Ghosting

Ghosting is bad.

I’ve been ghosted by a bunch of people. I’m sure you have as well. Hurts, doesn’t it? You know what would hurt less? If the other person told you to your face why they were upset with you, and gave you an opportunity to fix it. Or not. Even if there is no opportunity to fix it, knowing what you did wrong is better than not knowing.

That’s for starters. Now, in years past, when I would get ghosted by someone, it would cause me deep psychological pain that would last for months. What did I say? What did I do? You rewind everything you said or did in the last few weeks, trying to figure out what went wrong. Then you start stalking the person on social media. You are following them on every social channel imaginable. You Google-stalk them. It turns into an obsession. Yeah, so like I said, I don’t really do this anymore. My attitude these days is: fuck them. Or more accurately, Let Them. You might have heard about the new book from Mel Robbins that talks about this sort of thing. Let Them ghost you. You shouldn’t let someone else’s behavior have control of your life.

Even though I don’t let it affect me, and you shouldn’t let it affect you, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t a shitty thing to do. And basically, what it means is that you’re an emotionally immature infant if you do it. You’re a coward. You’re too much of a chickenshit to call the other person (or at least text) and tell them that your behavior upsets them. Because that is the hard thing to do. So people never do the hard thing; they do the easy thing, which is what this blog is all about, trying to do the hard thing, and the right thing, in every aspect of our lives.

I can honestly say that I have never ghosted anyone, at least, not in the last 13 years. What I have done is had the courage to pick up the phone and end a relationship—hey, fucko, you did X, Y, or Z, and I am never speaking to you again. I have done that. That can be traumatic, but it is orders of magnitude less traumatic than leaving someone on read. As the saying goes: hard talk, easy life. Easy talk, hard life. My friend Turney Duff told me that over a year ago about something in an entirely different context, and it stuck with me. Nobody wants to have the hard conversation—nobody. Ghosting is now the norm. You want to end a romantic relationship? Just disappear. You want to end a 10-year friendship? Just disappear.

I will tell you a quick story. Fellow newsletter writer Tony Greer and I have been doing a podcast and a business joint venture together. We have been advertising the combined newsletter product on our websites. I was doing some website maintenance and took the page down for a while, and Tony just happened to go to my website and saw that it wasn’t there, and he was pissed. He texted me that he was REALLY (all caps) pissed. There was an easy explanation for it, we talked it out, and everything is fine. But you know what I really appreciated? Tony blowing up my phone, telling me that he was mad at me. I can’t tell you how much I appreciated that. Because the alternative was that he would cop a resentment at me, sit there and stew, and then just ghost me somewhere down the line, which is what 99% of people would do. Tony demonstrated that he is an emotionally healthy person. He’s not afraid of conflict, and you shouldn’t be, either. There are very few problems that can’t be solved with a phone call. And again, if you run into one of those really intractable problems, have the phone call and end the relationship.

As a writer who pukes out about a bajillion words a year, inevitably I am going to say something that rubs you the wrong way. So I get ghosted a lot, and I never know what the reason is, but I figure it’s something that I wrote. And I figure it’s usually about politics. Don’t be a cherry. Drop me a line and tell me that I wrote something rude, and we can talk it out and go back to being friends again, or not. You might remember my earlier post “I’m Offended.” Remember, if you are offended by something I write, it’s your fault, not mine. I’m not responsible for your reaction to things—only you are. And remember, sane, sober people don’t react—they respond. If I write something you disagree with, write me an email, put it in your drafts folder, and sleep on it. 95% of the time, you won’t send it, and the act of writing me an email will make you feel better. 5% of the time, you send it, and then we talk it out. Avoiding someone is always a GREAT idea. And by the way, fate being what it is, we are going to run into each other at some point, and it is going to be super awkward—and embarrassing for you. Not for me.

And please, don’t ghost your way out of a romantic relationship. I heard a story recently of someone who ghosted their way out of a romantic relationship, and years later, the other person committed suicide. Now, people commit suicide for a number of reasons, and a lot of it probably had nothing to do with my friend, but maybe a small part of it did? Imagine the guilt that follows. Like I said before, I have the psychological tools to be able to deal with ghosting, but most people don’t, and if you do it, you are going to cause irreparable harm—because you were too scared or lazy to have the hard conversation. Ending relationships is hard, and is no joke. You have to do it with love, patience, and tolerance.

About that time 13 years ago. I had a mentor who was becoming increasingly belligerent towards me, screaming at me over the phone. It’s a long story, but the short version is that he was consumed by envy and resented my success. I ghosted him. And fate being what it is, we ran into each other in New York a few years later, under impossible odds, because I lived in South Carolina and he lived in Chicago. And it was embarrassing for me, not him. But at that point, we were able to talk it out and put it to bed. Sort of—he was still a dick. But guess what—until I met him in person, I still had a resentment against him. After we were able to get closure, I no longer did. Funny how that works. But the one exception to the ghosting rule is that you are allowed to ghost your way out of an abusive relationship, because having a conversation with someone who is going to be abusive towards you is not going to be productive. In abusive relationships, block the number, and move on. You don’t owe them the courtesy.

I don’t get upset about ghosting, but mostly I want to know what the hell happened. You have that voice in your head—what on earth did I say? People have a right to know. If you don’t let them know, you have the emotional makeup of a toddler. Life is not about the avoidance of pain. You’re supposed to say “I love pain,” and run headfirst into the pain. That’s what being an adult is all about. I’m a big boy. I can take it. Tell me how I fucked up. If you don’t, well, that’s on you, not on me.