It’s A Pleasure
He gave me no explanation.
I’m hurt and confused.
How do I move on?
Q:My guyghostedme after talking for a month.
We met online and hit it off immediately.
We talked every day from the time I opened my eyes until the time I closed them at night.
After about a week of talking online, we decided to exchange numbers.
I texted him and we went back to talking all day, every day.
A week later we decided to meet in person.
He came over and we just sat in the car and hung out.
I wasn’t comfortable with him meeting my kids so soon and he agreed and was understanding.
After we met, nothing changed; we still talked every day, all day.
A couple days after that, I decided to call.
The phone rang three times and I hung up after realizing he wasn’t gonna answer.
I’m just confused and still hurt as to what happened and why.
Its a flippant response to rude behavior, but its more than that, too.
When someone ghosts you, there are a thousand million possible explanations.
Thats why they cant text you back.
Grief is about loss, and you lost something.
What youre grieving is thepotentialfor the future you felt, which is sad.
But you didnt lose a life with this guy.
There is a bone-deep frustration and hurt to being left with no explanation.
Its rude, its cowardly; Imnottrying to encourage anyone to ghost someone.
However, I must say that ghosting isnt all that different from any other end to an early relationship.
(Heres where I might lose some people c’mon hear me out!)
And if you did, it might hurt even worse than if youd received no explanation.
I mean, really, what do youdowith that information?
Besides, its not your business!
Theyre no longer dating you.
Their feelings about you are now irrelevant.
Now, you might be thinking, Well, I want to know what went wrong!
I want to know my flaws!
OK, thats fair.
I get the impulse, but this person is an unreliable reporter.
If you want to work on flaws of yours, work on thingsyouwant to change about yourself.
Not what someone who treated you poorly and who no longer wants your company thinks are your flaws.
That is a fool’s errand and its cruel to yourself.
However, thats not how things work!
No one else is going to have the exact same impression of you that this guy did.
The truth is: probably nothing!
Some things simply dont work out.
Sometimes, the feelings arent there.
The specifics are, frankly, kind of unimportant, if they even exist.
Sometimes, people just dont match romantically.
Instead, he was a little baby.
Ghosting is a cruel way to get out of doing the bare minimum.
I want to lightly suggest that you examine how much time you give to people youve begun dating.
(To be clear, Im not saying youre to blame in this situation.)
Is it possible to meet up in person earlier?
Can you hold back from texting all day?
Look, maybe his aunt died and his mental health is suffering.
Maybe his childhood crush moved back into town and he wants to see if things could work with her.
Again, maybe he simply didnt feel enough romantic interest in you andnothingspecific went wrong.
You wont ever know, and thats OK.
This one random strangers opinion of you is no longer important.
He was a coward and a d*ck about it, which is a real shame.
Grieve what youre missing, and try your best to let go of what this says about you.
Its A Pleasure appears here every other Thursday.
