This touches upon a not-well-understood aspect of how we value things: the role of scarcity. You nailed it by diagnosing the ability for people to "ghost" as being rooted in having too many options, which is another way of saying a lack of scarcity. And I phrase it as "a lack of scarcity" and not "abundance" because of the positive connotation of the latter. We're so far beyond Dunbar's number in the internet age, that our relationships break down to crude opportunity-cost calculations.
The other issue is that, in an increasingly atomized society with strong institutional support, reputation doesn't mean much any more. In cultures and places where institutional support is weak, you see an emphasis on reputation and community, not because those people are more moral, but because relying on your neighbor could save your life in the middle of the night when the wolves are literally or figuratively circling. Hence, reputation becomes the most important asset a person has, which is where you get the extremes of honor culture where people will kill over "disrespect". Ghosting, in that sense, is the total opposite state of affairs; it's another example of us as a society and culture being victims of our own success.
Amazing work as always, Tamara. It doesn't surprise me in the least that you've never been ghosted.
Andrew, this is such a rich, incisive comment because you’ve captured something most people overlook: ghosting is emotional immaturity or cowardice (though yes, often that too); it’s the byproduct of an over-optimised, hyper-networked society where relationships are treated like inventory. And you’re right to reject the word “abundance”, this isn’t abundance, it’s relational inflation. When everything is available, nothing feels valuable. We don’t hold each other like rare artifacts anymore, we scroll each other like options.
Your point about institutional strength replacing social interdependence is especially sharp. When your neighbour no longer decides your fate, you can disappear without consequence. Reputation becomes aesthetic, not currency. Ghosting only thrives where memory doesn’t matter, where there’s no village to whisper, “he vanished on her without a word”.
And yes, what a paradox, ghosting is not a failure of progress but its shadow. It’s what happens when we get all the tools to connect and forget the cost of disconnection.
Thank you for this, it’s one of the smartest readings of the piece I’ve received. And as for me never being ghosted… perhaps it’s just that I haunt back in prose.
This is an emotional counterspell; a scalpel dipped in velvet. It’s not just about being left on read, it’s about what that engineered silence does to the soul.
Thank you for naming the choreography, the quiet cruelty, the way we contort ourselves to rationalize abandonment.
“A scalpel dipped in velvet.” That’s exactly it, ghosting doesn’t wound with a scream, but it surely seduces with absence. It turns pain into a private conspiracy: was it me? Did I imagine it? And somehow, the more articulate we are about the loss, the more invisible we feel inside it.
I think what hurts the most is that we have been trained to perform emotional fluency in a system that rewards evasion. We write essays, send playlists, leave the porch light on while the ghoster exits stage left without even tripping over their own conscience.
But naming it is a kind of reclamation because it says… I will not let silence dictate my story. Thank you for reading with such precision, and for recognising that the wound is spiritual.
The flip side of almost immediate connection is the chance for immediate disintegration. I guess our social mammalian forebears couldn't see this one coming!
Ahhh the Museguided lens has stripped back quite a lot through the prism of ghosting. Not sure how you do it, but glad I am here to witness.
"Presence as something that is optional…" how our world has changed from communities of humans banding together for survival. We are so schismatically separate that we can easily drop from being present to vapour without any consequence… such a destabilizing element of the digital age. It feels like part of a broader, unseen rot that we have barely begun to register... until the victims start to outnumber the ghosts.
Indeed this essay feels like we are drawn in by the modern schadenfreude of ghosting, but it speaks to a broader societal problem...
What if ghosting is just another in a long list of people lacking the cognitive capacity to deal with this gigantic and ever-expanding over-saturation of information we are buffeted by?
For example, your list of ghosting efforts on the institutional level ("Bureaucracies ghost their most vulnerable citizens"), I can say I have seen this play out in real time, in a number of private and public organizations. Often it is just a calculation: if the energy required to maintain connection to an individual in society is lower than the value you would get from an ongoing dialogue… then it is a business imperative to “cut your loses”. This can be seen as a systemic response… because on a case-by-case basis most rational humans (if they actually exist… damn you Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky! Shattering my ignorance of rationality!) can be reasoned with… but at scale… with 8 billion+ people on the planet and the systems required to serve them… we haven’t evolved quick enough to take this in stride. I think we are in a painful adolescence, a growth spurt from 5’2 to 6’2 in the blink of an eye. Our collective ability to be human is being sorely tested. So we rely on systems that are easily gamed... and this is perhaps how a phenomenon like ghosting can take the form it has... something that is even revered? Quite grotesque.
You mentioned those who suffered at the hands of the ghosted, are trying to make meaning in the void. I think we are all, sadly, trying desperately to make meaning, not in the absence of noise, but we are desperately trying to hear ourselves over the cacophony…. Even silence has abandoned us, and so we use it where we can just to see if it is still possible to still leverage it. Indeed, “bandwidth management” and the “triaging attention” might not be far from the truth… Ghosting might be a last resort because people are over-stretched.
Oh the notion of our dopamine yield! Yes, as a society, it seems that naturally occurring dopamine is perilously low — unless we are huffing the fumes being belched out from our digital landscape. And I don’t highlight this to disagree — I certainly don't want abrogate a person's responsibility to be a good human — but I think it is worth pointing out the challenging environment is unbelievably arraigned against the modern mammal. So I add this to the architecture of yet another insightful Museguided construction.
But I think the most insightful aspect of this whole essay is the framing of those who are ghosted as the involuntary author of a Mystery Novel they didn’t sign up for—forced to resolve a story where the plot was never fully formed. This is a brutal consequence of the current environment. But your request to add texture is sublime, and might I add, seems to be yet another of those meta arcs I detect in your work: a call for a return to the texture of a properly realized, fully alive humanity that has been eroded as we have poured our minds into the abyssal trough of the digital dopamine mine.
This, dear Adam, is less a comment and more a field report from the front lines of human consciousness in the algorithmic age. Ohhh I read it with a slow nod and a grin that turned slightly tragic halfway through. Thank you for this kaleidoscopic, layered response, it’s the kind of thinking that makes my writing feel less like a broadcast and more like a dialogue between serious minds trying to locate each other through the static.
You are right to say that ghosting isn’t just personal cowardice (though sometimes it is that, too). It’s structural. Systemic. The cold logic of bandwidth triage, scaled to a planetary population and run through the optimisation filters of capitalism. Presence now requires justification. If your ROI as a human is unclear, you risk deletion. It’s not connection we are struggling with but maintenance. And maintenance, in a culture that deifies speed and celebrates efficiency, is interpreted as inefficient. Thus, ghosting is born of design, not just of fear or laziness.
Your metaphor of humanity in a growth spurt… painful, uneven, emotionally uncoordinated, is brilliant. We have outpaced our cognitive architecture. Dunbar’s number was a warning, not a suggestion. We now form communities where we follow 10,000 people but recognise no faces on our street. And in that saturation, the burden of discerning signal from noise becomes exhausting. So what do we do? We vanish. We silence others. Or perhaps more tragically we silence ourselves.
