“If it’s bothering you that much, you should text him,” said my friend, sipping a pint in the April sunshine. “I always call men out if they ghost me. But you have to be completely prepared to not get a reply back.”
It had been weeks since I’d last had contact from the person I’d been dating. I’d asked a mate for his number in the late hours of a brightly lit house party: he had dark eyes and planned dates to jazz gigs and rooftop bars, sent me playlists and voice notes rather than small-talk texts, and didn’t squirm when I explained why I don’t shave my armpits. It felt fuzzy, almost like it could be going somewhere. I wanted to understand what changed.
Ghosting is one of those terms—like breadcrumbing, gaslighting, or love-bombing—that’s thrown around flippantly enough for us to forget what it really means. It’s dropped into conversations for effect at dinner parties and scattered into every other dating column. And although we’ve come to accept ghosting as just another senseless word in the vernacular of modern dating, it doesn’t make it any less painful, or embarrassing, when it happens to you.
Maybe it’s a pride thing, but we seem to have been conditioned into thinking that the only rational response is to ignore ghosters and move on: It proves we’re too good for them, anyway. As a result, in the decade-odd that dating apps have been around, ghosting has become accepted as the norm. We can tell ourselves it helps us to “dodge bullets” and avoid awkward conversations that nobody is particularly keen to have, but most of the time, it’s just plain rude.
Ghosting is associated with a digital generation of daters, one precariously close to experiencing social media burnout. It’s normal for algorithmically determined suitors to hide behind screens, skirting around accountability and read receipts. I’m complicit: It’s easier, and it’s pretty much all I’ve ever known. But it feels like the tide is starting to turn. An increasing number of people are deleting “the apps” to find dates IRL, and those who remain in the cycle of swipes are grappling with a new set of standards.
Anti-ghosting is well and truly here, and (hopefully) here to stay. My fellow Gen-Zers are popularizing the term “anti-ghosting” on TikTok, sharing examples of anti-ghost texts, asking their grandmothers to “rate” their replies, and videoing themselves typing anti-ghosting prompts into ChatGPT. There are even a handful of new, anti-ghost dating apps on the market, such as Elate and Snack.
“It’s nice to know that you can gain some kind of closure from ghosters by pulling the sheet from over their heads,” says Polly, a production assistant from Glasgow, who called out a guy she’d been dating on Hinge after he ghosted her when she confessed her feelings. “Not only does a prompted response validate the hurt and anger you felt during their silence—reassuring you that you didn’t make this whole thing up—but it means that you can truly let those feelings, as well as that person, go. I think everyone should call ghosters out.”
“We use the term ‘ghosting’ to excuse poor behavior,” adds dating coach Hayley Bystram. “In dating, there should either be progress or closure: it’s kinder to allow someone to move on. It’s very hard to truly figure out someone else’s reason for ending things, so rather than playing a guessing game, you can draw a line under the relationship by asking them to own their actions.”
Natalie, a sales manager in Leeds, was ghosted by a guy she’d been dating for six months. “I went through all the emotions under the sun when it happened,” she says. “Then, it was just anger. Eventually, I texted him and asked what was going on, and he replied instantly. I think if you’ve met someone, even just once, you owe them a bit of an explanation.”
Clearly, the answers won’t always be easy to hear—and that’s if you get them at all. “I was happy that I stood up for myself, but I don’t think that I necessarily felt better afterwards,” says Lilian, who confronted someone who ghosted her and stood her up for a date they’d confirmed half an hour before. “It just reinforced the fact that he viewed me as unimportant and didn’t have any concern for my time. It turns out he had a work fundraiser and could have texted me at any point throughout the evening, as I sat there, so embarrassed, for more than an hour.”
I spent my journey home from the pub that evening drafting a message in the notes page of my phone. I felt frustrated—not just because it dug up a feeling of disrespect which I’d started to bury, or because “giving in” shattered the cool, sophisticated image I’d been trying to pull off. It was because it forced me to recognize that there was an imbalance of feelings, or at least standards, and I had to properly accept that.
In just over an hour, the reply I’d been waiting so long for popped up on my phone screen. I’d been preparing to cringe, or at least feel a surge of anger. Instead, I felt relief, like cream had been slathered over a large mosquito bite. The text confirmed what I already suspected: he wasn’t a bad guy, but I wasn’t a priority. The difference now was that I knew.