you what, won’t bother to tell them you don’t want to do that anymore?

And why is it always about “obligations” and “owing”? Saying hello and good-buy is no obligation but we do it, do we not? Do we say thank you and please? Well…letting someone know you won’t be seeing them again, regardless of how many times you met, belongs in this category. I feel sad that we live in such times that this has to be explained and even argued about. A short message saying “it was nice meeting you but I don’t feel we should continue” is all that it takes. Several words of decency and respect for another person.

I am perplexed as to why we have to debate it? The debate legitimizes it. It makes it acceptable, it makes it “another point of view”. Whereas there is no other point of view, it is simply rude (if you only met a couple of times) and in some cases cruel and sadistic (if you’ve been seeing each other a few weeks or more).

Why do even think in such terms as “he is under no obligation”? This is a very faulty mentality that would cause you to mingle with wrong people. If oyu start using normal judgement, you will know that a person who feels ok to ghost should NOT be part of your circle in any way. You’d save yourself a lot of trouble this way. What normal person not know that it is not ok to do? Seriously ladies.

The only reason I keep commenting on the ghost posts is precisely because I want to make sure that the “no obligations” crowd does not influence young women in the wrong way, leading th4em to accept crappy manners and crappy attitude. We should all expect normal basic politeness and decency. Not everyone grew up in the ‘dog eats dog’ jungle and most of us don’t want to live this way. If you want to be surrounded by decent people, then do not let anyone to dissuade you from remembering what basic decency and politeness is. And no, it is not an obligation, not at all.

I, too, do not understand how the idea of no one owes you anything got distorted into legitimizing bad behavior. What is really sad is that it has become commonplace by some on here to criticize the person ghosted because they somehow “should” have expected it. Excuse me, isn’t it so in vogue to preach no expectations? Then, only to turn around and perpetuate the idea it is stupid or naive for not expecting someone who made a solid plan, as they had done before, to suddenly disappear? How’s that make sense for your no expectation rule?

What is worse is when people who have been ghosted get told they have no right to have a reaction or be upset because they haven’t met some arbitrary measure set forth by the person replying who is being dismissive. There is always another hurdle put out for it to count… If it was dating a month, it needed to be two months. If it was for two months, you weren’t a gf. If you were a gf, sounds more like FWB. It never ends.

While it is true that you can’t force someone to give you an explanation, that does not cross over to mean it is anything less than bad behavior or justifiable to ghost. What is so f-ing difficult about separating those two things?

Knowing you may never get an explanation does not mean you have to act like you think poor treatment is acceptable and excusable because people want to throw “no one owes you anything” in your face. “No one owes you anything” is meant to realize you can’t force collection on some things that are “shoulds” and you have to come to terms with making your own way. It DOES NOT mean the offensive action never occurred or you don’t qualify as being worthy of decent treatmeant.

It is beyond hypocritical to spew out “know your worth” and then tell that same person she has no right to have a reaction to being treated less than worthy.

Blue,

I repeat:

Knowing you may never get an explanation does not mean you have to act like you think poor treatment is acceptable and excusable because people want to throw “no one owes you anything” in your face. “No one owes you anything” is meant to realize you can’t force collection on some things that are “shoulds” and you have to come to terms with making your own way. It DOES NOT mean the offensive action never occurred or you don’t qualify as being worthy of decent treatment.

What is nonsense is to keep circulating the fallacy it is somehow wise to go through life having low or no expectations. Expectations are the barometer for what people base their tolerance levels on when interacting with others. To group expectations under one heading without distinguishing between
What an individual considers reasonable and unreasonable leaves out a vital life tool.

In dating, the word “standards” is parroted ad nauseam. Hello, what are standards? Standards are what you will tolerate and what you won’t. How does one figure out their standards? Did a list happen to land at their feet one fine day? Nope. Personal standards are decided upon through experiences of either having your expectations for treatment being met or not being met.

There is, of course, going to be disappointment. That is how you decide who is and isn’t a good fit to have in your life.

It is not just semantics to differentiate between low expectations and reasonable expectations. Low expectations can pave the way for the mindset of letting rejection define you because you don’t “expect” any better. Adopting the attitude you don’t care or are oblivios in an attempt to sidestep disappointment doesn’t change that you accepted poor treatment. Having defined what they consider reasonable expectations will offer a person more confidence through more decisive action (done matter of factly without a need for drama) what will or won’t be tolerated… no matter what stage of interaction.

I hate that this topic even exists.

BUT, if anyone who is considering ghosting reads this, please think about it.

The problem with ghosting, and why it is worse than just communicating a lack of interest is the amount and time of emotional energy you are asking someone to deal with in a break up. If you ghost, you are basically extending the grieving process for someone. (And I know grieving isn’t the best word).

The timeline on a break up:
You get a text from someone you decided you aren’t into and let them know it is over. They know *immediately* where you and can begin moving on. Maybe they are sad, don’t think its fair, or perhaps just relieved. But they have their answer and can begin the process of moving on. Maybe it wasn’t a full on relationship, but ultimately, in dating, it’s hard not to develop expectations and hopes in someone you like. Maybe they are dating other people and can take that guy up on a date that they hadn’t considered. Maybe they can change plans this weekend to go see friends instead of the date they had planned with you. Basically, you are freeing them immediately.

Ghosting, where you ignore that text, you are occupying space you don’t deserve until they figure it out. They might turn down that date with the other guy figuring you got busy at work and will call any minute. Maybe they think your phone isn’t working so they assume the date for this weekend is still on. You have moved on while they are still think you are with them, but busy.

If you couple ghosting with the advice here on giving guys space and being rather minimal with communication, you can realistically assume that it takes 4-5 days before someone is going to get your hint.

It’s nothing but rude. If you sleep with someone or go on a physical date with them, ignoring their text is just 100% rude and makes you a bad person. You simply should not date if you can’t handle a simple “this isn’t going to work for me” message.

Anon, I think it’s a little too soon to assume he’s ghosting. It sounds like both of you are busy and playing phone tag, not that he’s ignoring you.

I thought my boyfriend was ghosting on me a few months ago because he wasn’t answering texts/calls and it turns out he’d been transported by ambulance to the hospital and left his phone in his apartment. Not to say that it’s always the case, but don’t automatically assume someone his ghosting, especially when there’s extenuating circumstances. You have to have a little faith sometimes, too.

Thank you both SOOOO much. I knew tge thread was old, but was hoping someone could give clear insight. BOTH of you gave me points to ponder. From what I gather from you both is that it may not be ghosting, but is still rude if there is not a rational explaination for the silence.

We are both visiting relatives, but I figured he would squeeze in more time to talk since we couldn’t see each other. Our last convo was fun, so not hearing from him bothered me and my imagination started running.

I still have not heard from him, so today (which isn’t over yet) makes day 3 since his last call. I took your suggestion and did not call him because I did that the previous days.

Should I continue to wait for him to call with an explaination, or should I reach out text him after a point to ask if things are okay????

Again…8 months is still new, so I don’t want to ignore signs, but I also don’t want to over react by calling him out through text and be in error.