Why is "Ghosting" Socially Acceptable?

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Er?no you're not! Nobody is entitled to anything. Part of the problem here is closure isn't the same thing for everyone. If you keep chasing a girl down because you didn't get what you thought was supposed to be your "closure," you're going to draw the ire of the justice system. Let it go.


I'll give you this one: It is in extreme poor taste to fade someone you've had sex with.

Just a me thing, I think sex before marriage is a bad idea. But given the role of sex in our present day, um?there is no implied anything once you have sex with someone. For me, there was this girl I broke up with, and we ended up sleeping together a few times after we broke up because we were trying to be friends and we were always hanging out to begin with. I put the brakes on fast with that one after she started telling my friends we were getting back together. Another time, there was this girl I got involved with after a little innocent flirtation went too far. We agreed that a relationship was NOT the best thing for us at the time given her situation with her fiancé. My point being that having sex with someone isn't an unwritten exclusive ANYTHING (ironically, I think I accidentally got her in trouble one night?she told her fiancé I was helping her study for a test. He showed up at my place looking for her, and I honestly had no idea where she was. I wasn't quick enough to cover for her, and when it finally dawned on me what was going on, I couldn't help but wonder what it was she was actually doing that particular night. My first thought was how glad I was we'd already broken off that fling because she otherwise very easily could have been in my bed that night!).

Anyway, the point being if something is exclusive, it shouldn't just be implied that it's exclusive. That's something you really need to talk through and you both agree you're not going to see other people. You can't just assume that just because you had sex.

Having said that, even if it's not an exclusive relationship, it's a poor thing to do to fade someone you had sex with. I think you need to wake up together in the morning. If it's not going to happen again, or if we were just too drunk/high, we're rebounding after a bad breakup, or if it was just ONE night of fun, you need to say so. He/she calls you up, you say, "Hey, last night was GREAT! You're a sweet guy/gal, but I'm not looking for a serious relationship right now. MAYBE we can get together again, but I just don't see that happening right now. I can be cool if you can be cool, but if that's a problem, maybe we shouldn't see each other again for a while." There you go. Short, sweet, no explanation needed.


You been put in the creep zone? Personally, I don't care anymore. I'm well aware that I'm perceived as creepy. I can't help it. I can't change it. So I don't worry about it. But I don't think it's a cop out. If someone doesn't want to hang out with you, they don't want to hang out with you. Doesn't matter what the reason is. You do best to just let that go and accept it.

I also don't worry about what militant man-hating feminists have to say. They aren't part of my life. I don't hang out with those kinds of girls. I don't care to attract their attention. I'm not trying to impress them. They're not going to get close enough to me to hurt my feelings. They might as well not exist in my world. That said, if someone labels me creepy, I want to know why. If it's because I sound funny when I talk, because I walk with a weird gate, because my posture is a little odd, or because I don't know when to walk away from a conversation?fine, I can't do anything about that. Haters gonna hate. If I actually DID or SAID anything and it's my fault and something I CAN change, then the kinds of people I hang out with are going to quietly and subtly clue me in so I don't keep making an idiot of myself. I just prefer not to associate with haters, and I've largely been happier for it.

I think anything that's done commonly enough becomes socially acceptable and this is no exception. Most people probably don't like having it done to them, but they still do it "because lots of people do it". It's kind of a trivial answer to your question, but I really think it's the truth. (And why do lots of people do it? Because it's the easy way, the lazy way, the way that avoids responsibility for a decision.)

If someone did that to me I would never be able to maintain even the tiniest amount of respect for them. They would become a waste of oxygen in my view, not entitled to even the most basic courtesy if I was to ever run into them again. This is effectively what they've said to me by acting as if I don't exist. And all it would have taken them to avoid that is a one-line email with a simple statement like "I've decided that I'm not interesting in taking things any further". (That may still lower my respect for them somewhat, depending on the situation, but it would be far, far better than "ghosting".)

If I ever needed another reason to never try online dating, here it is. My impression is that this kind of behaviour is particularly acceptable with people you've met online.

Sure, we're all "entitled" to act like a***holes towards each other. That doesn't mean it's a good idea.

OK, so I suppose treating someone badly may be justified if they've treated you badly first, but your statement still makes no sense to me. If you want to give them the benefit of the doubt (in case the MySpace angle wasn't intentional), couldn't you say you're not interested without stating a reason? If you're sure that they purposefully tried to deceive you then couldn't you tell them in a not-nice way? At least that way they can link their wrongful action to its consequence, rather than explain away the consequence.

