A Ghost Story

October 19, 2022

Once upon a time, in a land far, far, away called NOVA (Northern Virginia) there was a girl (32-year-old-woman) who lived high up in a tall tower (4 floors of a suburban town home). In her tower, she waited patiently for her Prince Charming (any man with cute face, a 401k and a dark sense of humor) to come and rescue her from her tower to take her on grand adventures (wineries in the country, plays in the City, the Olive Garden). While she waited in her tower, she watched reruns of Sister Wives on TLC, wrote in her diary (blog), sent postcards (Snapchats) to friends in far away lands and scoured local wanted ads (dating apps) for men in need of a beautiful princess (moderately attractive data scientist) to take to balls (weddings and hockey games). One night after a long evening of reading (scrolling and swiping), she retired to her bed chamber (king-sized bed with the unicorn pillow) looking forward to a long slumber (4 hours like Bill Clinton in the 90’s, interrupted by pee breaks every 2 hours). In the night, however, she was stirred by a sound – the sound came from her cell phone and it sounded like a text! Her face was illuminated in the dark room (thanks to black out curtains from Bed, Bath and Beyond) by the light of the cellular contraption. Her glowing face showed signs of confusion, followed by comprehension and finally horror as she realized THE TEXT WAS AN AD FOR ALLBIRDS SNEAKERS INSTEAD OF A FLIRTY MESSAGE FROM RYAN THE ACCOUNTANT WHO TOOK HER FOR ICE CREAM IN THE VILLAGE LAST WEEK. *scary horror movie sounds*. It was then that the maiden realized that her phone was HAUNTED by Ryan’s ghost (and the ghosts of many, many other young men).

Okay that’s not exactly Jane Eyre (which is a terrific ghost story to read in October, btw), but I needed a cute introduction to my prose on ghosting. You know by now that I complain about ghosting all the time. For those who don’t know, ghosting is the act of simply not responding to someone’s attempt at communication with you – either by ignoring phone calls and texts, or blocking phone numbers and social media accounts. It is the single most bothersome part of dating for me because I think it’s the most hurtful thing you can do to a person who has been vulnerable enough to go on a date with you. Someone has taken time out of their schedule to give both of you a chance to make a connection and has tried to present their authentic self to you for the sole purpose of your judgement – like a beauty pageant from hell with harder interview questions – and your response to that is to disappear. You ignore their texts, pretend that you don’t know who they are, or that you fell off of a cliff as soon as you walked away from the date. That’s sooooo shitty. It’s not just shitty, it’s cowardly and wasteful – it’s your way of saying to someone “I was so not attracted to you that I have no interest in treating you like a human that I have met before, or being your friend, or even putting you out of your misery while you wait for me to call. I have enough friends and aquaintances in this life of quiet desperation, and I have no room on my roster for you.”

Ghosting is a despicable act (in my humble opinion) that 1) is usually motivated by good-ish intentions and 2) has been normalized in society so much that people don’t feel guilty over it very often. I think people ghost because they don’t want to have an awkward conversation. I’ve written about this in previous posts – giving someone negative feedback or simply saying “I’m not interested” is one of the hardest things to do. Most people don’t want to say things to you that may hurt your feelings or may make you feel insecure or upset. So instead of doing that, they say nothing. The nothing is so deafening though. You ever do something bad when you were a kid and your mom was so mad or exasperated with you that she didn’t even yell? She just walked away from you and said nothing? That’s how ghosting feels to me. It feels like I was such a bad date for you that you can’t even thank me for my time or ask me to be your friend, or tell me “thanks but no thanks” – like you’re so disgusted by the whole ordeal that you just want to walk away and pretend it didn’t happen. Which is almost certainly not how the other person is feeling – at least not every time. I’ve been ghosted after really good dates where we laughed the whole time and kissed at the end of the night. I’ve been ghosted after sex. I’ve been ghosted after seeing a person for weeks. I’ve been ghosted twice by the same person in one decade after he swore to me he was sorry and that the first time was a youthful mistake. It happens all the time, and most of the time, I have no idea why.

