He vanished somewhere between “what are you up to this weekend?” and me replying, “Not sure yet, but would love to see you.”
That was it. No fight. No red flag. Just a text thread that went cold like a drink left on the counter too long.
I waited a few days — tried to play it cool. Then I texted again. A neutral, “Hey you :)” type of thing. Still nothing. I watched his Instagram stories for a week like a ghost hunter, hoping for some pixelated clue. He was clearly alive. Just... not responding.
And the worst part? I wasn’t even devastated. I was embarrassed. Not that he left — but that I noticed.
We don’t talk enough about the weird emotional mechanics of ghosting. How it doesn’t just feel like rejection — it feels like being made invisible. As if someone held you in their hands for a moment and then decided to pretend you never existed.
There’s no closure. No ending. Just a sudden vacuum where a person used to be.
And that absence messes with your brain more than you expect.
Because we don’t process emotional abandonment like a missed call. We process it like threat. Your body registers it as a kind of mini social death. It asks, What did I do wrong? Did I come on too strong? Was it something I said?
The truth? Probably not. But ghosting has less to do with logic, and more to do with emotional patterns we rarely name.
Ghosting, in psychological terms, often stems from what we could call disconnection avoidance — the inability or unwillingness to tolerate the discomfort of closing a connection consciously.
For the ghoster, disappearing feels easier than confrontation. Avoiding your feelings seems less painful than managing someone else’s. It’s a form of emotional procrastination, except instead of ignoring a bill, you’re ignoring a human.
“Ghosting is a coping strategy for people who struggle with emotional regulation,” says psychologist Dr. Jennice Vilhauer. “It reflects their discomfort with vulnerability — not yours.”
Still, the brain doesn’t hear that. The brain hears you weren’t worth an explanation.
Zoom out and it’s not hard to see how we got here.
We live in a culture that rewards detachment. We call people “emotionally intelligent” when they’re just skilled at expressing themselves without exposing anything too raw. We call dating a “numbers game.” We treat intimacy like inventory.
Swipe apps have turned people into avatars. Texting has removed tone. Ghosting has become a cultural shorthand for “I don’t want this” — with no need to explain why.
And maybe that's the scariest part: ghosting is now normal.
There’s something almost nihilistic about how accepted it’s become. You’re not shocked anymore when someone disappears. You’re shocked when they don’t.
Let’s be clear: this isn’t a “they were just doing their best” apologist piece.
Ghosting isn’t neutral. It’s not just “what happens sometimes.” It’s a choice to disappear instead of be honest. And while it might not always be malicious, it leaves a mark.
That said — it’s rarely about you.
The ghoster might be conflict-averse. Emotionally unavailable. Insecure. Overwhelmed. Or, more painfully: they may have gotten what they needed from you and then checked out.
You won’t always know which it was. And that ambiguity is its own kind of cruelty. But understanding that ghosting says more about someone’s capacity than your worth is crucial to not internalizing it.
The first time I got ghosted, I felt broken. The second time, I felt stupid. The third time, I felt something I didn’t expect: familiarity.
And that scared me more than the silence.
Because I realized I wasn’t just reacting to the ghosting — I was reenacting an old script. The script of trying to prove my value in the absence of emotional availability. A dance I knew from childhood. From high school. From every time I mistook distance for mystery and inconsistency for intimacy.
“We repeat what’s unresolved,” says trauma therapist Linda Thai. “We chase closure not just for the relationship, but for the wound underneath.”
Getting ghosted cracked open a pattern I didn’t want to see: I kept choosing people who were charming, emotionally inconsistent, and hard to read. Not because I didn’t know better. But because I knew the script.
Ghosting, in that way, became a mirror. One I didn’t ask for. One I needed anyway.
There’s no satisfying end to ghosting. No grand confrontation. No apology that wraps it in a bow.
But what you can do is sit with the discomfort it leaves behind — without turning it into a referendum on your worth.
You can let yourself feel stupid, angry, embarrassed — and still not decide you were too much or not enough.
You can look at the part of you that spirals and ask: What are you actually afraid of here? Being alone? Being ignored? Being unlovable? That’s the real wound. That’s where the work begins.
And you can resist the urge to ghost yourself — to disappear from your own body just because someone else did.
I still think about that guy sometimes. The one who left mid-conversation. I don’t romanticize it anymore. But I wonder: did he feel a pang of guilt? Did he convince himself it was “easier this way”? Did he delete my number and feel lighter?
I’ll never know. And that’s the point.
Ghosting is a wound that doesn’t scab. It just becomes part of your skin map — a quiet bruise where a connection once was.
But maybe the lesson isn’t about avoiding ghosters.
Maybe it’s about becoming someone who never disappears from themselves — no matter who else does.
