With the advent of advanced technology, the world of modern romance is full of online dating and relationships maintained through texting, Facetime, phone calls, and social media rather than face-to-face time together. This shift in dating has opened the doors for a new method of ‘breaking up’ called ghosting.
Ghosting is a term used to describe the new dating phenomenon when one of the participants in a relationship suddenly stops contacting the person they’ve been dating and refuses to respond to their calls, texts, social media messages, and other attempts the other person makes to get in touch with them. Many people practice ghosting because they believe it is easier or less traumatic than telling the person they are dating that they are not interested in seeing them anymore. However, before you ghost someone, it’s important to consider the following four questions.
Do you Care About your Reputation?
Ghosting someone you are dating can significantly impact your own personal reputation. The practice of ghosting is widely renowned as rude, disrespectful, inconsiderate, and discourteous. Before you ghost someone, think about whether those negative traits are the types of characteristics you want to be associated with and known for within the circle of people who are aware that you ghosted someone else. Ghosting someone else can damage your own reputation among friends and even hurt your chances of dating someone new in the future if they find out what you did to the last person you dated. If you don’t want people to think of you as a disrespectful and unkind person as a whole, don’t show them that you are by ghosting someone.
Would you Act Similarly in the Workplace?
Ghosting is extremely unprofessional. While you might argue that dating isn’t about professionalism, dating and ghosting can be strongly paralleled to life in the workforce. If you demonstrated interest in a job and even showed up for a preliminary interview with the manager of the company, would you fail to call that manager back if he called you to request a second interview? Your answer to that question is most-likely no. Even if you found an alternative position and were no longer interested in the job you originally interviewed for, you would probably have the courtesy and consideration to let that company know that you no longer wanted to take the position they offered you. This obvious common courtesy that you would display in your professional life should apply to your personal dating life as well.
Would you Want to be Ghosted?
If you ghost someone who you are dating, you cannot expect respect from them or from anyone you date in the future. Before you ghost someone, think about how you would feel if the situation were reversed. Ghosting can have severe consequences on one’s self-esteem and the perspective they have on their future relationships. Although ghosting might seem to you like a quick and simple way to get out of an uncomfortable break-up conversation, it is incredibly inconsiderate and rude to the person you’ve been dating. Although ghosting someone else might not have long-lasting consequences for you, it can have extremely severe negative emotional impacts on the other person. Considering how you would feel if you were ghosted can help discourage you from ghosting someone else.
Do you Care about the Other Person at All?
If you are considering ghosting the person you are dating, it is apparent that you do not want to date them anymore and that you are no longer interested in them in a romantic way. However, if you dated them in the first place, something about them interested you or caused you to care about them at one time. Regardless of whether you are still attracted to them or interested in them romantically, you probably still care about them or respect them as a person or as a friend. If so, do not ghost the person you’ve been dating. Ghosting can be incredibly emotionally destructive to the person who is ghosted. It can make them question the existence of love as a whole as well as cause them to feel sad and confused for a much longer period of time than it would have taken for them to move on with their life if you had broken up with them officially.
Do you Respect Yourself?
Ghosting is not just about respecting the other person you are dating; it’s also about respecting yourself. If you consider yourself to be in good moral standing and possess a kind and considerate inner personality, don’t let yourself down by ghosting someone else. You might not feel as though you owe it to the person you are dating to let them know that you don’t want to talk to them anymore. However, you still owe it to yourself to maintain your own good character by doing the right thing and acting in a courteous way in all of your relationships, if only to retain your sense of self-worth and prove to yourself that you are a person of substance.