Yes to your note about dopamine because we are huffing fumes of false connection, and the yield is so pitiful that we now require increasingly extreme stimuli to feel anything resembling intimacy. But as you so wisely say, this doesn’t absolve us. The environment is brutal, yes. But we are still responsible for the way we exit each other’s stories.
As for the ghosted becoming the authors of mystery novels they didn’t volunteer to write… that’s exactly the brutality. Not just the vanishing, but the forced authorship. The involuntary scriptwriting. And the worst part? We write those stories in the dark, with tools borrowed from shame. Terrible!
Your response is a marvel, philosophically muscular, emotionally intelligent, and grounded in a kind of existential pragmatism I find deeply reassuring. Thank you for engaging with the era my essay diagnoses. You have added a floor to this architecture I hadn’t yet built, and I’m grateful! I love all your comments.
Thank you, Leif, I’m so glad you noticed. I care deeply about the art that wraps itself around the words. The images are always echoes, not decorative. Shadows with their own language. I try to choose pieces that whisper the unsaid, that hold the silence in visual form. And yes… the ghosts wait in them, just as you say, sometimes more patiently than we do.
There is something about a photograph that lingers long after words fade: the way absence can be framed, lit, made almost beautiful. Ghosting is, after all, a kind of composition, a vanishing point staged to look accidental.
Thank you for reading with your attention, a very rare form of presence these days!
The physical sensation of light-headedness, nausea, slow shaking, fast heart beat - almost like an actual cut, but unexplainably it's not visible. The mental marathon laps circling the empty track, glancing every 5 seconds towards the door to see if they show up, tripping because of it and falling face down.
It's mentally and physically exhausting. And the logic kicks in 'It's a lesson' , 'I only want what wants me back' , 'The door is open' - all the Instagrammable quotes desperately trying to give a helping hand in what feels like a fall into a void.
For the sake of your sanity, if you have experienced ghosting or start seeing signs of a change in pattern that spikes your anxiety, please breathe deeply and give yourself a hug. Go for a walk and move your body - observe what surrounds you and remember you are loved and time is limited. And your nervous system deserves clarity and consistency.
This is so achingly accurate, I felt it in my sternum. That image, the mental marathon around an empty track, is devastating in its truth. Ghosting is somatic. I really do believe that. It hijacks the body before the brain can apply logic, like a wound without coordinates, an alarm with no fire to extinguish.
And yes, the Instagram mantras, well-meaning but often hollow when you are in the middle of that vertigo. They try to stitch up a soul rupture with pretty font and pastel colours. But healing doesn’t happen in aphorisms. It happens in breath, in motion, in remembering, just as you said, that your nervous system deserves clarity. What a line!
Thank you for naming this so gently, and yet so powerfully, Alexandra!
What you’ve written is more than about ghosting, it’s the quiet brutality of modern disconnection. The kind of absence that isn’t loud, but cuts deeper precisely because it pretends to be nothing at all. As someone who’s seen the erosion of intimacy masked as “self-care”, I felt every word in my chest.
You’ve managed to articulate what so many of us struggle to name, which is the ache of being left in limbo, not with a wound, but with a question mark. You dissect the cowardice hiding in curated silence with a scalpel of language so sharp it’s almost surgical. And the insight, that silence is choreography, that stayed with me. Because it is choreography. Intentional, rehearsed, clean.
The emotional economy you describe, where feelings are ghosted like old emails—archived without ceremony—it’s a dating trend and it’s a cultural sickness. And your refusal to romanticise the ghoster, to call it what it is, emotional minimalism masquerading as maturity, feels like the kind of clarity we’ve been too afraid to speak aloud.
What makes this essay extraordinary is insight,and how intimately and unapologetically it’s written. There’s anger, sure, but also wisdom, and deep, deep compassion for the people left carrying the silence. You’ve taken something ugly and made it incredibly bright by holding it under bright, unflinching light.
This is an elegy for accountability and a call to stay present in the mess. And I just want to thank you for writing with that kind of precision, intelligence, and heart.
You have put your finger exactly on what I hoped my essay might unearth, not just ghosting as a trend, but ghosting as a symptom of a larger cultural rot, this slow corrosion of relational responsibility dressed up in the silk robe of “self-care”. The way silence is weaponised not through performance, the curated kind that looks clean from the outside and leaves the other person bleeding without a mark. And yes, that’s the brutality of it… the absence that pretends to be nothing at all.
“Not with a wound, but with a question mark” is devastatingly precise, I like that because it explains what ghosting robs us of: the dignity of a known ending. The ability to metabolise what happened. It forces us into being the author, the reader, and the forensic analyst of our own abandonment.
But what you have also named so powerfully is what we must do in response: hold it under unflinching light. Not to shame, but to stop pretending that disappearance is ever neutral.
That you saw in my words what your essay so brilliantly illuminated means more than I can express.
Thank you again for writing something so fiercely lucid, and for always engaging with such thoughtfulness with all your readers. Your comment section is the most iconic on Substack.
I thought about deleting my account on this platform—not to make a statement or to run away like a coward, but because of the difficulty in communicating through translation and my lack of trust in automated translations of my comments. I feared unintentional offense or writing replies I’d later have to delete because they were misunderstood. I don’t deny that I’ve benefited greatly and learned so much. An article convinced me to stay, for the brave do not fear chaos. But what’s unbearable is the thought of being an unwelcome, intolerable guest.
Your comment moved me deeply because beneath it, I hear linguistic vulnerability, but also the ache of wanting to belong with care. That is never unwelcome. In fact, it is a rare kind of grace. To worry about being misunderstood is a sign of profound respect for language and the people receiving it. And that, to me, is the opposite of being an intolerable guest, it’s the silent signature of someone who honours the room they have entered.
Translation, by nature, is imperfect. But so is all communication, even in our first language. What matters isn’t pristine syntax but intention. And yours carries sincerity, humility, and thoughtfulness, which transcend grammar. Besides, it’s often the people who apologise for their presence who bring the most gentleness to a space.
I’m especially glad you stayed. And I hope you’ll continue to speak, even if imperfectly. Your voice has already added something invaluable: the courage to admit doubt, and the wisdom to stay anyway. That’s the most welcome kind of bravery, not cowardice for sure.
This again hit close — not because I’ve been ghosted countless times (I have), but because I’ve always refused to be the one who disappears. I believe people deserve the respect of a goodbye, even if it's awkward, emotional, or incomplete. Silence may protect the ghoster’s peace, but it leaves the ghosted haunted by a story they didn’t choose to end.
Of course, I’ve stopped responding too — but not out of avoidance. When someone refuses to honour a goodbye or turn toward a real conversation, that’s not ghosting. That’s a consequence. That’s self-respect.
Your words reminded me why I choose presence, even when it’s painful — and why staying with my own fullness, instead of folding into silence, is how I begin to unlearn the damage.
Thank you for giving voice to what so many of us have been left holding in the dark.
The decision to not become what hurt you, even when silence would be easier, cleaner, more socially “efficient” carries a lot of dignity. Choosing presence over protection, even when it costs you something, is the right thing to do. And yes, ghosting is not defined by the absence of contact, but by the absence of honour. A boundary set in truth is a declaration.
