There are few things more humiliating, belittling and crushing to your confidence than realising that you have been Ghosted.

Often, the signs that start are so subtle, we tend to plug a lot of different excuses and explanations for why the communication is just changing ever so slightly, before the realisation begins to hit us.

It’s a horrible, creeping, and miserable feeling that we soon stop being able to deny is there – nobody should ever have to experience it when there is such an abundance of tools at our fingertips to deliver a quick, often painful but always necessary message.

I don’t think Ghosting is a new form of behaviour – versions of this will have existed for centuries, but the medium is the message and unfortunately, the ability for people to do it nowadays is so much easier – even though our ability to be in constant contact with people remains at an all-time high.

The ghosting epidemic

I believe ghosting has become an epidemic because connections are made and broken so quickly with the advance of social media and instant-fix gratification technology.

I have been ghosted after a couple of dates, a couple of months and I have been ghosted after a +1-year long Relationship abruptly ended, and where I was totally denied the opportunity to ask any questions.

Whilst I put that particular experience in my Dating Hall of Horrors, I’m not sure I would change it because it taught me a hell of a lot about my own resilience, ability to rise up from heartbreak and genuinely call out human bullshit.

I think in our minds (or maybe just mine?!) we always imagine ghosting to accompany the douchiest of people – people who we automatically assume would be rude in person, nonchalant, arrogant, and just not particularly nice.

We don’t associate ghosting with people who are generally good, decent, respectful, and helpful to others around them in their everyday lives.

The person who is first on the phone to help their friends out. The person who volunteers at shelters, stands up avidly for family values, or passionately gets behind charitable causes and helps sick children or the elderly. Surely those types don’t ghost, do they?

They know what it is to be a good person, we can see it from their behaviour toward others and how their live their daily lives. So why did they ghost us?

The aftermath of ghosting

There are a lot of resources online which talk about ghosting, and how to get over being ghosted. I think we can all agree on the fact that ghosting is very much about them as a person, their weaknesses, their ‘true colours’ being revealed and that we have dodged a bullet early on. All good and well.

Somehow though, that doesn’t make us feel a great deal better, does it? Yes, we can accept that their ghosting us wasn’t about us, but it’s still left us feeling really deflated, defeated and nervous to ever date again.

After all, if it just comes down to them and their behaviour, what’s to say this won’t keep happening on repeat and it is out of our control?

I outline here what to do after being ghosted, from the perspective of these techniques really helping me fine-tune my mind and my thinking about the situation I ended up in on several occasions.

As I say across my blog, there’s nothing I advise or write about that I haven’t done myself, so I hope these tips bring you strength and relief after this piss-poor behaviour you’ve just experienced.

I truly believe that whilst you can acknowledge the person for who they truly are (even if it was the first sign you ever saw of red-flag behaviour from them), that you can somehow put yourself back in the driver’s seat through these points and speed away from this awful experience.

How to get over being ghosted

What do we typically do post-ghosting, and what should we do instead?

1. Stop trying to psycho-analyse them to prevent it happening again

We take this road which we think is about learning their behaviour better, but in fact we are making it all about us. By ghosting, they did this to US, but they presented SOMETHING ELSE AND SOMETHING BETTER to the world and those around them.

Therefore, we deduce that there was something about us that was just ‘not enough’ to warrant a decent exit or basic human manners, and somehow, we make it about ourselves and our worth.

We assume they wouldn’t have ever done this to anyone else, that we’re doomed to have this happen on repeat, and we can never gain any future confidence for putting ourselves out there again.

We think if we can understand them, their motives, their thoughts, and basically do a deep-dive inventory of them for the whole time we were together, then we can crack the code somehow and then ensure it won’t happen again.

The unfolding

Part of dating (and being in a committed relationship) is that the person we are with unfolds.

Read that again.

Part of dating (and being in a committed relationship) is that the person we are with unfolds.

