Dating Would Be So Much Easier If Ghosting Went Away

Unfortunately, it seems like ghosting is here to stay since it’s an easy way to dump someone without actually, you know, telling them it’s over. It’s messed up, painful and needs to end. Dating is depressing AF in general, but if more people actually started being upfront about wanting to end things, it would make dating a whole lot easier.

1. If you have a real ending, it’s easier to move on. No one likes breaking up with someone, but it has to be done if you’re a decent human being. It shows a basic level of respect, and one would assume that if you’re dating someone or even just sleeping someone that you’d want to show them a bit of it. Telling someone it’s over so they can move on accordingly is infinitely better than leaving them without explanation or even a goodbye.
2. Leaving someone hanging hits their self-esteem, sometimes hard. If you’ve ever been ghosted, especially by someone that you were really growing to care for, you know the internal struggle and self-doubt that comes along with it. It’s not fun; in fact, it’s downright soul-crushing sometimes. They really need to stop leaving us this way and stop making us question ourselves. Asking for decency isn’t asking for too much.
3. It’s hard to enjoy the moment when you’re always halfway expecting the person you’re dating to disappear. Because you’re so stuck in this endless loop of constantly being ghosted, you’ve almost come to expect it. Getting to know someone and potentially building an amazing relationship with them should be exciting, but instead, it’s stressful AF. You don’t know if he’s going to end up disappearing without a word like so many other guys before him. You want to enjoy the moment, not be terrified of it ending.
4. It diminishes your hopes that mature men and women are out there. The more people you come across who think ghosting is acceptable, the more you start to think that mature men and women who have their act together are few and far between, if they even exist at all. If people want you to stop labeling them as jerks, they need to start acting like kind adults and give you the honesty you deserve to hear.
5. You’d rather look back and smile than look back and hate them. You don’t want to hate your ex. You don’t want to curse the memories you shared when we look back on them. You’d much rather think of them as people you tried our best with and that it just wasn’t the right fit — not that they were total jerks who couldn’t give us a proper breakup.
6. After half a dozen times, it starts to really get depressing. Ghosting isn’t just something that most people have experienced once or twice, it’s almost every damn time you start seeing someone these days. Whether they ghost you after 3 months of dating or 1 week of chatting nonstop before you’ve even made it to the actual date, the outcome is the same — they Houdini out of your life and you literally have no clue as to why.
7. It feels better knowing the truth. Even if it’s hard to say what they’re truly feeling, you’d rather hear “I’m just not feeling this” or “You’re great, but…” than hear nothing at all. Believe it or not, there are times when sugar coating it is better than the brutal truth that comes along with the silence.
8. Closure is better than holding on to a dead-end hope. As sad as you might be about losing someone you genuinely like from your life, getting closure on the ending is better than leaving things unfinished and wondering when and if they might resurface again. Some people actually purposely ghost because they want to keep someone as an option for later, but screw that. If they weren’t interested in anything real, they shouldn’t have started with you to begin with.
9. Yes, it is common courtesy to offer someone the honest truth. The whole idea that you don’t owe anyone anything is complete BS and people need to stop living in a state of “deal with it” and start acting like decent human beings. They may not owe you an explanation, but it’s the right thing to do. Shouldn’t it be as simple as that?
10. It’s better to have lusted and lost than to wish you’d never met someone at all. If given the choice between dating someone you know will eventually ghost you and being alone instead, you’d probably choose alone every time. This isn’t ever a fun experience for anyone and it’s about time this crap was put to rest. If peoplehe can’t end things like mature adults, they shouldn’t be dating at all. Our dating culture would be infinitely better off without ghosting in it.