“Haunted by a story they didn’t choose to end” is the heart of it. The ghosted are often left living inside a narrative they didn’t write, trying to edit themselves into closure that was never offered.
Thank you for sharing your writing, Tanja, I look forward to reading both pieces. I have no doubt they will carry that same principled clarity and emotional intelligence you brought here. If there’s any real antidote to this cultural epidemic of vanishing acts, it’s exactly what you model… refusing to flinch, even when the lights go out.
Is it cowardice, Tamara, if ghosting is a person's presence, their consistent state of being? I want to share a brief story that shapes a lifetime and explore whether it syncs with cowardice. Or if, as you conclude later, with capacity.
My dad died last year. I was present when he took his last breath. I didn’t feel loss or grief. Maybe I felt ghosted. He died having given no explanations, no closing embrace. But my self-perception did not shrink. Partly, I think, because it had never expanded into a bubble that could be burst in the first place.
In a sad sort of way, his passing felt too familiar to be a loss. When he came to visit me or my family over the years, within a couple of hours he would become restless and start heading for the exit. Him leaving, not arriving, not being present, was how I experienced him for decades. So, when he died, no closure, no reckoning with loss was necessary. It was already baked into our relationship.
He was a “good” father, it could be said. 80 to 100 folks showed up for the free food and celebration of his life. He was well liked. But I don’t think he knew how to show love to me.
He could be affectionate to children, to his cows, his goats, his cherished chickens. He could be kind to strangers. But I would not say he was ever loving toward anyone. He never took the time to know them, or me, as a man worthy of unique attention.
But then, how could he be expected to?
He was the middle of nine siblings. He was raised in rural counties near the Red River Valley in southern Oklahoma. His was a Grapes of Wrath like childhood to be sure. Survival, not love, was the sufficient leavening agent in his family. The camaraderie built of collaborative effort was the only bond compound he understood.
He learned to negotiate his spot in the family line up, but never to love the people in it. Love was not modeled for him. And he did not model it for me. I did not feel denial, or anger, or depression when I watched him die. Only ghosted, again. His death was just another dispassionate, untimely exit.
And yet, I would not call him a coward. He didn't intend harm, not really.
You have excavated an important and ancient form of human psychosis here, Tamara. My heart, as usual, is filled to overflow with gratitude and introspection. May your work continue to heal in ways you will never know of, in hearts you will never hear of. But may you know in your own heart of hearts that it is reaching people. Your work stirs Life into the dying. Strangely, it gives truth, beauty, and goodness a good name again. Good day, m'lady.
This is a reckoning wrapped in grace. A letter to the living and the gone. Thank you for offering it, Andrew!
What you have shared is the kind of story that doesn’t cry out for analysis, it silences analysis, in the way only truth can. Your father’s absence, so consistent it ceased to feel like absence, redefines the very shape of what we mourn. It wasn’t a rupture, quite the opposite, it was continuity. The final act of ghosting wasn’t dramatic because the ghost had never really left the stage. He was simply never quite on it, at least not with you.
And yet what moves me the most is your refusal to collapse the complexity. You don’t demonise him. You don’t absolve him. You understand him. And that’s rarer than forgiveness, it’s a kind of moral archaeology. You have dug into the silt of context, the poverty, the birth order, the goats and the grit and the Great Depression inheritance. You saw the architecture of his detachment, and instead of using it as a weapon, you framed it as explanation. Not excuse. But explanation.
You ask if ghosting can still be cowardice if it is someone’s only known language of being, and I think the answer is yes and no. Sorry, no definitive answer. Because cowardice isn’t always active malice, it can be the inherited inability to stand in relational light without flinching. But where cowardice ends and incapacity begins is murky terrain. What matters, as you so elegantly reveal, is that we do not shrink in response to someone else’s ghost-weight. That we don’t contort ourselves to become the love they didn’t learn to give.
Your story honours him by not romanticising him. And that is love, even if not the kind he would have recognised. Andrew, your final line left me speechless in the most reverent way. Thank you for letting me witness this!
Tamara, who could have thought so much could be said about ghosting. So many helpful takes and encouraging perspectives; thank you. And your black and white photos were achingly poignant. I have a related example of serious ghosting. After I left the priesthood and married, my wife and I ran a group home in California for seven teenagers who were wards of the court, kids who were too much of a behavioral problem to qualify for foster homes. These kids were literally abandoned by their parents. Yet, each child still fantasized that their parents were going to come for them. As you said, “And somehow, still, we mythologize the one who disappears.” Sad, but parents sometimes ghost their own kids, which I think you captured with your line that parents can be “startled by their own emptiness.” (You no doubt notice that your faithful followers never ghost you who add so much to our lives with your essays.) With warmest gratitude.
What a deeply moving example, and what a life you have lived to carry that story. It’s unbearably human: these teenagers, abandoned by the very people meant to anchor them, still holding space in their hearts for return. That’s the cruelest thing about ghosting, it doesn’t always kill hope. It feeds it just enough to keep the wound alive.
And yes, the line “startled by their own emptiness” was meant to touch precisely that kind of quiet terror. It’s not always hatred or malice that drives people to disappear, t’s a kind of emotional vertigo, the fear of not being able to show up fully… so they don’t show up at all. But of course, to a child, it doesn’t feel like fear. It feels like erasure.
Thank you for sharing this, Michael! Your presence in those kids’ lives, that holding space, that refusal to vanish, was undoubtedly a form of rescue they’ll carry forever. And thank you for being the kind of reader who stays, who sees, who responds. In a world full of vanishing acts, presence is the rarest form of devotion.
Tamara, this is brilliant. It happened to me recently. I had a friend of 20 years, and one day I made a light-hearted joke, which she took to heart. Instead of talking about it, she just ghosted me. No explanation, no goodbye. It broke my heart.
I never meant to hurt her, but I also never expected two decades of friendship to end in silence. It’s painful when someone disappears instead of having a conversation, especially when you’ve shared so much.
Your words really hit home. And so beautifully written. Thank you
I’m so sorry that happened. Twenty years should come with more dignity than a vanishing act. What you describe is especially cruel because it rewrites the entire history in hindsight, suddenly every shared memory feels up for questioning. Was it ever as mutual as it seemed? Was the bond real if it could be dropped without a word?
The irony, of course, is that ghosting is often framed as a “non-response”, but what it actually says is thunderous: “I’d rather disappear than deal with discomfort”. That’s betrayal disguised as avoidance. A friendship doesn’t require perfection, but it does require the willingness to stay in the room when things get messy.
Thank you for sharing this here, Meredith! I hope you know the silence wasn’t your fault, and that her refusal to speak doesn’t erase your intention or your loyalty. And thank you, too, for your kindness!
Tamara, I could feel the sharp edge of truth cutting through this piece, as if you were holding up a mirror to every ghoster, daring them to face their inner ghost and reckon with the reasons they vanish. Once read, your words feel like a quiet spell; one that lingers, ready to surface the next time someone considers opting out without a word.
