There’s a particular sense of shame and embarrassment attached to the experience of being ghosted. It often ends up as the butt of a joke and is on par with psychopathic dates you’ve tried to avoid.
Ghosting doesn’t just happen after embarrassing first dates – it can happen to anyone at any point in their relationship. Even though it’s a relatively common risk of dating, it doesn’t mean it’s not a problem that can cause significant damage to those who experience it.
Being ghosted can have significant long-term effects on a person. It can impact someone’s self-confidence and affect how they pursue future relationships or meet anyone new. The person may blame themselves for their relationship abruptly ending and question what exactly went wrong.
It’s never easy to move on from a breakup – it’s even harder when you’ve been ghosted, and you’re missing the closure you need. It’s not easy, but it’s not impossible.
Reframing the situation and seeing yourself as the victim and not the problem helps process the situation. You can then find the inner strength to make a conscious decision not to let this breakup define your future relationships.
Is your long-term boyfriend or girlfriend ghosting you? Not sure what to do next? Here are some helpful suggestions on how to begin to move on.
1. Allow yourself to go through all of your emotions.
Being ghosted will take you on a rollercoaster of emotions, especially when it’s from a serious relationship.
You might feel embarrassed, shocked, or even find yourself in denial. You could be confused, angry, upset, or worst of all, start thinking that there’s something wrong with you that made your ex leave.
Being ghosted doesn’t make the relationship less meaningful or easier to get over. When you’ve been ghosted by someone you genuinely cared about, it’s not as simple as just laughing off their disappearance or pretending the relationship never happened. The ending of any relationship is hard, especially without closure.
Allow yourself time to come to terms with the end of your relationship – but do so in your own way. You will never get the answers or reason why you were ghosted. Instead of focusing your energy on understanding why your ex left, focus on healing yourself.
Take time to work through all the emotions you’re experiencing in this breakup and put effort into building your self-confidence and self-love. The more you can love yourself, the stronger you’ll become. The goal is to grow strong enough to let go of this relationship and leave it behind you.
2. Don’t make any rash decisions.
When we’re hurt, we can allow our emotions to get the better of us and lead us to do things we later regret.
Being ghosted in a relationship is no exception to this. When you realize you’ve been ghosted, you’ll naturally want your ex to give you an explanation for their actions.
You might feel compelled to keep messaging or calling, go looking for them or even call their friends and family. These decisions may be unhealthy ones motivated by anger or shock.
If they still don’t answer you or can’t be found, it will only add to the embarrassment, upset, and loss you already feel.
If someone has decided to ghost you, they’re deliberately avoiding any type of confrontation. They don’t want to face the pain they’ve caused you. Trying to contact them (either for closure or insulting them) might only make you feel worse if they continue not to respond.
If you’ve made up your mind to try to contact your ex for a sense of closure, at least sleep on the idea. Don’t make any lasting decisions when you’re emotional. If you still feel the same way when you’re in a calmer state of mind, then you can make the decision that’s best for you.
3. Talk to someone.
After you’ve been ghosted, you might feel yourself trying to downplay the situation. You may not be ready to admit how things ended between you and your ex to anyone, including those close to you. But being ghosted is a painful and challenging experience. It’s not something you should have to cope with on your own.
Being ghosted by your boyfriend or girlfriend robs you of a sense of closure. It’s difficult to piece together how and why your relationship ended the way it did and know how to grow from the situation in a positive way when you don’t know what went wrong in the first place.
Such a sudden and unexplained ending can shake your self-confidence to its core. Talking through what you’re feeling in that moment can be a cathartic exercise that will help you find closure. While you might have a close friend or family member that you feel comfortable speaking to, consider talking to a trained professional.
No feeling is too small or unimportant to speak to a therapist about. You don’t have to have a “problem” to talk to someone or need help. Speaking to a professional can help you understand your relationship and yourself. They can also teach you how to process your feelings healthily and support you as you heal.
4. Don’t over-analyze the situation.
If you’ve been left suddenly by an ex, you might find yourself analyzing your part in the relationship. You may wonder if you could have done anything differently to change how things ended.
The problem with analyzing a relationship like this is that you’re only going to waste your time. The sad reality is that you’ll never know why your ex ended the relationship in the way they did. You might think you understand but can never be sure when you can’t talk to them about it. You’ll only make yourself more upset by focusing on such a negative situation.
Over-analyzing your relationship will keep you stuck in an unhealthy mental state and stop you from being able to move on with your life. As hard as it is to let go of your ex without answers to your questions, you have to try if you’re ever going to move on.