What I am saying is that everyone steps forward with their best feet, but time reveals true characteristics, weaknesses, and behaviours at short or long-rates.

Sometimes, the first hideous part of someone you are seeing is a year into your relationship, and it might be in the form of them disappearing altogether.

When my +1 year relationship ended abruptly with a nice dose of ghosting afterwards when I tried to ask him about why he had seemingly vanished, people asked me questions like, “You must have seen some of these traits in him when you were together?”.

No. No I did not, and this was not me talking with my blinkers on. This was truly the first vibrant red flag I had seen in that whole time. The point is, it didn’t matter that it was a year into the relationship. He had unfolded.

Ghosting is always ‘the unfolding’. It’s the risk that accompanies us choosing to put ourselves out there to date and potentially be hurt. You cannot analyse them and what they did, to safeguard yourself against it happening again.

What to do instead?

You can minimise the bounce-back rate.

You can acknowledge what has occurred, that it hurts, but that you have just seen their true red-flag colours via the lowest and weakest form of communication.

STOP trying to psychoanalyse why the person has ghosted you in the first place, what’s going on in their life right now, and talking about it all the time. It is a tremendous waste of time, energy and emotions.

By them choosing to behave this way and show so little regard to you and your wellbeing, do you honestly want to lose time to this person by ‘getting over them?’

2. Stop trying to seek CLOSURE – create your own

People invest so much of their energy into things that they cannot control in dating (I should know) and never more so than ghosting.

Ghosting and our anguish around it links right back to our desire for closure in a relationship.

Much like wanting to know and trying to know are recipes for wasting time and extraordinarily huge amounts of energy, the thing about ghosting is that it is not simply a feature of dating – it is a feature of life. If you’re in business, then chances are that you have been ghosted before.

You worked hard on establishing a working partnership with a client and you were meeting regularly, discussing briefs, taking them out for lunch and then suddenly, your pitch went unanswered. Maybe they palmed you off with a message about getting back in touch later, or maybe they just stopped answering your calls.

Closure is never something you get from them – even if they DO give you something ‘closure-related’ I can bet that if you are in such a terrible place after you have been ghosted, you’ll put new meaning on it or flip-flap with variations of what they said.

Closure is just not necessary for you get better and move on from.

Guy Winch is a brilliant writer and really grasps the agony of heartbreak. He says that instead of needing an answer or an explanation to be able to move on, just make up one and go with it.

The truth they might provide you with may not even help you move on at all, and it’s just an excuse to stay invested in them whilst you ‘wait’ for your closure pass to waive you through the door of recovery.

3. Self-analyse yourself instead of them

Another common (and often ‘delicious’) approach we can take is to sling mud and verbal abuse at them – generally in our heads, but also directly at them if the occasion presents itself.

We blame it all on them and the fact that they are completely and utterly devoid of any human decency.

They have issues left right and centre, they could never have shown up to be in an adult, mature relationship with us and they revealed their true colours in the most gruesome way.

We declare from the rooftops that it is their loss and good-riddance you ghosting-asshole. Our friends love to join this party with us and will be all too happy to send expletives their way.

This feels good in the moment, but I think it can be reductive in the long-term as that ‘high’ wears off.

Empowering yourself

Possibly my unpopular opinion, but what if instead of throwing ammo at them, you turned this on its head and put it back on yourself, in a way that empowers you and builds you up after this devastating experience, but also lets you take some personal action to run with and grow from?

You’ll never hear me talk in cheery Pollyanna terms, and I’ll NEVER put cheesy spins or ‘the cult of positivity’ on genuinely awful and heart-breaking situations, which ghosting definitely is. But hear me out.

Ghosting happens everywhere and not just in the direction of man to woman – in dating it happens in all directions, between genders, in all different parts of life.

Let go of what you can’t control

What we need to get a grip on is the parts of this situation that we can control, and really learn to let go of the parts that we can’t.