"Ghosting thrives in an emotional economy optimised for exit, an architecture of apps, inboxes, and fleeting attention spans where intimacy must never interrupt convenience." Yes!
This "generation allergic to discomfort" is also the one plagued by loneliness, too afraid to face another person honestly, even when it's hard. Discomfort may not be pleasant, but it’s real, human and necessary. To reject it is to reject part of what makes us alive.
I’ll be sending this to everyone who’s ever been ghosted - and maybe even a few ghosters too. Bravo on such a riveting and unapologetically sharp piece. This subject is unforgivable, and you’ve captured that with power and precision.
This is the kind of reply that feels like a state visit indeed, regal, precise, and bearing gifts of insight. Thank you, Joanna!
Yes, discomfort is the last frontier of real intimacy. We romanticise the grand gesture, the fireworks, the curated compatibility but it’s in the awkward pauses, the vulnerable stumbles, the clumsy clarifications where actual connection lives. To ghost is to flee another person and the opportunity to become a fuller version of oneself.
And yes, that line you quoted, about the architecture of exit, is the scaffolding I wanted to expose. Ghosting doesn’t emerge from personal failure alone; it’s made structurally convenient. We are trained to believe that our feelings are sacred, but someone else’s are optional. Add a few dopamine loops and “ghosting” becomes less a decision than a swipe-default. But a default, I’d argue, that corrodes us all.
Thank you for reading with such fierce generosity, always as a matter of fact. And thank you for wanting to share it, even with the ghosts. Who knows? Maybe one or two might feel the spell catch in their throat, just long enough to write back.
I've been ghosted more times than I can count, and I'm finally done with believing it has anything to do with me. We are just in a really sick culture where basic principles, integrity and empathy are becoming more and more marginalized.
Yes, exactly. At some point, the only sane response is to stop internalising a collective sickness as a personal flaw. Ghosting thrives not because you were too much or not enough, but because we are living in a culture that rewards disengagement and labels avoidance as “boundaries”. Integrity now feels almost subversive. Empathy, a luxury. And consistency? Practically vintage.
You are right to opt out of the self-blame spiral. When everyone is becoming increasingly emotionally illiterate, your ability to feel deeply, show up honestly, and expect reciprocity is like a résistance movement.
So yes, we are in a sick culture. But the antidote begins with refusal, refusal to contort ourselves to fit disappearing acts, refusal to take silence as a verdict, and refusal to lose faith in connection just because some have forgotten how to hold it. I’m glad you are done. That’s called clarity, not defeat.
The way you put it, ghosting carries strong flavours of 'stalking', where the one being ghosted somehow stalks him/herself by means of the other's incomprehensible absence.
The other bit that bites is how much the availability of connectivity makes actual connection redundant. Because we can resume 'things' at any time, we don't care about maintaining contact: presence is assumed because assured. Of course, that says a lot about ourselves and the one doing the ghosting (as you've described).
Also, I don't think the subscription format helps. Other tensions arise, self-interest, potential audience losses, etc.
Finally, I find that being ghosted is disrespectful but extremely emotional too because of that. Perhaps that was at the root of your incisive piece.
Yes! The ghosted are left haunted not only by the absence of the other, but by their own looping reenactments of what might have been. It’s an emotional surveillance state, but turned inward. We become both investigator and suspect in a crime we didn’t commit.
And you are right, the illusion of infinite availability has made presence feel less urgent, and in turn, less sacred. We mistake potential for commitment, and in doing so, we cheapen continuity. It’s the paradox of our time… the more reachable we are, the less reached we feel!
I also really appreciate the insight about the subscription format, and I assume you mean platforms like Substack or even emotional “subscriptions” in relationships. In both cases, there’s an undercurrent of performance and conditional attention: am I worth renewing for? What happens if I stop delivering? It adds a strange layer of commodification to connection, where even intimacy begins to resemble content.
And yes, being ghosted hurts because it is both disrespectful and intimate. It’s an absence that stings precisely because it once mattered. Thank you for adding nuance!
Thanks for getting back to me. This got me thinking...
I asked myself: why is Tamara's writing so engaging? And the adjectives came thick and fast. "It's beautiful, challenging, precise, deep, fine tuned, musical, spectacular ..."
And, as I was running out of descriptors, an image, a reel of sorts came to mind. I thought to describe your writing as an Olympic diving final with the 10m platform and the 3m springboard, with the pool of still water, and a muted audience, all awaiting the jumps, the pirouettes, the slick, beautiful, trained, terse, magnificent silhouettes of well positioned ideas springing into the air and diving in curls and mathematical twists deep into the well referenced magnitude of a carefully selected topic without a splash, true to angles and reflections, reaching all at once in marvel and delight.
You probably would have preferred a ballet comparison, but that's what came to mind.
I am a ballet lover, you know, and I wouldn’t trade the ballet for this, not for a second. That image is magnificent. You have turned my metaphors into motion, given my sentences muscle and gravity and grace. I read it twice, then laughed, delighted, at the idea that my writing might leap from the 10m platform with mathematical twists and land without a splash. That’s the highest compliment. Precision wrapped in risk. Discipline holding hands with freedom.
And truly, what a generous thing to do, to not just read, but to stop and wonder why something resonates. That curiosity is its own form of artistry. I’m deeply touched that you see the layers, the tuning, the engineering beneath the apparent ease. Because it’s not ease, it’s dive after dive, draft after draft, bruised knee after bruised ego. And yet, you have caught the silhouette of it. That means everything.
Thank you for this unexpected reel… I’ll replay it in my head the next time I hit a sentence like a belly-flop! :)
I’ve read this over and over today. Deeply moving….but messy in the very best of ways. Messy is so much better.
Once upon a time, I planned my life to achieve all my major life goals by the time I was 40. Envisioning I would enjoy the fruits of my labor after that age.
It was boring.
I jumped into the messiness of life a few years later. It’s been painful, joyful, quiet and loud…..but authentic.
Thank you for your writing. Each piece gives me so much on which to reflect and grow.
I am grateful for the beautiful unraveling you describe, from curated clarity to chosen chaos. That shift, from the tidy timeline to the unpredictable texture of real life, is brave and so profoundly alive. And I like how you frame it, not as failure, but as escape from boredom. Because that’s the secret no one tells you…. perfection is soooo dull!!! It leaves no room for awe, or rupture, or transformation. Messy, on the other hand? Messy has plot twists!
I admire you for abandoning the blueprint in favour of depth. And yes, it hurts. And yes, it hums. But it’s yours. I think that’s the most amazing thing we can do in a world of scripted lives, choose the unscripted one, even when it scrapes.
Thank you for letting these words accompany your reflection!
I hope the next chapter of your messiness be just as rich, just as real.
Ohhhh this is so good, melancholy with a wink, a heartbreak wrapped in rhyme and marmalade.
The way you smuggle existential despair into buttered toast is a kind of dark art.
But what I like the most is the final shrug: “Was it her? Or was it me?” That’s the ghosting curse, isn’t it? It leaves you performing necromancy on your own breakfast, parsing crumbs for meaning. Yet you’ve managed to turn it into poetry, which is the most dignified kind of revenge.
