The Worst Part Of Getting Ghosted Is The Unanswered Questions
Timothy Dykes

The Worst Part Of Getting Ghosted Is The Unanswered Questions

Getting ghosted sucks because you have no idea what you’ve done wrong. You’re left with lingering questions that are never going to be answered. You could scroll through your old messages and replay conversations in your head, but you’re never going to know exactly what caused them to bail. You don’t even know if it was your fault.

Maybe they’ve been swamped with work and realized they aren’t in a position to date anyone right now. Maybe an ex reentered their life and they wouldn’t be able to live with themselves if they didn’t give the relationship another shot. Maybe they simply aren’t feeling any sparks with you and don’t want to waste your time. Maybe they have some issues to work on and feel like you deserve better. The reason could be completely innocent. It could have nothing to do with you.

However, since you aren’t given any closure, you’re left considering the worst-case scenarios. Your imagination starts running wild. You aren’t sure whether you came across as too clingy and should tone it down in the future. You aren’t sure whether you took things too slow and should be more forward about your feelings next time around. You don’t know whether you said something wrong that caused them to lose interest in you or whether it happened naturally and was inevitable.

Instead of moving on to someone new, you stay stuck on them for a while. You can’t stop thinking about what caused them to disappear. You start second-guessing every moment you’ve spent with them. Even though their decision to ghost you instead of having a mature, face-to-face conversation with you says more about them than it does about you, it’s still hard to cope with the aftermath. It’s hard to get closure when the other person took away your chance to ask questions, to say goodbye, to have a real conversation.

The worst part of getting ghosted is the unanswered questions. If you knew why they walked away, or if they gave you a warning ahead of time, you would have an easier time dealing with the separation. It would feel like a clean break. Since they dropped off the face of the planet instead, your curiosity gets the best of you. You debate reaching out to them, or stalking their social media for answers, but you don’t want to waste too much time on them. Obviously, they aren’t the right person for you, but you just wish you knew why they felt that way.

Even worse, you’re not exactly sure if their disappearance is permanent. There’s a chance they could be ignoring you for a while, and are planning on returning. There’s a chance their vanishing act is only temporary and they’ll have a good excuse about what happened. The not knowing is the worst part. If you knew they were gone for good, you could move on. You could forget about them and put them in your past. But since you’re unsure what’s going on with them, you’re always wondering whether there will be another text.