Don’t let them keep a hold over you by being stuck on questions you’ll never have the answers to. They took control of how things ended between you, but you can take back control over how you want to move forward in your life.
5. Learn that sometimes no closure is the closure you need.
One of the worst parts of being ghosted after a long time together is that you have no explanation or understanding of why the relationship failed.
There’s no final argument, no chance to say how you feel. You probably have a lot of things you’d like to tell your ex, but you’re cheated of the opportunity. You might even feel like you want them back to give the relationship a second chance.
As much as it feels like you’ve had no closure from the relationship, the fact that your ex has ghosted you could be all the closure you need. It takes a particular type of person to leave a serious relationship without facing their ex and giving them the respect of a proper breakup. It’s an immature and selfish choice, and that’s not the character of a person you want to be in a long-term relationship with.
They’ve shown that they don’t value your feelings the same way they do their own. You deserve more than that in a partner. If you had the chance to talk to them one more time, do you believe you’d get anything positive from the interaction? Or would it just hurt more to see them after knowing they were so willing to run away?
As much as it hurts right now, one day, you’ll hopefully realize it was for the best. You’ve dodged a bullet with your ex. They weren’t the person you thought they were. Yes, your ex decided to end your relationship without your input, which is unfair. But by walking out, they saved you from wasting more of your time with someone who didn’t appreciate and value you the way they should.
6. Don’t let this bring you down.
It’s easier said than done, and it’s difficult not to let the situation knock your self-esteem.
Being ghosted can affect the way you see yourself. It’s natural to question what you may have done wrong or why someone you loved treated you this way. It’s also easy to blame yourself for someone else’s actions in a situation without any explanation or closure.
As difficult as it is to keep those negative thoughts under control, you have to try to remind yourself that your ex’s decision to ghost you was theirs alone. It had nothing to do with you. Even if the relationship was coming to an end, your ex had the opportunity to end things maturely and respectfully. Ghosting someone is a selfish and easy option. Their decision to ghost is not a reflection of you but of who they are.
Just because your boyfriend or girlfriend decided to ghost you doesn’t mean that you are not worthy of love and respect. As you heal and overcome this moment, you’ll come through the other side a stronger person. You will be more in tune with yourself and the healthy relationship you deserve.
7. Their decision is not a reflection of you.
Feelings don’t come with an on and off switch. As much as this situation hurts, you can’t just turn off your feelings for your ex. You could find yourself excusing their faults by blaming their behavior on yourself. It’s hard to come to terms that someone you love could choose to do something so hurtful to you.
Blaming yourself won’t get you anywhere and will only make you feel worse. No one deserves to be ghosted without an explanation. It doesn’t matter if there were things you could have done differently or actions you think contributed to the breakup.
When you’re in a relationship with someone, you owe each other the respect of breaking up face to face. The reason your ex left you might have nothing to do with you and everything to do with how they were feeling in that moment. But they chose not to give you the courtesy of sticking around to tell you for sure.
Everyone has a choice about how they choose to handle a situation, so you can’t blame yourself for your ex’s actions. Their decision to ghost you was theirs alone and they could have chosen to do things differently.
Although it’s hard, try not to take their choices personally. Instead, try to be thankful that you’re no longer with someone who would rather take the easy route than the right one.
8. Ask one last time for an explanation.
There’s no easy way to get proper closure from a partner that’s ghosted you.
If they’ve decided to stop replying and have disappeared, then there’s not much you can do to make them have a conversation with you they don’t want to have.
You don’t want to be someone who leaves their ex multiple voicemails and emotional messages or contacts their friends and family to find them when they don’t want to be found. You have more self-respect than running after someone who didn’t care enough to say goodbye to you.
However, it can be challenging to come to a place where you can move on from the relationship when you don’t have the opportunity to express how you feel. Even if you don’t get a response, saying your piece one final time could be what you need to do to help you in the healing process.
If you reach out to your ex, be prepared not to get a response from them. It’s unlikely you’ll get the answers you want even if you ask the questions. But writing one final message telling them how you feel can be a cathartic exercise to help you find your sense of closure.
Try not to do this when your emotions are raw. There’s no need for hurtful language and to be argumentative. Think carefully about what you want to say to make them realize how their actions have affected you. Even if they never reply, they might still read or listen to your message. This is your chance to make them understand that ghosting is never okay.
You may not get the answers you want. Your ex might not even read or listen to your message. It won’t make the pain go away and but at least you’ve allowed yourself to say goodbye, even if they didn’t. You might find a sense of closure in knowing that you’ve finally said all you wanted to say.
9. Think about what you can learn from this experience.
Focusing on anything but the negatives is challenging if your relationship ends badly.
