Casper the Friendly Ghost

ghost·ing
/'gōstiNG/
noun: ghosting

the practice of ending a personal relationship with someone by suddenly and without explanation withdrawing from all communication.

~*~

I have a love/hate relationship with technology. Lately it's been leaning towards hate. In the last month, I've had three people (one recent acquaintance, two two long-term "friends") ghost me, or at least appear to be on the verge of ghosting me. I have to tell y'all ... I just don't get this.

According to this Psychology Today article:

"People who ghost are primarily focused on avoiding their own emotional discomfort and they aren’t thinking about how it makes the other person feel. The lack of social connections to people who are met online also means there are less social consequences to dropping out of someone’s life. The more it happens, either to themselves or their friends, the more people become desensitized to it and the more likely they are to do it to someone else."

I would say this theory is spot on ... and that it SUCKS!

I've felt disrespected, disposable, and worse yet? Just plain foolish for thinking there was something to these friendships that clearly wasn't there.

Because I am who I am, my first assumption is that the ghosting has something to do with me. That somehow I have screwed things up ... again ...

Logically, I know there are a ton of possibilities for the ghosting - people get busy and texting relationships take a backseat - people experience real life events that change their priorities - people just lose interest. The problem is that I don’t know how to react because I don’t really know what has happened ... so I default to I suck (and not in a good way).

It's just? People! Get some gonads!! Ghosting is the ultimate passive/aggressive way of ending a friendship/relationship, and y'all know how I feel about passive/aggressive people ... GRRRRRRR!!

I don't know ... sometimes I want to just give up on technology. I can't decide if it connects us, or just makes it easier to pretend we are connected.