Thank you for this lyrical lament! May your next toast be warm, your coffee strong, and your lovers real.
This touches upon a not-well-understood aspect of how we value things: the role of scarcity. You nailed it by diagnosing the ability for people to "ghost" as being rooted in having too many options, which is another way of saying a lack of scarcity. And I phrase it as "a lack of scarcity" and not "abundance" because of the positive connotation of the latter. We're so far beyond Dunbar's number in the internet age, that our relationships break down to crude opportunity-cost calculations.
The other issue is that, in an increasingly atomized society with strong institutional support, reputation doesn't mean much any more. In cultures and places where institutional support is weak, you see an emphasis on reputation and community, not because those people are more moral, but because relying on your neighbor could save your life in the middle of the night when the wolves are literally or figuratively circling. Hence, reputation becomes the most important asset a person has, which is where you get the extremes of honor culture where people will kill over "disrespect". Ghosting, in that sense, is the total opposite state of affairs; it's another example of us as a society and culture being victims of our own success.
Amazing work as always, Tamara. It doesn't surprise me in the least that you've never been ghosted.
Andrew, this is such a rich, incisive comment because you’ve captured something most people overlook: ghosting is emotional immaturity or cowardice (though yes, often that too); it’s the byproduct of an over-optimised, hyper-networked society where relationships are treated like inventory. And you’re right to reject the word “abundance”, this isn’t abundance, it’s relational inflation. When everything is available, nothing feels valuable. We don’t hold each other like rare artifacts anymore, we scroll each other like options.
Your point about institutional strength replacing social interdependence is especially sharp. When your neighbour no longer decides your fate, you can disappear without consequence. Reputation becomes aesthetic, not currency. Ghosting only thrives where memory doesn’t matter, where there’s no village to whisper, “he vanished on her without a word”.
And yes, what a paradox, ghosting is not a failure of progress but its shadow. It’s what happens when we get all the tools to connect and forget the cost of disconnection.
Thank you for this, it’s one of the smartest readings of the piece I’ve received. And as for me never being ghosted… perhaps it’s just that I haunt back in prose.
This is an emotional counterspell; a scalpel dipped in velvet. It’s not just about being left on read, it’s about what that engineered silence does to the soul.
Thank you for naming the choreography, the quiet cruelty, the way we contort ourselves to rationalize abandonment.
“A scalpel dipped in velvet.” That’s exactly it, ghosting doesn’t wound with a scream, but it surely seduces with absence. It turns pain into a private conspiracy: was it me? Did I imagine it? And somehow, the more articulate we are about the loss, the more invisible we feel inside it.
I think what hurts the most is that we have been trained to perform emotional fluency in a system that rewards evasion. We write essays, send playlists, leave the porch light on while the ghoster exits stage left without even tripping over their own conscience.
But naming it is a kind of reclamation because it says… I will not let silence dictate my story. Thank you for reading with such precision, and for recognising that the wound is spiritual.
Yes just so! I've written about this and I'm glad to see it being talked about more broadly.
The flip side of almost immediate connection is the chance for immediate disintegration. I guess our social mammalian forebears couldn't see this one coming!
Ahhh the Museguided lens has stripped back quite a lot through the prism of ghosting. Not sure how you do it, but glad I am here to witness.
"Presence as something that is optional…" how our world has changed from communities of humans banding together for survival. We are so schismatically separate that we can easily drop from being present to vapour without any consequence… such a destabilizing element of the digital age. It feels like part of a broader, unseen rot that we have barely begun to register... until the victims start to outnumber the ghosts.
Indeed this essay feels like we are drawn in by the modern schadenfreude of ghosting, but it speaks to a broader societal problem...
What if ghosting is just another in a long list of people lacking the cognitive capacity to deal with this gigantic and ever-expanding over-saturation of information we are buffeted by?
For example, your list of ghosting efforts on the institutional level ("Bureaucracies ghost their most vulnerable citizens"), I can say I have seen this play out in real time, in a number of private and public organizations. Often it is just a calculation: if the energy required to maintain connection to an individual in society is lower than the value you would get from an ongoing dialogue… then it is a business imperative to “cut your loses”. This can be seen as a systemic response… because on a case-by-case basis most rational humans (if they actually exist… damn you Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky! Shattering my ignorance of rationality!) can be reasoned with… but at scale… with 8 billion+ people on the planet and the systems required to serve them… we haven’t evolved quick enough to take this in stride. I think we are in a painful adolescence, a growth spurt from 5’2 to 6’2 in the blink of an eye. Our collective ability to be human is being sorely tested. So we rely on systems that are easily gamed... and this is perhaps how a phenomenon like ghosting can take the form it has... something that is even revered? Quite grotesque.
You mentioned those who suffered at the hands of the ghosted, are trying to make meaning in the void. I think we are all, sadly, trying desperately to make meaning, not in the absence of noise, but we are desperately trying to hear ourselves over the cacophony…. Even silence has abandoned us, and so we use it where we can just to see if it is still possible to still leverage it. Indeed, “bandwidth management” and the “triaging attention” might not be far from the truth… Ghosting might be a last resort because people are over-stretched.
Oh the notion of our dopamine yield! Yes, as a society, it seems that naturally occurring dopamine is perilously low — unless we are huffing the fumes being belched out from our digital landscape. And I don’t highlight this to disagree — I certainly don't want abrogate a person's responsibility to be a good human — but I think it is worth pointing out the challenging environment is unbelievably arraigned against the modern mammal. So I add this to the architecture of yet another insightful Museguided construction.
But I think the most insightful aspect of this whole essay is the framing of those who are ghosted as the involuntary author of a Mystery Novel they didn’t sign up for—forced to resolve a story where the plot was never fully formed. This is a brutal consequence of the current environment. But your request to add texture is sublime, and might I add, seems to be yet another of those meta arcs I detect in your work: a call for a return to the texture of a properly realized, fully alive humanity that has been eroded as we have poured our minds into the abyssal trough of the digital dopamine mine.
This, dear Adam, is less a comment and more a field report from the front lines of human consciousness in the algorithmic age. Ohhh I read it with a slow nod and a grin that turned slightly tragic halfway through. Thank you for this kaleidoscopic, layered response, it’s the kind of thinking that makes my writing feel less like a broadcast and more like a dialogue between serious minds trying to locate each other through the static.
You are right to say that ghosting isn’t just personal cowardice (though sometimes it is that, too). It’s structural. Systemic. The cold logic of bandwidth triage, scaled to a planetary population and run through the optimisation filters of capitalism. Presence now requires justification. If your ROI as a human is unclear, you risk deletion. It’s not connection we are struggling with but maintenance. And maintenance, in a culture that deifies speed and celebrates efficiency, is interpreted as inefficient. Thus, ghosting is born of design, not just of fear or laziness.
Your metaphor of humanity in a growth spurt… painful, uneven, emotionally uncoordinated, is brilliant. We have outpaced our cognitive architecture. Dunbar’s number was a warning, not a suggestion. We now form communities where we follow 10,000 people but recognise no faces on our street. And in that saturation, the burden of discerning signal from noise becomes exhausting. So what do we do? We vanish. We silence others. Or perhaps more tragically we silence ourselves.
