Don’t Let The Ghosters Get You Down

What Gumtree and Hinge have in common.

To explain the next paragraph: I’m moving flat, I’m a woman of extremes and I lean towards the ridiculous. That should cover it.

I’m seeing this move as not just as an opportunity to declutter, but as a chance to rid myself of all my worldly goods. Turns out that is surprisingly simple, as all my worldly goods are clothes that I love and won’t part with, but I am selling anything else I own that isn’t a fixture or fitting via all available platforms: your Vinted, your Gumtree, your Nextdoor.com. I am consumed by this process, and get a thrill every time I do a deal. So consumed in fact, that when anyone does present to make a purchase I prefer to meet them by a street lamp, wear a shearling coat and flat cap, count the notes under my coat, and speak in a tone unfamiliar to even my own ear that also involves saying “mate” a lot. I’m even thinking of buying fingerless gloves. The purchasers have no idea that they are indulging me this little role play, but they are glad to get the goods (a magimix nespresso machine and a SHITSHOW jigsaw FYI), so I think it’s a fair deal.

But that is only with the ones who actually show up. Yes, my friends, ghosting is not confined to the dating world. There are people, let’s call one Gumtree David, who will ask for your post code, and your number, arrange to call 12-1pm ON A SATURDAY to pick up your sofa AND JUST NOT SHOW. There are people who will say ‘can I call to pick this up at 4pm?’ and you will say ‘yes you can call and pick this up at 4pm’. But they will not show up at 4pm. You will wonder what fate they have befallen, before realising that laws of averages would suggest that not everyone who stands you up can have befallen a horrible fate, and that this is just what people do. Recreational ghosters. I was so incensed I did a very not-me thing and sent Gumtree David a one word message: LOUSY. I’m sure he had a good laugh at that. Turns out that standing me up on a date to collect a chest of drawers, and thereby fucking up my life admin system, irritates me on a scale that is not tapped into when dating, because (unpopular opinion incoming) I don’t actually think that ghosting is the worst thing ever.

Ghosting gets such a bad reputation, but, and I expect the online equivalent of eggs thrown at my house here, it is a practise I have favoured. My approach is simple: I don’t feel that in agreeing to have a drink with someone that I enter a social contract with an opt out system, where it is assumed that I are complicit unless I declare my intention otherwise. I don’t want to offer explanation as to why I don’t want to go out again and I don’t think I should have to. The why, as I see it, isn’t my dates’ business. I don’t want to have to go down the route of “it’s not you it’s me” platitudes and explain to them where I am, emotionally (ie stunted, LOLs) as that too is none of their business. It is also not their business what I think of them: “I didn’t like your beard” “you were too Irish” “your leather flip phone case gave me the ick” or “I can’t handle one more guy who has read one self help book and thinks he is Freud” - none of that is helpful to hear from a stranger (me) who doesn’t really know them. For all that I didn’t go for, these qualities might make another (better!) woman swoon. It takes a lot of emotional energy to construct sentences that balance honesty, rejection and kindness. I feel that the silence communicates what I have to say best.

I also think the bad rep that ghosting gets is based on the assumption that people take rejection well, and always accept it with grace. In my experience, they do not.

Equally if it’s me on the receiving end, I do not expect a conversation of severance at all. Even if it’s full of “you’re lovely, but…”. I don’t need any more insecurities to bake into my current rotation - I’m at quota. I had a guy a while ago send me a dinner reservation and date and time, and then disappear into thin air, which I did consider rather audacious, but it didn’t upset me. For me, it’s a case of not giving someone else the power to hurt me, and a stranger never will. Shock me, yes, embarrass me, but not upset or hurt. They can’t even disappoint me, really, because they aren’t responsible for managing any expectations, hopes or dreams that I may pin on them - I am.

That said I have had some friends recently who have been savagely ghosted - gone from seeing a person 3/4 times a week for months, to then become uncontactable. Another had offered some emotional support to a guy, and exchanged vulnerabilities, only to find that he had vamoosed. Like she was some sort of emotional rehab service. That I can’t condone, and that is a different thing entirely.

It happens frequently. It is a such a widespread phenomenon so for all the ghostees, you don’t have to be Freud, like one of my collection there, to deduce that there must be an equal but opposite ghoster. So for all who denounce it, there are a lot of people doing it, and staying quiet about it. I suspect that they are your friends and family who you love, the colleague whom you admire, the nice lad from the gym that lives with his mum. People who give to charity and recycle, not scum of the earth as it’s easy to paint them as. Rejection is hard to take in any form, and sometimes it’s easier to channel the shitty feels into demonising the ghoster rather than than let the hurt come and go. The silence should tell you everything you need to know. And remember it is the nature of the digital world we live in, and often no more personal than Gumtree David there, evaporating last Saturday.

Anyway, back to my Del Boy Era. I have sold two separate items to ‘Matt’ on the Nextdoor.com platform. He lives around the corner. He now wants to buy a third item, and has suggested we meet for a drink to exchange. Do you think this is a date? I think it might be, although I already see an ick problem with that insistent second ‘t’ in his name….Stunted, I tell you. Stunted.

Until next week, presuming I don’t lose my sanity somewhere in the moving boxes…

Big love

Una

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