What Does It Mean to Be Ghosted?

Physical and emotional pain are on the same neural pathway in the brain. According to research studies, social rejection can cause the same level of pain that an injury to the body would cause because the pain is activated in the same region of the brain. Some studies have even shown that taking pain-relief medications like Tylenol can alleviate the emotional pain. 

This may help explain why many people try to numb the hurt they’re feeling by drinking alcohol or taking other drugs or medications. What they’re doing is really just numbing the part of the brain that is creating feelings of emotional distress.

It can be devastating. People who have been ghosted will often spend hours trying to figure out what went wrong, and the pain of that can be intense

Being ghosted can also cause anger, which may actually be a healthier response to the situation than wallowing in sadness. 

Mental health professionals have found that ghosting can be classified as a form of emotional cruelty. In an online survey, those who experienced breadcrumbing (leading someone on) or a combination of breadcrumbing and ghosting were shown to have an increased feeling of loneliness and helplessness and/or a decreased satisfaction with life.

While ghosting has always happened on some level, it’s now on a different scale in the modern world. This likely has to do with the huge cultural shift that has occurred in dating trends, especially with the internet. 

Not everybody looking for someone to date wants to be in a committed and exclusive relationship. And with dating apps like Tinder, many users are simply looking for something to relieve their boredom without fear of judgment. Because you’re often meeting people who aren’t in your social circle, there’s also less social accountability. It becomes a lot easier to play the field and move on from relationships quickly when there are fewer consequences for doing so. 

Online dating apps also offer people access to a greater pool of potential dating partners with a wide variety of looks and personalities. When there are so many options to choose from, finding an ideal partner suddenly seems more possible. If a current relationship doesn’t seem to meet your ideal standards, you can just shop for the next person.

Ghosting is very common. In fact, a 5-year-old observational study showed that almost 50% of people in the dating world have either been ghosted or ghosted someone themselves. 

There are no specific personality traits that make one person more likely to ghost someone than another. Even decent, good people may ghost someone at some point in their lives, since cutting off contact with someone is often much easier than confronting them.