A couple of years ago, BankMyCell did a big study to find out how many of today’s Internet users have experienced ghosting. This means communication with another person abruptly ends. The statistics turned out to be quite revealing:
- 82% of women have experienced ghosting (they were ghosting someone or someone was ghosting them).
- 71% of men have experienced ghosting.
In fact, women ghost someone significantly more often than men — 26% versus 15%.
But why does this happen at all and what makes people simply break off communication without warning? And how can this be prevented? That’s what we’ll be talking about today.
Why do men and women ghost each other on dating platforms?
Let’s continue to study the results of the BankMyCell research in order to better understand the reasons for this behavior towards other people.
TOP 3 reasons why girls ghost:
- 50% — do not want to enter into a conflict and explain their motives.
- 17% — mismatch between the real appearance of a person and their profile photo.
- 10% — feel that the other person is too clingy and pushy.
Among men, the percentage is significantly different:
- 38% — unwillingness to provoke a conflict.
- 28% — mismatch between profile photo and real appearance.
- 16% — obtrusiveness of the potential partner.
Despite the difference in percentage, the main motives of men and women are very similar. But let’s try to look at the situation from the point of view of psychology.
How ghosters justify their behavior and why it’s not right
Perhaps there are three main psychological reasons for ghosting among modern internet users. For some, they are more significant, for others, less so. But one way or another, each ghost is guided by them.
- Avoidance of conflict. Any normal person prefers to avoid conflict if possible. Sometimes, even to the detriment of the interests of other people. For many, it is much easier to walk away from a problem than to try to solve it. “No person — no problem”, that’s how they live. And even realizing that their behavior can harm others, they continue to act that way.
- Fear of attachment or simple self-doubt. Unfortunately this happens very often. Millions of people around the world want to have a romantic relationship, but at the same time they are afraid of getting too attached to someone. Or they are afraid that someone will become strongly attached to them, and in the end they will be disappointed. Others are not confident in themselves and think that when the other person gets to know them better, they’ll definitely not want to continue communication. In fact, such false fears can be implanted from childhood, if a child is rejected, criticized and never praised. They lose any confidence in themselves, and it can be very difficult to restore it.
- Breaking any contact has become too easy. The Internet has changed the very nature of communication between people. One click on the “Block” button, and that’s it — the person will no longer be able to contact you. No need to explain anything to anyone, sort things out, come up with some non-existent motives and the like. Everything is easier. Perhaps too easy…
But ghosters rarely think about how their “victims” feel. But this sort of behavior on your part can be a serious blow to a person. They may not understand at all what happened, what the reason for ignoring them is, and what they did wrong. As a result, a person begins to delve into themselves, their self-esteem falls, and there’s a risk of falling into a prolonged depression and maybe more serious psychological problems. And all because you didn’t bother to explain your motives.
Useful tips on how to make it through ghosting and how to prevent it
Unfortunately, it is impossible to 100% protect yourself from the fact that people will stop communicating with you. Especially on dating sites and apps, it’s quite common. It is curious that the platforms themselves regularly make attempts to combat ghosting. For example, Bumble recently entered into an agreement with the cycle rickshaw service HOST and presented free rides for users of its application. And all the cycle rickshaws were decorated in the signature style of Bumble with the inscription “No Ghosting On Bumble”. A good solution and great advertising.
If you’re still faced with such a phenomenon, we want to offer you five tips on how to survive it more easily and not overthink yourself:
- Don’t try to chase the ghoster and especially don’t try to get your own back on them. This person already made up their mind. Forget about it and move on. And rejoice that fate turned you away from them.
- Don’t collapse in on yourself. You are perfectly fine and did nothing wrong. Keep this thought in mind and move on.
- Take a break from dating apps. Sometimes it can be very helpful to just take a break from Internet dating for a week or two, rethink your approach to it and have a kind of detox.
- Take care of yourself, pay more attention to your wellbeing. Find a hobby, join a gym, take a language course, whatever. This will simultaneously help you take your mind off the negativity and become a better person.
- Find another online dating format. Sometimes this is all it takes to survive ghosting and not face it again.
We advise you to use online video chats if the classic Internet dating formats have exhausted themselves. Pay attention to the following sites:chatrandom.com — video chat with gender and geographic filters, as well as themed chat rooms; emeraldchat.com — online video chat with a karma rating and a great messenger; coconut.tv — video chat with a streaming feature that other users can enjoy and send messages to the streamer; omegle.com — classic chat roulette and one of the first random video chats in the history of the internet; videochatomegle.com — video chat like Omegle with an exclusive gender filter that connects men solely with girls.
In a random video chat, there is no ghosting in the classic sense. If the person doesn’t suit you, you just switch to the next one and no one owes anything to anyone. If you like the other user and you want to continue chatting, you can exchange contacts and continue to communicate in a format convenient for you. Of course, this does not eliminate the risk of ghosting in the future. But that’s a completely different story.
You can overcome the ghosters
Ghosting is a serious problem in modern online dating. It’s rather frustrating not just that such a phenomenon exists, but that it’s very difficult to resist it in any way. Dating sites and apps don’t have special tools to prevent ghosters, and their victims are sometimes not equipped to experience such an attitude towards them.
We hope our advice will help you avoid this unpleasant phenomenon, or at least make it easier to endure. Remember: 3 out of 4 Internet users have experienced ghosting or ignored someone themselves. This is today’s reality.
Don’t take it too personally, don’t try to reconnect with the person who stopped responding to you, and pause your use of dating apps. Sometimes it is enough to switch to the video chat format to make online dating more comfortable, more enjoyable, and more fruitful. Try it, you’ll like it!