Tag: parent

Have you ever had someone related to you drop out of your life for years, or have them only say they will never talk to you for the rest of your life, but give you no reason why they are doing this? This is called “ghosting.” The term “ghosting” became mainstream about seven years ago alongside the surge in online dating; it became an official entry in the Merriam-Webster dictionary in 2017. Interestingly, though, the term was actually used as far back as the 1990s.

On one hand, everyone has a right to privacy and staying safe in these days of online profiling and dating. However, ghosting in the 2000s has been taken to new lows, with grown children deciding to cut loving parents out of their lives, with no explanations. There have been cases where the adult children have shunned parents and even grandparents, hurting them to the core.

I asked one engaged woman, who told me matter-of-factly, that she hasn’t spoken to her mother in years. When I asked her why she decided to do that, she simply shrugged off the question, not aware that it was herself she was also hurting. Another woman said she was “getting rid of bad chi,” yet others in her circle who knew her well had no such memories in that relationship. There are sad stories of grandparents who lost one of their adult grandchildren to ghosting. One of the grandparents who had been ghosted confided in me that the ghosting adult grandchild was not to be allowed to attend his funeral, since his hurt was so deep.

While ghosting may be especially hurtful to those on the receiving end, causing feelings of ostracism and rejection, ghosting is a passive-aggressive form of emotional abuse, a type of silent treatment or stonewalling behavior, and emotional cruelty.

According to Psychology Today, when asked why people ghost, the article said, “People who ghost are primarily focused on avoiding their own emotional discomfort and they aren’t thinking about how it makes the other person feel.”

The lack of mutual social connections for people who met online also means there are fewer social consequences of dropping out of another’s life. The more it happens, either to themselves or their friends, the more people become desensitized to it, and the more likely they are to do it to someone else.

• “Ghosting is one of the cruelest forms of torture dating can serve up.”

This post is not addressing harmful relationships that include violence, extortion, or situations where your life is in jeopardy.

Ghosting does not only occur in dating. It is also emotionally painful in mother/daughter, father/son, grandparent/grandchild, and sibling relationships.

Intentional brokenness and heartless depravity are part of the ghosting craze feeding the frenzy of hurt feelings these days, even in immediate families. It happens in human relationships when people decide to give up on each other void of empathy and ordinary care. The ghosts decides to remove themselves without explanation, from what they predetermine to be the end of the relationship.

The only problem with this action is that they also harm themselves in the process. It is a show of lack of character development and positive self-esteem at the root of such ghosts.

Many articles have been written about how bad ghosting makes the victim, the ghostee feel, but this post centers around the dysfunction the ghost brings on to his and/or herself.

When this happens in families, most ghosts do not know ahead of time that they have chosen a life of their own making that includes replacing normalcy with the constant attention from then on to shun, justify, and blow things out of proportion, in order to continue on in part of their life they have cut off. They have to constantly protect their online presence, if they have one at all. Everything is cloaked with altered names and usually threats to other family members that if they go against the ill wishes of the ghost, then they too will be ghosted. It is a constant being in the fight or flight mode in their mental and emotional state, always being on guard to not cross paths or be detected.

This is not normal. Just because it has become more common place these days, does not mean it is becoming more normal. It is a dysfunctional, mental crutch. It is a lack of character development, lack of honesty, and lack of integrity. In psychological terms, those getting between the ghost and the ghostee are triangulating.

Those triangulating stop any possible healing in the relationship between the ghost and the ghostee, often saying they simply do not want to get in the middle of the situation. But once threatened by the ghost, they are already in the middle. Often the reason for that is that the person who is triangulating, as mentioned above, has been threatened to be cut out of the life of the ghost if they do not go along with this disastrous manipulation and obligation technique, usurping the free will of the person caught in the middle.

Fear is the motivating force.

If the person the ghost is ghosting shows up unexpectedly at a social event, they will flee in order to keep up the pretense that their ghostee is not really there. The fragile glass house of the ghost might crumble into shards of denial.

Ghosts will tell you that they do not want to be around what they perceive as the negative energy anymore, as if that will work without any harm to themselves. The problem with this self-delusion is two-fold. First, they are planting seeds of dysfunction. Second, from the moment they act by ghosting others, they must then live in a pretend-reality that the other does not exist, when in actual reality, they do.

