‘I do feel guilty, but it’s just an easy option’: We asked serial ghosters to explain why they do it

Let’s hear them out I guess


There was once a time where ghosting and the idea that someone would stop talking to you out of nowhere was the most terrifying thing in the dating universe. We were so naive. Now we’re being cushioned and trying to find someone on the brink of World War Three things are infinitely more terrifying, so it’s understandable that people are a little more chilled about ghosting.

In fact some ghosters are even totally fine with talking about their serial disappearances. Despite the fact that we’ve moved on into scarier, unknown dating territories though, people are still obsessed by the fear of ghosting. So to understand that fear, I asked people who love it why they love it. This is what they said.

Gigi

Honestly, I end up ghosting 99 per cent of the guys I talk to because they don’t know how to hold a conversation and bore me to death. After a while of trying to carry it I always just end up thinking I’d rather not waste my energy and phone battery to be honest.

Livi

I ghosted someone as a form of revenge for them briefly ignoring me. Like a sort of “the fuck are you going to ghost me, I’ll beat you to it” kind of thing. Sometimes I regret it and think maybe he liked me. But then I think fuck him, he should have responded sooner if he did. Ya snooze ya lose.

Holly

I ghosted a boy and marked him as spam as he’d text me at fuckboy o’clock (any time past midnight) to ask me where the nearest corner shop was to me in the weakest attempt to graft I have ever witnessed with my retinas. He’s also an amateur rapper which just completed the look.

I also told a girl I would take two to five business days to reply to her in the hope she’d go away. It worked.

Victoria

I was seeing an older guy for a while and he started to piss me off and not care about me a lot. I was already not really feeling it, and then I found out he intentionally gave me an STI, so I told him to go fuck himself and ghosted him and haven’t spoke to him since.

Ben

I ghosted a Tinder date. She was boring as sin but she seemed nice, so I said I would text her about getting together again. I didn’t. She was only around for one year so she’s back in the USA now, and I’m in the clear.

Hazel

I’ve ghosted three people – one serious boyfriend, one not-so serious, and a Tinder date. I ghosted the serious boyfriend because we’d been going back and forth for ages, breaking up and getting back together and it got to the point where he became so overbearing and was refusing to let me break up with him that it just got really, really, really irritating and I got angry and I thought the only way I can escape this person is to eradicate him from my life. And by that it meant blocking his number and his social media.

He contacted me through a friend’s profile on Facebook but I didn’t get the message until three or four months after he sent it because it was in my filtered inbox. He basically wrote this essay about how much he hated me and how I treated him really badly and I felt really bad – so bad that I sent him a message to apologize. Now we’re cool, not really friends but civil. Ghosting him wasn’t the right thing to do. But it was a last resort. Breaking up the normal way didn’t work.

I feel guilty but I think it’s an easy option to get someone off your case, and maybe to just slight them, make them feel like shit. I didn’t do it to make people feel bad I just did it to get some control back in my life. It’s just a case of being ‘I don’t want to feel like I can’t do what I want. I don’t want to be with you anymore’. It seems like a really unkind way of treating someone but sometimes you just have to be cruel to be kind. It is the coward’s way out. I should have been honest and upfront but I just thought ‘I’ll save his feelings by ignoring him’.

Illustrations by Teresa Ferreiro.