After being ghosted, we are very good at judging other people, and saying that we want other people to behave in a certain way without necessarily living up to that standard ourselves

I try to always write about personal accountability as the starting point for any topic, but never ever to the point of delivering you ‘brutal honesty’.

That’s not only because any type of recovery starts and ends with you, but because sometimes some self-introspection can be genuinely useful for your next move.

The self-analysis piece needs to come in when we just dismiss things, saying things like ‘Oh he just left because he was not ready for an actual relationship’ or well-meaning friends chime in with ‘He just left because he wasn’t good enough for you’.

If you never asked the question, ‘What could I have done differently?’ then I believe you’re missing crucial opportunities to grow and to reflect.

By getting introspective and looking at how you reacted and responded to this situation, ask yourself what you can then bring to the next person that MIGHT be right for you?

Getting better is always the answer

Responding to this situation by improving and growing is always going to be the answer and you’ll probably thank this ghosting loser one day for it.

Much like the self-help movement which now gears toward pinning everything you do and every action you take in the name of ‘taking care of yourself’ above anything else, sometimes you need to pull yourself up on YOU too. Ghosting is no exception.

We need to hit the right balance of not being ignorant post-ghosting and trying to figure out more about maybe WHY we’re getting this behaviour.

By doing this, we also need to ensure we are not heading into self-flagellation territory, which occurs when we blame it all on ourselves, and say that it’s all about us and it’s personal and we are not good enough.

Don’t see ghosting as a loss of control

Few situations leave you more powerless than ghosting – after all, you didn’t even get the chance to defend yourself, the relationship, or the chance to keep it going. You might see it as the ultimate loss of control, but that just isn’t true.

There are parts of it you can’t control – him leaving – but there are parts of the situation you can control and that’s the part of us that proactively looks in the mirror – not looking at him for answers -but looking and asking yourself ‘What do I need to learn about this situation?’

Answers might be:

• Whilst I’m entitled to feel devastated, perhaps my reaction is showing that I was investing too much too quickly. Next time, I’m going to let it roll a bit slower.
• There was a side of myself that I didn’t show this person yet, and I think maybe I need to do that next time.
• EVEN if I did XYZ which might have scared him off, someone who was right and ready for me in the long-term would have worked through that with me, not run off and ghosted me.
• I’ve been left feeling so lost and lonely after this, it’s shown I need to build my life out with more interesting content before the next person comes along. Ghosting will always hurt, but I don’t need to perhaps feel this way about my life and like there is literally nothing in it without another romantic partner
• I had such a catastrophic reaction to this, that it’s shown me I actually need to stick up for myself a lot more and be a better friend to myself before dating – I’m pinning far too much on them for my ‘ticket out’.

The Winner’s Mindset

Even in situations where not everything was your fault? Well, that to me is the winner’s mindset. ‘It may not all be my fault, but there are always ways that I can improve and bring more to the table – maybe not for the loser who ghosted me, but for the guy who deserves my attention’.

Learn to ignore what you cannot control, focus on the parts of yourself you can control, and for heavens’ sake stop trying to get answers from the one person that is not going to give you one (and if they do it will not be an honest one)

Final thoughts: How To Get Over Being Ghosted

Unlike other relationship endings where you tell yourself with gritted teeth that somehow YOU WILL BE GRATEFUL FOR THIS IF IT KILLS YOU, with ghosting, you GENUINELY need to be grateful for it because you got out in good time.

After ghosting, you have an excellent window to stand UP for yourself and empower yourself to get better each time you go into the ring of life and dating.

How to get over being ghosted can feel like a tall order, but of all the challenging situations out there, I think you can really bring up some of the biggest drivers to launch you forward and toward what you seek.

Write down how you want the people in your life to be, and then act that way too. Be what you want in someone else. When it doesn’t match, instead of feeling agony if you get ghosted, it’ll be a sting.

I am always here for you. If you’d like to work with me personally, you can check out my coaching tab or email me

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