The following is an excerpt from F*ckboys Are Boring: A Gay Man’s Guide to Dating (For Everyone) by Ryan Sheldon, available now wherever books are sold. Follow Ryan on Instagram and TikTok.
Why Do People Ghost?
When I was choosing unavailable men and getting ghosted all the time, it was baffling to me. You can suck my d*ck and be inside me but have a problem calling or texting me to say it’s not working out? While examining my old tendency to pick dates who allowed me to relive my abuse and abandonment issues, I realized something. These acts of ghosting had very little to do with me. But my habit of pursuing men who were destined to abandon me was a pattern I chose and accepted willingly. It was time for me to learn healthy relationship behaviors that were never modeled for me in childhood. Even a basic understanding of how to end a relationship would save me a world of pain.
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As someone who has been ghosted, and done a bit of ghosting myself, I’ve gained some valuable insights as to why people ghost.
Spoiler, it rarely has anything to do with the person being ghosted. It’s probably not your fault, and honestly, they likely did you a favor since people who ghost are rarely ready for a healthy relationship. Still, if it’s keeping you awake at night, wondering why you’ve been ghosted, a list of reasons might set your mind at ease.
Reasons people ghost
- Fear of intimacy
- Insecurity
- Fear of telling the truth/facing the truth about themselves
- Embarrassment about their bad behavior
- Too immature to have a grown-up conversation that ends things respectfully
- Can’t deal with the thought of hurting someone (which usually signals unresolved childhood trauma and not being able to deal with difficult emotions)
- Fear of conflict/confrontation (see above regarding unresolved childhood trauma)
- Lack of courage
- Fear of growing up
- A sociopathic lack of basic empathy
The truth is none of us make it out of this life unscathed. So many of us in the dating world are just playing out the familiar relationship patterns we experienced in childhood. As your friendly guide and former mayor of the ghost town of dysfunctional situation-ships, I understand the struggle. If you’re dating in this modern Tinder-box of trauma where every swipe potentially strikes a “match,” you’ve likely been ghosted once or twice.
When I got ghosted, I thought it was all about me. I would obsess over whether they thought I was too fat, if I said something wrong, or if I just wasn’t lovable enough. I never considered that I was dealing with complicated people (just like me) with their own pasts that they’d learned to survive using defense mechanisms, such as ghosting. I wish I could go back to talk to my past self, when I was so disturbed at being ghosted, and say, “It’s not your fault and has very little to do with you.” To think of all of the suffering from taking things personally I could have avoided when it wasn’t about me at all.
I try to live without regret as much as possible. Without these stories, I wouldn’t be writing this book. But even though I don’t regret the past, I do appreciate the freedom that comes with learning from my mistakes. Sure, I allowed ghosting to put me in a cage of shame and despair, but I didn’t stay there. I picked the lock and came out with notes for everyone else. Yes, I was obsessing about the guys who’d ghosted me, but I was also doing my research. That is when I learned that ghosting can be nuanced. If you’re not careful, it can be difficult to detect because it is sometimes disguised as something else. While I understand and have compassion for people who ghost, I don’t have to fall for it ever again. And I can teach others how to spot the various types of ghosting, so you don’t fall for it either.
As it turns out, there are more ways than one to ghost a person. Believe me, I’ve experienced them all, from both sides.
Types of Ghosting
Here are the different ways of abandoning someone in the dating world, paraphrased from Nate Swanner’s The Manual.
Ghosting—make like a ghost and vanish without a trace. This term is used for anyone who has dropped off the face of the earth, suddenly stops talking to you, won’t take your calls, won’t respond to your texts, blocks you on social media, and becomes the ghost of f*ckboy past. It’s a thing people do when they don’t have the courage to break up with someone in a dignified way. Or they got what they wanted and have no further interest in pursuing a relationship. This leaves the ghostee feeling confused, hurt, and angry . . . not that the ghoster would notice.
Haunting—after ghosting you and disappearing for a significant amount of time, the haunter will stealth-stalk your social media, maybe liking one of your posts or sending an emoji reaction to one of your stories. This low-effort engagement is like low self-esteem bait. If you take it, they’ll know you don’t have enough respect for yourself to ignore or block them. They’ll view your eagerness as low hanging fruit, which they’ll pluck, take one bite of, and toss back in the dating pool before ghosting you again. It’s best to board up this ghost back in his little haunted house.
Submarining—rather than the half-hearted, more subtle approach of a haunter, this f*ckboy will suddenly pop back up in your life like a submarine resurfacing out of the water. It’s always when you least expect it and usually when you’ve just gotten over them. The submariner is eager to rekindle the flame, most likely because they’ve already tainted all the dating waters, and nobody wants anything to do with them. They may use the passage of time to shield them from the accountability of their behavior in the past, hoping you will have forgotten about it. They’ll act like nothing happened and try to lure you into another situation-ship, only to slink back into the dark waters of the oblivion until next time. When that submarine pops up, it’s best to push it right back down and keep moving.
Zombieing—the zombie will hobble back to you, sometimes years after they vanished, wounded and contrite, hoping to resurrect a dead connection. This zombie may mumble some insincere apologies or make false promises and insist they’ve changed. But if you pay attention, you can smell the decaying flesh of their old betrayals as if it were rotting off their bones in front of you. Let that putrid stench remind you not to make this grave mistake again.
Orbiting—this one’s for the sneaky little phantoms. They’ll ghost you, then creep on your social media pages to find out what you’re up to. They may be curious, or they may be looking for a reason to pop back into your life, like when they see that you’re happy and fulfilled and they want to steal that joy or status for themselves. While you’re doing your best to move on, they’ll lurk in your orbit, ready to strike when the moment is right. If you’re worried they might enter your atmosphere again, the block button is a great way to eject them from your life so they can’t stealth-stalk you.
Breadcrumbing—just like Hansel and Gretel, the kids in the German fable that dropped breadcrumbs in the woods so they could find their way home, a breadcrumber will drop a trail of tiny “love” morsels so you’ll follow them into the f*ckboy woods. They may drop subtle hints to your friends that they’re in town and want to see you again. Or they’ll send you a small text here, a social media comment there, until you’re gobbling up those crumbs and skipping gleefully right into the witch’s hut to be cooked in the oven of loneliness. Hot tip: if they’re stringing you along, they don’t like you; they like the attention they’re getting from you. As soon as they get more favorable attention from someone else, they’ll drop you like the witch dropped Hansel in her oven. Stick to hearty meals and leave the breadcrumbs for the birds.
The following is an excerpt from F*ckboys Are Boring: A Gay Man’s Guide to Dating (For Everyone) by Ryan Sheldon, available now wherever books are sold. Follow Ryan on Instagram and TikTok.
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