Yes to your note about dopamine because we are huffing fumes of false connection, and the yield is so pitiful that we now require increasingly extreme stimuli to feel anything resembling intimacy. But as you so wisely say, this doesn’t absolve us. The environment is brutal, yes. But we are still responsible for the way we exit each other’s stories.
As for the ghosted becoming the authors of mystery novels they didn’t volunteer to write… that’s exactly the brutality. Not just the vanishing, but the forced authorship. The involuntary scriptwriting. And the worst part? We write those stories in the dark, with tools borrowed from shame. Terrible!
Your response is a marvel, philosophically muscular, emotionally intelligent, and grounded in a kind of existential pragmatism I find deeply reassuring. Thank you for engaging with the era my essay diagnoses. You have added a floor to this architecture I hadn’t yet built, and I’m grateful! I love all your comments.
Exquisite choice of photographs, Tamara; the ghosts wait us in them.
Thank you, Leif, I’m so glad you noticed. I care deeply about the art that wraps itself around the words. The images are always echoes, not decorative. Shadows with their own language. I try to choose pieces that whisper the unsaid, that hold the silence in visual form. And yes… the ghosts wait in them, just as you say, sometimes more patiently than we do.
There is something about a photograph that lingers long after words fade: the way absence can be framed, lit, made almost beautiful. Ghosting is, after all, a kind of composition, a vanishing point staged to look accidental.
Thank you for reading with your attention, a very rare form of presence these days!
The physical sensation of light-headedness, nausea, slow shaking, fast heart beat - almost like an actual cut, but unexplainably it's not visible. The mental marathon laps circling the empty track, glancing every 5 seconds towards the door to see if they show up, tripping because of it and falling face down.
It's mentally and physically exhausting. And the logic kicks in 'It's a lesson' , 'I only want what wants me back' , 'The door is open' - all the Instagrammable quotes desperately trying to give a helping hand in what feels like a fall into a void.
For the sake of your sanity, if you have experienced ghosting or start seeing signs of a change in pattern that spikes your anxiety, please breathe deeply and give yourself a hug. Go for a walk and move your body - observe what surrounds you and remember you are loved and time is limited. And your nervous system deserves clarity and consistency.
This is so achingly accurate, I felt it in my sternum. That image, the mental marathon around an empty track, is devastating in its truth. Ghosting is somatic. I really do believe that. It hijacks the body before the brain can apply logic, like a wound without coordinates, an alarm with no fire to extinguish.
And yes, the Instagram mantras, well-meaning but often hollow when you are in the middle of that vertigo. They try to stitch up a soul rupture with pretty font and pastel colours. But healing doesn’t happen in aphorisms. It happens in breath, in motion, in remembering, just as you said, that your nervous system deserves clarity. What a line!
Thank you for naming this so gently, and yet so powerfully, Alexandra!
What you’ve written is more than about ghosting, it’s the quiet brutality of modern disconnection. The kind of absence that isn’t loud, but cuts deeper precisely because it pretends to be nothing at all. As someone who’s seen the erosion of intimacy masked as “self-care”, I felt every word in my chest.
You’ve managed to articulate what so many of us struggle to name, which is the ache of being left in limbo, not with a wound, but with a question mark. You dissect the cowardice hiding in curated silence with a scalpel of language so sharp it’s almost surgical. And the insight, that silence is choreography, that stayed with me. Because it is choreography. Intentional, rehearsed, clean.
The emotional economy you describe, where feelings are ghosted like old emails—archived without ceremony—it’s a dating trend and it’s a cultural sickness. And your refusal to romanticise the ghoster, to call it what it is, emotional minimalism masquerading as maturity, feels like the kind of clarity we’ve been too afraid to speak aloud.
What makes this essay extraordinary is insight,and how intimately and unapologetically it’s written. There’s anger, sure, but also wisdom, and deep, deep compassion for the people left carrying the silence. You’ve taken something ugly and made it incredibly bright by holding it under bright, unflinching light.
This is an elegy for accountability and a call to stay present in the mess. And I just want to thank you for writing with that kind of precision, intelligence, and heart.
You have put your finger exactly on what I hoped my essay might unearth, not just ghosting as a trend, but ghosting as a symptom of a larger cultural rot, this slow corrosion of relational responsibility dressed up in the silk robe of “self-care”. The way silence is weaponised not through performance, the curated kind that looks clean from the outside and leaves the other person bleeding without a mark. And yes, that’s the brutality of it… the absence that pretends to be nothing at all.
“Not with a wound, but with a question mark” is devastatingly precise, I like that because it explains what ghosting robs us of: the dignity of a known ending. The ability to metabolise what happened. It forces us into being the author, the reader, and the forensic analyst of our own abandonment.
But what you have also named so powerfully is what we must do in response: hold it under unflinching light. Not to shame, but to stop pretending that disappearance is ever neutral.
Thank you, Céline!
That you saw in my words what your essay so brilliantly illuminated means more than I can express.
Thank you again for writing something so fiercely lucid, and for always engaging with such thoughtfulness with all your readers. Your comment section is the most iconic on Substack.
I thought about deleting my account on this platform—not to make a statement or to run away like a coward, but because of the difficulty in communicating through translation and my lack of trust in automated translations of my comments. I feared unintentional offense or writing replies I’d later have to delete because they were misunderstood. I don’t deny that I’ve benefited greatly and learned so much. An article convinced me to stay, for the brave do not fear chaos. But what’s unbearable is the thought of being an unwelcome, intolerable guest.
Your comment moved me deeply because beneath it, I hear linguistic vulnerability, but also the ache of wanting to belong with care. That is never unwelcome. In fact, it is a rare kind of grace. To worry about being misunderstood is a sign of profound respect for language and the people receiving it. And that, to me, is the opposite of being an intolerable guest, it’s the silent signature of someone who honours the room they have entered.
Translation, by nature, is imperfect. But so is all communication, even in our first language. What matters isn’t pristine syntax but intention. And yours carries sincerity, humility, and thoughtfulness, which transcend grammar. Besides, it’s often the people who apologise for their presence who bring the most gentleness to a space.
I’m especially glad you stayed. And I hope you’ll continue to speak, even if imperfectly. Your voice has already added something invaluable: the courage to admit doubt, and the wisdom to stay anyway. That’s the most welcome kind of bravery, not cowardice for sure.
Hi, I just wanted to say that I think you are a beautiful human for even being able to voice what you feel.
I believe it’s really brave to show vulnerability as you did.
But I am glad you chose to stay too.
And may I say, you have been doing an awesome job with translating and communicating, if that’s what you were worried about..?🙃
May you have many blessings to come 🔮✨🪬
Thank you for your support, you are a wonderful person.
This again hit close — not because I’ve been ghosted countless times (I have), but because I’ve always refused to be the one who disappears. I believe people deserve the respect of a goodbye, even if it's awkward, emotional, or incomplete. Silence may protect the ghoster’s peace, but it leaves the ghosted haunted by a story they didn’t choose to end.