Ghosting is different from communicating, person-to-person, especially to a family member, you no longer want in your life, coming to a mutual understanding of the end of the relationship. The key here is communication. Sometimes relationships do not work out. That is life. The healthy way to handle the end of a relationship is for mutual communication, however difficult.

There are valid reasons for walking away from relationships that are not working. It is the way mature adults decide to handle relationships, either with empathy or cruelty that makes the difference in ghosting.

Can we ever go back and fix the relationships we broke by our walking away through lack of empathy?

Ghosts tend to have tunnel vision, choosing to only see or remember the parts of their lives that they keep a constant drum beat of the offences, arguments, or one major eruption by which they felt slighted or injured. They keep its beat as close as the beat of their heart, hardening their hearts with every dysfunctional memory.

Some ghosts do not want to heal. Their pride and ego means more to them than the relationship. There is a mantra learned by every energy worker, holistic healer and everyone in the healthcare field. It is, “Are you ready, willing and able to heal?”

It is up to the ghost whether or not they want to heal. No one will heal if they do not want to. It is not the perceived offender who is stopping their healing. It’s themselves.

As in all relationships, more than one person is involved. It requires both parties being ready, willing and able to heal. If both parties want to heal, healing can take place.

There are some situations where the ugly head of gear, obligation, and guilt (aka FOG) are used as motivating forces. These outside forces, including manipulation, can be applied by others in the circle of the ghost. Ghosts may be under the manipulation of others, that if they do not conform, they themselves will be ostracized from the other relationship, club, or social circle.

All manipulators have painfully learned the lessons of guilt and manipulation by being manipulated themselves. It can become their survival technique, and how to get others to do their bidding.

For example, has anyone ever said to you, “If you talk with so-and-so, I will never talk to you again?” Also, manipulators often force others to manipulate, such as statements like, “I do not want you ever to talk about so-and-so to me. If you do, I will never talk to you again either.”

How do you like being manipulated?

Does that work for you?

Have you given your personal power away to the person manipulating you?

Do you want to heal emotionally?

The dawning of social media spawned a growing social awkwardness. In some cases, with the breaking down of communication, it became easier not dealing with people face-to-face. Why talk when you can text? Why say whole words when you can shorten to a few letters? Why have the need to communicate at all?

While social media and dating apps became popular in the 2000s, the more common reason for the malaise of ghosting is lack of empathy. We see lack of empathy all around us, in relationships, social settings, and even politics.

There is an inherent ambiguity in ghosting—the person being ghosted does not know whether they are being rejected for something they or somebody else did, whether the person doing it is ashamed or does not know how to break up, or is scared of hurting the other’s feelings.

In the dating scenario, the ghost may simply not want to date the victim anymore, or may have started dating someone else while keeping the ghostee as a reserve option in case a relationship does not work out with said other date, as well as they can be facing serious problems in their lives. It may become impossible to tell which it is, making it stressful and painful.

While “ghosting” refers to “disappearing from a special someone’s life mysteriously and without explanation,” numerous similar behaviors have been identified, that include various degrees of continued connection with a target. For example, “Caspering” is a “friendly alternative to ghosting. Instead of ignoring someone, you’re honest about how you feel, and let them down gently before disappearing from their lives.” A possible response to ghosting has been suggested with “ghostbusting”: forcing the “ghoster” to reply.

Then there is the sentimental and positive, but also ghost-related in origin, “Marleying,” which is “when an ex gets in touch with you at Christmas out of nowhere”. “Cloaking” is another related behavior that occurs when an online match blocks you on all apps while standing you up for a date. The term was coined by Mashable journalist Rachel Thompson after she was stood up for a date by a Hinge match and blocked on all apps.

Whatever newfangled terms we come up with, nothing replaces honesty and integrity in relationships as much as face-to-face communication, especially in the making-up phase.

Reconciliation is always possible as long as both people are still living. Life is too short to continue ghosting. It takes self-correction, forgiveness of self and others, and the magnanimity of spirit to be empathetic rather than cruel.

God Bless Everyone Everywhere