It hurts me so much that I keep myself accountable to a strict moral code when it comes to ghosting. If you’ve never online dated, you may not know what it’s like. Basically you are on an app and you have many texting conversations going at one time, but most of them go absolutely no where. It’s basically impossible to avoid ghosting to some extent – if a conversation is fizzling, it’s easier for both of you to just stop replying than to have some conversation about how it isn’t going to work. My ghosting rules kick in when I meet someone face-to-face. If I have a date with someone or I talk to them on a video chat, I insist on keeping a promise to myself that I will not ghost them without communicating my feelings first.

So far, I have stayed true to this promise. Things did get a little shaky for me last week though. I met this really nice guy on an app. He was good looking, seemed to have a good job, wasn’t married to my knowledge – check, check, check. He is one of these people who insists on having a video chat conversation before a date. Not my preference, but ok. He kind of cold called me one evening after work, like he was trying to catch me at my ugliest or something – but I answered and talked to him. The conversation was just uncomfortable. He kept telling me how gorgeous I was but was interrupting me to tell me that. I’d be mid-sentence talking about Maudie or my job and he’d insert “Rebecca you’re so gorgeous” into the conversation. We got off the phone and I thought “well that wasn’t great but maybe he was nervous.” A couple nights later, he cold called me again. I happened to be wearing the same oversized house shirt I had on when we last spoke, and he commented on it. I joked “Plot twist, this is the only shirt I own.” His face fell and he said “Oh I’m sorry I didn’t realize.” Ah, so sarcasm, not his thing. Got it. Then he noticed my earrings and told me they were gorgeous. We chatted for a few more minutes and he brought up the earrings three more times and asked me where I got them. At the end he said “I’m so interested in you, Rebecca.” The vibe made me want to crawl out of my skin, and even now I’m having a hard time describing the cause of the alarm bells that went off in my head.

I know what you’re going to say. Gee, Rebecca, sounds like the guy was being super nice to you and you’re so used to jerks that you can’t handle it. But I’m telling you, this was not nice. I felt like I was being worked over by some professional who has learned to tell women what they want to hear. He complimented my eyebrows, for Christ’s sake. Red flags started popping up in my perifiery and my whole body and soul told me to run. I wanted to block his number and never live though another conversation like that again. Like I said, I can barely articulate why, but I knew I couldn’t go out on my date with him. As with most situations in my life, a phone call with my best friend Kristin gave me the courage I needed to keep my own promise to myself, and I called this guy and told him the truth – well a piece of the truth anyway – that I didn’t think our personalities were meshing well. He took it so well and was really kind about the whole thing. I was glad I told him. But to be honest, he called me past midnight twice this week and I am starting to regret not hitting that “block” button.

Oddly enough, the night after I went through this to-ghost-or-not-to-ghost ordeal (Macbeth! Another great ghost story for your spooky October!) I got a text from a man who ghosted me in August. He stood me up at a restaurant for date 1, actually showed up for date 2, kissed me goodnight and asked me out for date 3, and then got hit by a bus…or so I thought. Out of the blue, he texted me to apologize for not communicating. Just a simple text, saying hey I’m sorry for being a little shit head. Here’s a picture of me making fun of him with a friend, and you can tell by my reaction to her, I was kind of having an “Is that you, God?!” moment – a bit in awe of the coincidence. I made fun of him, but in truth, I appreciated that I was on whatever little list of amends he was running down that day. You always experience these little paper cuts in dating, small rejections that compound over time like the interest on your mortgage, and you kind of walk through that pain assuming that the culprits don’t even realize that their actions are wrong or hurtful. Some people don’t apologize or try to make things right, and I have a lot of respect for people who do. But I really think this could be an example of putting good into the universe and watching that good come back around. Anyway, I responded to let him know I was glad he enjoyed his vacations and to let me know if he ever needs a friend.

Anyway that’s my ghost story – the story of how I didn’t allow myself to turn into a ghost (*yet*, there’s still plenty of time in this life for me to act like a shit head too) and got visited by Casper (the friendly ghost). The true hero of this story is Nala the pitbull who is “loving the cooler temps with less bugs, by the way.” Maudie agrees with that statement.