Of course, I’ve stopped responding too — but not out of avoidance. When someone refuses to honour a goodbye or turn toward a real conversation, that’s not ghosting. That’s a consequence. That’s self-respect.
Your words reminded me why I choose presence, even when it’s painful — and why staying with my own fullness, instead of folding into silence, is how I begin to unlearn the damage.
Thank you for giving voice to what so many of us have been left holding in the dark.
A few years ago, I wrote a post on this - not as beautiful and eloquent as you, but perhaps worth reading. https://changeandevolve.substack.com/p/ghosting and perhaps a more recent post fits in as well. https://changeandevolve.substack.com/p/seen-heard-recognised
The decision to not become what hurt you, even when silence would be easier, cleaner, more socially “efficient” carries a lot of dignity. Choosing presence over protection, even when it costs you something, is the right thing to do. And yes, ghosting is not defined by the absence of contact, but by the absence of honour. A boundary set in truth is a declaration.
“Haunted by a story they didn’t choose to end” is the heart of it. The ghosted are often left living inside a narrative they didn’t write, trying to edit themselves into closure that was never offered.
Thank you for sharing your writing, Tanja, I look forward to reading both pieces. I have no doubt they will carry that same principled clarity and emotional intelligence you brought here. If there’s any real antidote to this cultural epidemic of vanishing acts, it’s exactly what you model… refusing to flinch, even when the lights go out.
Is it cowardice, Tamara, if ghosting is a person's presence, their consistent state of being? I want to share a brief story that shapes a lifetime and explore whether it syncs with cowardice. Or if, as you conclude later, with capacity.
My dad died last year. I was present when he took his last breath. I didn’t feel loss or grief. Maybe I felt ghosted. He died having given no explanations, no closing embrace. But my self-perception did not shrink. Partly, I think, because it had never expanded into a bubble that could be burst in the first place.
In a sad sort of way, his passing felt too familiar to be a loss. When he came to visit me or my family over the years, within a couple of hours he would become restless and start heading for the exit. Him leaving, not arriving, not being present, was how I experienced him for decades. So, when he died, no closure, no reckoning with loss was necessary. It was already baked into our relationship.
He was a “good” father, it could be said. 80 to 100 folks showed up for the free food and celebration of his life. He was well liked. But I don’t think he knew how to show love to me.
He could be affectionate to children, to his cows, his goats, his cherished chickens. He could be kind to strangers. But I would not say he was ever loving toward anyone. He never took the time to know them, or me, as a man worthy of unique attention.
But then, how could he be expected to?
He was the middle of nine siblings. He was raised in rural counties near the Red River Valley in southern Oklahoma. His was a Grapes of Wrath like childhood to be sure. Survival, not love, was the sufficient leavening agent in his family. The camaraderie built of collaborative effort was the only bond compound he understood.
He learned to negotiate his spot in the family line up, but never to love the people in it. Love was not modeled for him. And he did not model it for me. I did not feel denial, or anger, or depression when I watched him die. Only ghosted, again. His death was just another dispassionate, untimely exit.
And yet, I would not call him a coward. He didn't intend harm, not really.
You have excavated an important and ancient form of human psychosis here, Tamara. My heart, as usual, is filled to overflow with gratitude and introspection. May your work continue to heal in ways you will never know of, in hearts you will never hear of. But may you know in your own heart of hearts that it is reaching people. Your work stirs Life into the dying. Strangely, it gives truth, beauty, and goodness a good name again. Good day, m'lady.
This is a reckoning wrapped in grace. A letter to the living and the gone. Thank you for offering it, Andrew!
What you have shared is the kind of story that doesn’t cry out for analysis, it silences analysis, in the way only truth can. Your father’s absence, so consistent it ceased to feel like absence, redefines the very shape of what we mourn. It wasn’t a rupture, quite the opposite, it was continuity. The final act of ghosting wasn’t dramatic because the ghost had never really left the stage. He was simply never quite on it, at least not with you.
And yet what moves me the most is your refusal to collapse the complexity. You don’t demonise him. You don’t absolve him. You understand him. And that’s rarer than forgiveness, it’s a kind of moral archaeology. You have dug into the silt of context, the poverty, the birth order, the goats and the grit and the Great Depression inheritance. You saw the architecture of his detachment, and instead of using it as a weapon, you framed it as explanation. Not excuse. But explanation.
You ask if ghosting can still be cowardice if it is someone’s only known language of being, and I think the answer is yes and no. Sorry, no definitive answer. Because cowardice isn’t always active malice, it can be the inherited inability to stand in relational light without flinching. But where cowardice ends and incapacity begins is murky terrain. What matters, as you so elegantly reveal, is that we do not shrink in response to someone else’s ghost-weight. That we don’t contort ourselves to become the love they didn’t learn to give.
Your story honours him by not romanticising him. And that is love, even if not the kind he would have recognised. Andrew, your final line left me speechless in the most reverent way. Thank you for letting me witness this!
Tamara, who could have thought so much could be said about ghosting. So many helpful takes and encouraging perspectives; thank you. And your black and white photos were achingly poignant. I have a related example of serious ghosting. After I left the priesthood and married, my wife and I ran a group home in California for seven teenagers who were wards of the court, kids who were too much of a behavioral problem to qualify for foster homes. These kids were literally abandoned by their parents. Yet, each child still fantasized that their parents were going to come for them. As you said, “And somehow, still, we mythologize the one who disappears.” Sad, but parents sometimes ghost their own kids, which I think you captured with your line that parents can be “startled by their own emptiness.” (You no doubt notice that your faithful followers never ghost you who add so much to our lives with your essays.) With warmest gratitude.
What a deeply moving example, and what a life you have lived to carry that story. It’s unbearably human: these teenagers, abandoned by the very people meant to anchor them, still holding space in their hearts for return. That’s the cruelest thing about ghosting, it doesn’t always kill hope. It feeds it just enough to keep the wound alive.
And yes, the line “startled by their own emptiness” was meant to touch precisely that kind of quiet terror. It’s not always hatred or malice that drives people to disappear, t’s a kind of emotional vertigo, the fear of not being able to show up fully… so they don’t show up at all. But of course, to a child, it doesn’t feel like fear. It feels like erasure.
Thank you for sharing this, Michael! Your presence in those kids’ lives, that holding space, that refusal to vanish, was undoubtedly a form of rescue they’ll carry forever. And thank you for being the kind of reader who stays, who sees, who responds. In a world full of vanishing acts, presence is the rarest form of devotion.
Thank you for your work. The chance for salvation you create.
Tamara, this is brilliant. It happened to me recently. I had a friend of 20 years, and one day I made a light-hearted joke, which she took to heart. Instead of talking about it, she just ghosted me. No explanation, no goodbye. It broke my heart.
I never meant to hurt her, but I also never expected two decades of friendship to end in silence. It’s painful when someone disappears instead of having a conversation, especially when you’ve shared so much.
