Lots of debate recently here around ghosting. Here’s some further thoughts.

If you go into a store, browsing around happily and an assistant says “can I help you with anything?”, if you ignore her and walk off, you are an asshole. It takes 1 second to say “no thanks I’m good”. Yes it can be irritating to be asked, you didn’t ask for help, you don’t need help, you don’t owe her anything. But how you behave defines a little bit about how you are as a person. If you saw someone who ignored her, you’d think what an asshole. It’s about common decency and manners.

So you are messaging online on a dating app for few days and the conversation peters out. You don’t like them enough to try to carry the conversation and you unmatch. Not an asshole. Or they are into it but you aren’t so you unmatch, you’ve given them a clear message you aren’t interested any more. Or both of you leave the conversation where it is and it’s pretty mutual. This happens with 80-90% of the matches on dating apps and people expect it. That’s the process.

So you ‘ve come off the dating app and exchanged numbers and have been talking for 2-3 weeks, maybe discussed some plans together, scheduled in a date vaguely…raised expectations that you are interested and want to take it to the next step of meeting. You have been talking every day, both putting in an equal amount of effort – you are getting involved in their daily life and them yours. You suddenly go quiet on them. They text a few times to see if you are ok, but you don’t respond. You are ghosting. This is asshat behaviour. You don’t owe them a date, you aren’t dating them, but it takes 2 minutes to send a quick message to say you don’t want to take things forward. This is the equivalent of saying no thanks to the shop assistant rather than ignoring her – it’s following a social norm for common decent behaviour.

Same goes if you’ve been on a date or two. It takes no effort to let someone know no thanks (unless you feel it would put you in danger or you’ll get an abusive response as has been discussed here).

Relationships are another kettle of fish. IMO there’s no excuse for ghosting in a relationship, unless they are abusive and you are literally disappearing for self-protection.

Ask yourself this question – you aren’t interested romantically in that person BUT would you want to the next person you ARE romantically interested in to see how you are behaving in this situation? Would you want them to see you be the asshole in the shop? If the answer is erm no, I wouldn’t want the girl/boy I really like to see how I ghosted/treated this other person, then you aren’t showing yourself in a very favourable light.