A serious relationship shouldn’t be defined by just one moment, and definitely not just by how it ended. Though painful to think of right now, it’s essential to learn to look back on the good times you had together. As time passes, you will be able to heal and gain perspective.
Exes are a chance to learn about yourself, what you need out of a relationship, and the type of partner that’s right for you. At the time, you may not have noticed the red flags, but in hindsight, you’ll be able to see why your ex was not the right fit for you.
Upon reflection, you may realize that you jumped into the relationship too quickly before you saw those red flags for what they were. Or maybe learn that everything got too serious too soon for you to genuinely know the person you were falling in love with.
This relationship ended because it wasn’t the right one for you. This experience should not hold you back from looking for a healthy relationship that meets your needs.
Use this experience to learn more about who you are, how strong you are emotionally, and what you need in a partner. This reflection will help you recognize the right person for you when they come along.
10. Get back out there.
Getting into a new relationship isn’t a way to fix how you feel about an old one. You should only get into a relationship when you’re happy and secure in yourself so you can enjoy your time with someone who brings out the best in you. And you should not rely on a relationship for the sole purpose of feeling loved.
Once you’ve taken some time to get over your ex and focus on yourself, getting back on the dating scene is a great way to help you move on with your life.
It can be scary to put yourself out there after being ghosted. When you’ve had your trust broken so wholly, it’s going to be challenging to open up to someone new and believe that the same thing won’t happen again.
You have to remember that everyone is different. There are millions of people in the world, and no two people are the same. Even if you don’t meet your perfect match right away, dating will remind you that not all people act in the same way. It will help you gain the perspective that this is one bad experience.
Dating can boost your confidence and remind you of the attractive, positive person you can be. Meeting other people might even help you see how wrong your ex was for you, after all.
Don’t deny yourself all the significant parts that come with a relationship just because you’ve experienced the bad. Refusing to date because of your ex gives them a hold over you that they don’t deserve to have. They didn’t value you, but that’s not to say that someone else won’t. Allow yourself to trust that there are good people out there and start enjoying yourself again.
11. Think about what you’d gain if you had a chance to talk to your ex.
After being ghosted by your long-term partner, you might tell yourself that all you need is one more conversation with them, and then you’d be able to move on.
You’d tell your ex how you feel, maybe even ask them to give your relationship another go, or at least try to understand why they left.
You can spend time imagining how the conversation might go and convince yourself that this is all you need to move on with your life. But if you’re honest with yourself, do you think you’d feel better if you spoke to them again?
Your ex was prepared to end your relationship without explaining and live with themselves having never said goodbye. They had the chance to talk to you, to break up with you maturely, but they chose not to. What makes you think they would offer you any more than that if you saw them again?
If you managed to get a response from them and agreed to meet, would the experience bring any positivity to your life? If you had the opportunity to get back with them, could you ever trust that they wouldn’t ghost you again?
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Ghosting isn’t taken as seriously as it should be, and the very act is usually laughed off or hidden through embarrassment. It can, however, have a significant negative psychological impact on someone who has been through it.
When you’re one-half of a relationship, you’re trusting someone else with your happiness. It’s hard to come to terms with the fact that they would leave you so abruptly and with so little thought for the pain they’ve caused you.
You are not responsible for your ex’s actions, but you do have to suffer the consequences of them. You’ll have to find a way to learn to live with the unanswered questions you have and be able to trust in a relationship again.
Ghosting is a selfish act. It’s not taking accountability for what you’re leaving behind and ignoring a situation by shutting it out. It’s a quick fix for the person walking away, but not for anyone else.
As someone who was ghosted, you have the job of learning to rely on yourself. You’ve had your heart broken, but you have to have faith that you’re strong enough to move past this.
Not every relationship will end like this. There will be a voice in your head making you doubt yourself and other partners, but it’s your choice whether or not to listen to it.
When you find someone ready to appreciate the love you have to give, they won’t walk away and ghost you.
Use this horrible situation as a stepping stone towards finding the right person for you. It is a way to gain a whole new appreciation of yourself and your ability to regroup, renew, and come out stronger in the end.
You may also like:
- 14 Reasons Why People Ghost (+ How To Get Over Being Ghosted)
- 6 Things To Do If A Guy/Girl Ghosts You And Then Comes Back
- 11 Tips To Move On From A Relationship Without Closure
- My Boyfriend Broke Up With Me Suddenly For No Reason. Now What?
- Why Do Breakups Hurt So Much? The Pain Of A Relationship Ending
- How To Be Single And Happy After A Long Relationship Ends
