Hello swell verse. Today I wanted to talk about ghosting and both sides of it. Really. So I used to see ghosting essentially as women protecting themselves from men, because if you see the way that some men react when they get rejected, especially across the internet, when there isn't as much of a social filter, shall we say it can be really scary. Some of these reactions are just not comparable to the situation
Dominique Davis
@Dominique · 1:29
But like you said, ghosting can also be done to protect the individual involved. I know that ghosting can be very hurtful no matter which way you dice it. But if it's done ultimately to protect one's safety, then I understand why it's a thing. Even if it does hurt the other person involved. I will never say that ghosting is wrong or right or that is black and white, because oftentimes it happens to be a shade of Gray
Tasha Frank
@NLOFrank · 4:27
And that might not be because you're not a person that they can talk about it, but they feel their own insecurities. There's just so many things. We human beings are so complex, and dating is just such a roller coaster. It's great. It's exciting. But there's also so many things that make you nervous and speaking to people like technology wise and meeting them. There's all sorts of different things. So there could be millions of reasons why this happened
Sontaia Briggs
@PKBriggs · 3:40
We've all done this thing where we don't communicate to another individual that we have created some type of relationship with. When I say relationship, everything is a relationship. You and I are in a relationship. We're in conversation about different things. A mutual type of respect is built and human nature, and just the laws of human connection requires rules. Thus relationships. So people have a sort of cavalier and dismissive way of dealing with folks
Charlie Olivieri
@Charlieri · 2:07
It's just the way that things end really aren't great. And it does take, I would say, a little longer to get over than if you were straight up reject it. I think when we are rejected, we can have our friends rally around us. We have, like, a narrative. We have a story in our brains on how to deal with that. And I think ghosting is kind of new, and there's no social kind of instructions for how to deal with that
Jason Mogollon
@Binx75075 · 2:48
Hey, good afternoon, guys. Hopefully you're doing well. It's a beautiful day here in Dallas, so Unfortunately, I have been the party subjected to ghosting. Okay, both on a relationship basis and friends. Here's my outlook. You know what? I'm straight 100 with people, right? I give everybody the same level of treatment. I'm an open book right now
Melissa Mccarter
@lissahoop · 2:18
What happens if they come back and they say, hey, I was having a mental health break, and I just couldn't deal with people right now. And I'm sorry that you were the subject of this. Let's reconnect. And obviously I think that most people would be okay. Yeah, I understand. Thank you for telling me now. I wish you hadn't done that, but we can't to move forward
Melissa Mccarter
@lissahoop · 3:44
That is not just a matter of necessarily the person saying, I don't want to interact with you if you're exclusively interacting them on text or virtually or whatever the person might be saying, I'm just tired of this and that if you reach out to them, if you have the capacity or the ability to do that and say, hey, let's connect in person
Charlie Olivieri
@Charlieri · 2:50
But also, I think the difference with Ghosting is that it's usually a romantic context, which gives us a lot of expectations, really on the other person and like to build that connection and maintain it. It's something that isn't yet established. Whereas when you have old friends that you keep reconnecting with, there's an established dynamic, I guess
Melissa Mccarter
@lissahoop · 4:27
So maybe if it is a case of people who are establishing romantic relationships virtually and then getting ghosted in the process for whatever reason, and it has nothing to do with friendships, then I would say that's part of the danger of trying to establish romantic relationships online virtually that maybe the average person you say should tell you, hey, I need a mental health break or, hey, I'm just not interested or just be upfront. But I would say that the online interaction in some ways disposable
Charlie Olivieri
@Charlieri · 2:48
Hi, Martha. So yeah, ghosting is usually in reference to, like, a romantic connection, often around dating apps. That kind of thing. I thought your comment about how intimacy you get a false sense of of intimacy online. I think that's very true, because it's so easy to share, like, words and personal experiences with each other. But you're not actually sharing, like, lived experiences in the moment with that person. So you might be sharing a lot of stuff
Melissa Mccarter
@lissahoop · 4:08
I remember dating apps first coming on the scene when I was younger and I went on a few dates off of Cupid. I don't remember what it was called, but like mass dot com or whatever the OkCupid, whatever it was back then, they were horrible. And part of the reasons they were horrible is because we didn't have lived experience to come out of
Tasha Frank
@NLOFrank · 4:33
And I think we spend more time together, actually, than people who live just down the road from each other when they're first dating. So I just wanted to put that out there. I attempted to do Swell post about it a little bit more about kind of how it can work and some of the creative things that you can do. Maybe that will help people to understand how it can work. But again, not every relationship works for everyone. So I completely understand
Charlie Olivieri
@Charlieri · 2:36
Hi, Tasha, thank you so much for your response. I'm going to tag Melissa here as well, just like, just to prompt her to go and listen to your post just now because I was trying to to think of ways. I was like, I know online relationships like, do you work? And it is possible. But I was trying to think of how to convey that. And obviously you've just swooped in and conveyed it perfectly
Tasha Frank
@NLOFrank · 2:11
I even went as far as saying to my brother that you can't be in a relationship with somebody online. I said a few years later I was like, really sorry for saying that because you clearly can. And there's loaded tips as well as to how to maintain long distance relationships or relationships online, which I think is really useful, especially considering the lockdowns we've had. And hopefully that's not going to happen again. But we don't know we've had one