Ghost responsibly

By Kira Logan

An unsaved number lights up my phone for the sixth time in the past hour. It’s currently 2:33 a.m. on a Thursday night turned Friday morning and I’m knee deep in blankets and pillows on my couch with my roommates. 

“Yo u tey a?” is plastered across my phone, something I can only translate as a drunken attempt for “Yo, you awake?” My eyes roll as I put my phone in between the cushions, my own embodiment of “out of sight, out of mind.” 

I wake up in the morning to three more texts from the same unsaved number. My mind already mentally checked out from the conversation and the random person whose connection to my life I can’t place, I decide to not respond. This isn’t the first time, either — call me unempathetic, that’s fine. I believe that in certain circumstances, silence is kinder than the performance of politeness. It’s not always my job to soften the blow on the inevitable, and I don’t think it’s a crime for me to be a bit picky about who I spend my time talking to.

When I fall, I fall hard — as I’m sure the endless articles about love and loss reflect. So, when someone who I deem not worthy of my conversation starters (aka very nuanced would-you-rather questions) peers into my life, I have the prerogative to not respond. I don’t think it’s hurtful or offensive to require someone to meet my standards before I let them into the corners of my heart. And besides, it takes a lot of energy for me to respond to someone when I have hundreds of pages of readings to do for class. 

It’s equally as offensive to drunk text me for a hookup as it is for me to not respond to said text. If you believe that I am someone who will put up with half-assed effort in an attempt to share a meaningless night together, then you deserve the silence that follows. 

My past situationships don’t deserve closure in one final text, just to have the upper hand and say they ghosted me. We love pretending that closure is noble when, in my personal experience, most times it’s just performative. 

However, just like everything else, context matters. Chronic ghosters who disappear mid-long term relationships or friendships owe more than a “Sorry, I wasn’t on my phone!” text. Ghosting after a level of emotional intimacy becomes cruel, and we’ve all been on the other side of it. My level of ghosting is just cutting to the chase and skipping the fluff of responding to careless texts. 

And maybe ghosting feels harsh because the reality check is that we aren’t entitled to each other’s unlimited time and attention. Not everyone owes a detailed explanation to their thought process, and sure that hurts our egos a bit, but it’s valid nonetheless. 

I also believe we’ve become attached to buzzwords we see on social media. Me not responding to a drunk text or taking an extra few days to respond to my hometown friends isn’t necessarily ghosting — I’m just taking my time. In a culture with such an emphasis for rapid, constant communication, sometimes it’s okay to naturally let something fizzle out. It’s not malicious, it’s accurate. 

So, saying I’m “pro-ghosting” might sound flawed out of context: I too have been at someone’s beck and call, begging them to provide me with the same amount of care for my heart as I have for theirs. However, dragging every single person through the theatrics of a pseudo “breakup” conversation just to clear your psyche isn’t always the right answer. Explaining yourself to every single romantic situation that you’re emotionally entangled with is almost worse than ghosting: it’s humiliating for the other person! Closure doesn’t always close the door in the way you hope it would.

I’m willing to back up ghosting’s cause in the name of efficiency, despite ghosting being cruel in certain situations. This argument is not advertising to switch platforms to Snapchat and leave your eight-month situationship on read (been there), but rather a general reminder that no one is immediately entitled to your time, attention and most importantly: your response.

Ghosting isn’t necessarily ideal or noble, but it’s not evil either. It’s an imperfect response in a deeply imperfect dating world and with an “always on” social culture around us. Let’s stop villainizing the ghoster and instead learn to read subliminal messages.

Kira Logan can be seen responding, “Sorry, I was in the shower!” to a text sent two weeks ago.

The irony of ghosting

By Lucy Dixon

It’s the end of August, and I’m sitting in my childhood bedroom. The drawing you made me for Christmas — a portrait of our shared favorite artist — looms on the wall above my bed as my thumb hovers carefully over the send button. The text box holds the five words I’ve been thinking all summer: “Did I do something wrong?”

We graduated from high school on a warm evening in May. The ceremony was long but sentimental. I felt pretty in my dress, and the band was playing Taylor Swift as you hugged me on the baseball field. We said our goodbyes to the rest of our class and hopped into your Jeep, where we’d spent many a lunch period hiding from the rest of our friends. The two of us were equally thrilled to leave the sweltering heat of our hometown in the fall, and the summer felt full of opportunity. You got a job at our second-favorite local coffee chain and my dad was taking me to Europe in a few weeks. I promised to send pictures, and you promised to reply. 

In June, I sent you photos of the Trevi Fountain and a Spotify link to a song I thought you’d like. You recounted something funny your dog did and sent me a short story you’d written about a wistful summer in Maine. When I got back into town we took sunset drives and listened to The Beatles at obscene volumes. We drank coffee and wandered around bookstores. Before long, it was your turn to leave town. You sent me pictures of the sea and rants about your family. I sent you videos of me and my guitar. Eventually, at some point that I can’t currently recall, you stopped responding. 

In July I texted you a picture from another trip I’d taken. It was a photo of a big blue house on a sunny day, the real-life mansion from one of our favorite movies. Maybe you’d just missed my last few texts.  

Radio silence. I caved and texted you again a few days later: “How are you?” to no avail. 

I went through something akin to the stages of grief. At first, I was confused — what could I have possibly done to cause this? What happened that I missed? Then I was devastated, because how could you throw away what was, at one point, the most important friendship in my life without so much as a text? And then, I got angry. 

I’m an incredibly docile person — it takes a lot to make me mad. But August brought with it a deep, inner rage I didn’t even know I was capable of. It was like there was molten lava in my veins, and at each reminder of your presence I was brought closer to a rolling boil. I un-added you on BeReal because it hurt just looking at your face. I posted the angry lyrics of a Fiona Apple song on my Instagram story because I needed you to know that you hurt me. And finally, because I couldn’t stand it anymore, I wrote that text: “Did I do something wrong?”

You responded with a list of all the things I had done wrong over the course of our friendship. From forgetting to text to posting those lyrics to “Paper Bag.” I’m not going to write this and deny I did anything wrong. I definitely could have sent you a few more texts that summer, and I probably shouldn’t have posted that particular song. But people make mistakes — especially young, emotionally volatile teenage people. 

I apologized for everything I’d done (or more accurately, hadn’t done) that summer. I told you that I wished you had communicated these things earlier. You apologized for letting it all pile up. We went back to a semi-normal but perhaps more distant state, and in September we both went off to school. 

That was three years ago. We still text here and there, and over the holidays we’ll grab a cup of coffee at our second-favorite local coffee chain. I like to think that we’ve forgiven each other for our young and emotionally volatile ways. But the truth is that it’s never been the same. Because when you ghost someone, you establish that you do not respect them enough to give them closure. And I don’t think I’ve ever gotten that out of my head.  

I’m not sure why they call it “ghosting,” but it sure seems ironic. Because sometimes it feels like you haunt me. I see you everywhere. In the yellow glow of a European street lamp and on a crisp autumn morning, when I put my Carole King record on my roommate’s player. I see you on my wall, where the drawing you made me still hangs all these years later. It’s torn at the edges now, but it’s still beautiful. 

Lucy Dixon is sentimental by chance, a writer by choice.