"Unfriend"ly Ghost

Let’s talk about ghosting. 

However, before we get started, I want to acknowledge the fact that some of what I’m going to say is going to sound like some old guy talking about “kids these days.” And I’ll admit it, I’m a bit of a dinosaur at this point in the timeline, but I’ve been helping people with relational issues for a long time now and over that time the culture has shifted bringing with it new relational challenges in a new context. So, please bear with me as I attempt to address this difficult issue while trying not to sound like an old guy yelling at the kids in the neighborhood to “stay off my lawn.”

While people have been abruptly ending relationships since the beginning of time, the cultural phenomena called ghosting showed up in the common vernacular somewhere around 2015. So even though most of us have been on the receiving end of this rupture and know exactly what it means when someone mentions it, the practice of ghosting in a relationship is relatively new. It shows up in Webster’s Dictionary (that’s a thing that old people had to use to learn what words meant before Google or ChatGPT) around 2017 and it is defined as follows: “Ghosting (the noun) and ghost (the verb) both describe this phenomenon of leaving a relationship of some kind by abruptly ending all contact with the other person, and especially electronic contact, like texts, emails, and chats.”

Abruptly. Leaving. That’s it. No explanation. Just gone. 

Again, the process of abruptly leaving a relationship is not a new one. It’s been happening all along. The difference today is the social context. We now inhabit a world that makes the process frictionless. In a previous era if you lived in a village, you could not vanish without consequence. If you suddenly stopped talking to your BFF, the people around you would notice. If you wronged someone close to you, your reputation would follow you. Relational cowardice was socially visible. In today’s digital village, we have created tools that make the disappearance painless for the person who does the ghosting. 

That’s all fine and well if you’re the ghost-er, but what if you’re the one being ghosted? One minute they’re responding to your texts and the next it’s crickets. That creates a special type of injury. Your brain tries really hard to make sense of this loss. That’s what brains do. The brain’s job is to help us make meaning from the data that is received. The problem is when the only data is silence, your brain goes into high gear trying to fill in the blank and generates a whole list of possibilities and in most of those possibilities we put ourselves on the hook. “This always happens to me.” “I’m the problem.” “I’m too much for most people.” “Everyone leaves me.”

Thanks a lot, brain!

Now we’re stuck with a story that makes us the problem. Why? Because that’s our brain’s self-defense strategy. We need predictability. We look for patterns. We want to believe that we have some control over our lives, so we try to find control by beating up on the one person left in the relationship – ourselves.

The other big issue in this kind of relational injury is that the person being ghosted is denied dignity. When one person decides to “take their toys and go home” without explanation, the person being left behind is left with nothing but unanswered questions. Explanation is respect. Silence is erasure. This is not just relational loss; it is epistemological rupture. Our understanding of how the world is supposed to work is turned upside down. This can be a phenomenally destabilizing place.

The hurt doesn’t come from the fact that they left, it comes from the lack of explanation. Loss can be grieved. Silence must be endured. It’s open ended with no possibility of closing the narrative loop. You will choose a story that tries to make sense of the whole thing and that story can either shrink you or steady you. 

Ghosting is relational cowardice.

Not always. There are legitimate reasons for bailing out at all costs. When there is abuse, manipulation, repeated boundary violations, or safety issues involved, detangling yourself from that relationship is actually an act of courage as you refuse to allow yourself to be devalued or repeatedly hurt in some way. In those cases, often, the leaving takes place after multiple attempts (sometimes too many) at creating clarity. However, most people would not consider that to be “ghosting.” It is self-preservation and self-valuation. There’s a difference.

Here’s where the “old man” voice is going to kick in again. The phenomenon of ghosting isn’t just a problem for the people involved; it’s a symptom of a sick society. Like I said before, our culture (particularly in the digital age) has made exiting a low-friction process. Leaving is easy. Staying will cost you some relational sweat. Repair is rare because explanation feels optional. In that environment, the person who has the emotional stamina and courage to attempt repair or even closure will often feel exposed, naïve, or foolish. We then become weary and hypervigilant in our approach to relationships and create a feedback loop that screams, “Trust no one. Vulnerability is not worth the price you pay.”

This leads to more and more isolation, more focus on the individual at the cost of the collective, and increasing tolerance for selfishness and relational cowardice under the guise of “self-care” and “boundaries.” 

We’re losing our shared humanity.

Don’t fall for it.

Your integrity is not validated by a particular outcome. It’s validated by alignment with your core virtues. And living in alignment with your virtues has been the definition of human flourishing as far back as Aristotle. The ancient Greek philosophers, along with current research in modern psychology, tell us that the true mark of a good human (what the Greeks called “eudaimonia,” or a good soul) was the ability to hold fast to your virtues even when it was costly. The Greeks held four virtues above the rest – Wisdom, Discipline, Courage, and Love. 

It’s easy to see (at least I hope it is) that the act of ghosting as we’re defining it doesn’t line up with any of these cardinal virtues. And when a society loses all semblance of shared virtue, history proves repeatedly that it will crumble at its foundation. 

It’s not about staying or leaving. It’s about having the integrity to be brave and face the friction. Friction creates heat. Heat creates change. And the willingness to stay in the heat long enough to face yourself and do both the internal and relational work creates a ripple effect throughout society. It may not lead to repair in the relationship, but it does create more emotional stamina and courage, and lord knows the world could use a lot more of that. Cowards are a dime a dozen. Heroes are invaluable and are willing to stand in the gap and have strength not just for themselves, but for those around them.

The world needs heroes like that.

Stepping into that gap means saying to yourself, “I did not stay because I was certain of the outcome. I stayed because I owed it to myself to do the work. In a culture that chooses to leave quietly, I chose to have the hard conversations. In a culture that disappears, I choose to stand up and remain visible. They owed me an explanation, but I never got one. I owe myself integrity, and that I’ll keep.”

Ghosts have no backbone.

Heroes do.

Choose wisely.