Two wrongs do not make a right, so I'm not going to insult them. If they're rejected after the first date, they usually know it was because their picture was deceptive. Girls on dating sites use MySpace angles for a reason.

What it comes down to is that people are cowards and would rather just stop talking then be honest. It's really that simple.

Safety? I guess if they told the guy in person they could have reason to fear for their safety. But what about a text message or something similar?

As for wanting to text girls who've dumped me, it's not because I have some pipedream that I can get back together with them, it's not that I want to stalk them and it's not that I want to berate them for dumping me... it's because I want feedback so I can improve for the next girl. It's so confusing when they ghost me with no reason given. I can only speculate as to what my mistake was and that makes it hard to improve.

You only have other guys to blame for this, though. Most often when a guy asks a girl why she dumped him, it's so he can make a show of changing to get back in her good graces. The girl doesn't want to be "won back." She wants to move on, and no amount of explanation is going to fix this.

I'd need to know an exact reason. I'm really good looking, intelligent, and funny, so I'd need a specific reason for rejection, or I think the woman was crazy for rejecting a chance with me. Also, people have different definitions of early stages of relationship. I've been with girls that I consider us in the early stages before we even went on the first date.

I've never become aggressive on a rejection. I won't, unless it is public and it becomes obvious that the girl is wanting to try to mock me. Even then I'd just cuss her out or something.

But that isn't likely. The rejections I've had have all been cordial and I haven't had a problem with them. There are lots of reasons for rejection, and few if any are about me as a person.

The no closure thing is weird though. I had a girl I dated three times, things were great, we were talking, texting, ect, then out of the blue she completely stops contacting me. Nothing, for days. I had to google her address, come over to her house, and ask what was up. I said I was fine if she was no longer interested, just tell me, it's not a problem. She could have gotten in a wreck or something, so I take no contact to not immediately mean she isn't interested.

For the sex before marriage thing, I don't ever plan on getting married, and I consider sex to be a normal part of a relationship.

Last edited by rainydaykid on 26 Oct 2014, 1:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

So what actually happened with that girl, then?

She told me she wasn't interested any more, and I was ok with that. Found out later she was dating some ugly bald dude, to each his own. We are both redheads though, she said it felt like it would be incest, I was like, you saw my pic before we started dating. So whatever.

^That's one of the creepiest damn things I've ever heard. For future reference, that's a fantastic way to get yourself a restraining order. You may feel entitled to an answer, and I don't blame you for that, but this is taking it waaay too far.

So let me start of by saying that I believe you when you say you only wanted closure. That said, let's consider this from her perspective:

She went full no-contact, which is usually taken to mean (at least by "neurotypicals") that she is no longer interested in you. You then (again, from her perspective) tracked her down and confronted her at her house. You can imagine that doing this makes her feel seriously anxious, at a minimum. You guys hash things out, and she does partly believe you when you say you're just looking for closure, but she can never be sure. I think that's the salient point. Just as you don't know why she broke contact, she can never know your motivation for seeking it out.

If she went no-contact because she feared how you'd react, then your tracking her down had the inadvertent effect of validating her wariness.

It doesn't spare anyone pain though. If you get rejected after several dates there's no way to avoid feeling hurt. It's easier to let go and move on if you hear it officially. Ignoring doesn't spare anyone anything.

I don't see it being too far at all. It was a simple and basic measure.

I'll reword it: it spares you additional pain. "I don't think we match" spares you pain relative to "I think you're an awkward loser." Even if both are true (and note that the second statement being true just means that she "thinks" you're an awkward loser, not that you're an "awkward loser" in fact), I think most of us would prefer the former kind of rejection. Similarly, no-contact seems to spare us pain relative to "I don't think we match." I don't think that ends up being the case, but I see the sense in such an approach.

I can't understand guys like this. If someone dumps me once with no reason I will never be able to get together with them again, even if THEY come to me. I won't get attached to someone I can't trust. If I don't trust someone they're gone. I'm never going to play a fool and dance before someone I want to "win over".

"Creepy is a vs feminist liberal cop out" -- no actually it's not. It's listening to your intuition, when it's telling you there is something "off" about a person. It's an old instinct kicking in to protect you. Go read Gavin de Becker's "The Gift of Fear" if ya don't believe me. It is my subconscious telling me to get the heck away from a dude who may be dangerous.

The "unwritten rule that having sex = exclusive relationship"?

No such rule exists. You're exclusive when you have a conversation with the other person and you both AGREE to be exclusive and not one second before!!


You feel ENTITLED to closure, to an explanation from a girl you barely know and have spent a grand total of, say, 14 hrs over 5-6 dates with. You WANTING closure doesn't ENTITLE you to it. Ever.