Your words really hit home. And so beautifully written. Thank you
I’m so sorry that happened. Twenty years should come with more dignity than a vanishing act. What you describe is especially cruel because it rewrites the entire history in hindsight, suddenly every shared memory feels up for questioning. Was it ever as mutual as it seemed? Was the bond real if it could be dropped without a word?
The irony, of course, is that ghosting is often framed as a “non-response”, but what it actually says is thunderous: “I’d rather disappear than deal with discomfort”. That’s betrayal disguised as avoidance. A friendship doesn’t require perfection, but it does require the willingness to stay in the room when things get messy.
Thank you for sharing this here, Meredith! I hope you know the silence wasn’t your fault, and that her refusal to speak doesn’t erase your intention or your loyalty. And thank you, too, for your kindness!
Tamara, I could feel the sharp edge of truth cutting through this piece, as if you were holding up a mirror to every ghoster, daring them to face their inner ghost and reckon with the reasons they vanish. Once read, your words feel like a quiet spell; one that lingers, ready to surface the next time someone considers opting out without a word.
"Ghosting thrives in an emotional economy optimised for exit, an architecture of apps, inboxes, and fleeting attention spans where intimacy must never interrupt convenience." Yes!
This "generation allergic to discomfort" is also the one plagued by loneliness, too afraid to face another person honestly, even when it's hard. Discomfort may not be pleasant, but it’s real, human and necessary. To reject it is to reject part of what makes us alive.
I’ll be sending this to everyone who’s ever been ghosted - and maybe even a few ghosters too. Bravo on such a riveting and unapologetically sharp piece. This subject is unforgivable, and you’ve captured that with power and precision.
This is the kind of reply that feels like a state visit indeed, regal, precise, and bearing gifts of insight. Thank you, Joanna!
Yes, discomfort is the last frontier of real intimacy. We romanticise the grand gesture, the fireworks, the curated compatibility but it’s in the awkward pauses, the vulnerable stumbles, the clumsy clarifications where actual connection lives. To ghost is to flee another person and the opportunity to become a fuller version of oneself.
And yes, that line you quoted, about the architecture of exit, is the scaffolding I wanted to expose. Ghosting doesn’t emerge from personal failure alone; it’s made structurally convenient. We are trained to believe that our feelings are sacred, but someone else’s are optional. Add a few dopamine loops and “ghosting” becomes less a decision than a swipe-default. But a default, I’d argue, that corrodes us all.
Thank you for reading with such fierce generosity, always as a matter of fact. And thank you for wanting to share it, even with the ghosts. Who knows? Maybe one or two might feel the spell catch in their throat, just long enough to write back.
I've been ghosted more times than I can count, and I'm finally done with believing it has anything to do with me. We are just in a really sick culture where basic principles, integrity and empathy are becoming more and more marginalized.
Yes, exactly. At some point, the only sane response is to stop internalising a collective sickness as a personal flaw. Ghosting thrives not because you were too much or not enough, but because we are living in a culture that rewards disengagement and labels avoidance as “boundaries”. Integrity now feels almost subversive. Empathy, a luxury. And consistency? Practically vintage.
You are right to opt out of the self-blame spiral. When everyone is becoming increasingly emotionally illiterate, your ability to feel deeply, show up honestly, and expect reciprocity is like a résistance movement.
So yes, we are in a sick culture. But the antidote begins with refusal, refusal to contort ourselves to fit disappearing acts, refusal to take silence as a verdict, and refusal to lose faith in connection just because some have forgotten how to hold it. I’m glad you are done. That’s called clarity, not defeat.
The way you put it, ghosting carries strong flavours of 'stalking', where the one being ghosted somehow stalks him/herself by means of the other's incomprehensible absence.
The other bit that bites is how much the availability of connectivity makes actual connection redundant. Because we can resume 'things' at any time, we don't care about maintaining contact: presence is assumed because assured. Of course, that says a lot about ourselves and the one doing the ghosting (as you've described).
Also, I don't think the subscription format helps. Other tensions arise, self-interest, potential audience losses, etc.
Finally, I find that being ghosted is disrespectful but extremely emotional too because of that. Perhaps that was at the root of your incisive piece.
Thank you for making things so clear.
Yes! The ghosted are left haunted not only by the absence of the other, but by their own looping reenactments of what might have been. It’s an emotional surveillance state, but turned inward. We become both investigator and suspect in a crime we didn’t commit.
And you are right, the illusion of infinite availability has made presence feel less urgent, and in turn, less sacred. We mistake potential for commitment, and in doing so, we cheapen continuity. It’s the paradox of our time… the more reachable we are, the less reached we feel!
I also really appreciate the insight about the subscription format, and I assume you mean platforms like Substack or even emotional “subscriptions” in relationships. In both cases, there’s an undercurrent of performance and conditional attention: am I worth renewing for? What happens if I stop delivering? It adds a strange layer of commodification to connection, where even intimacy begins to resemble content.
And yes, being ghosted hurts because it is both disrespectful and intimate. It’s an absence that stings precisely because it once mattered. Thank you for adding nuance!
Thanks for getting back to me. This got me thinking...
I asked myself: why is Tamara's writing so engaging? And the adjectives came thick and fast. "It's beautiful, challenging, precise, deep, fine tuned, musical, spectacular ..."
And, as I was running out of descriptors, an image, a reel of sorts came to mind. I thought to describe your writing as an Olympic diving final with the 10m platform and the 3m springboard, with the pool of still water, and a muted audience, all awaiting the jumps, the pirouettes, the slick, beautiful, trained, terse, magnificent silhouettes of well positioned ideas springing into the air and diving in curls and mathematical twists deep into the well referenced magnitude of a carefully selected topic without a splash, true to angles and reflections, reaching all at once in marvel and delight.
You probably would have preferred a ballet comparison, but that's what came to mind.
Be well.
I am a ballet lover, you know, and I wouldn’t trade the ballet for this, not for a second. That image is magnificent. You have turned my metaphors into motion, given my sentences muscle and gravity and grace. I read it twice, then laughed, delighted, at the idea that my writing might leap from the 10m platform with mathematical twists and land without a splash. That’s the highest compliment. Precision wrapped in risk. Discipline holding hands with freedom.
And truly, what a generous thing to do, to not just read, but to stop and wonder why something resonates. That curiosity is its own form of artistry. I’m deeply touched that you see the layers, the tuning, the engineering beneath the apparent ease. Because it’s not ease, it’s dive after dive, draft after draft, bruised knee after bruised ego. And yet, you have caught the silhouette of it. That means everything.
Thank you for this unexpected reel… I’ll replay it in my head the next time I hit a sentence like a belly-flop! :)
Glad you enjoyed it! As you well say: "it's dive after dive" that makes it happen.
The weight of truth, of reality in writing cannot be separated from the physical self. Perhaps that's where the need for discipline comes from.
Thanks again.
I’ve read this over and over today. Deeply moving….but messy in the very best of ways. Messy is so much better.
Once upon a time, I planned my life to achieve all my major life goals by the time I was 40. Envisioning I would enjoy the fruits of my labor after that age.
It was boring.
I jumped into the messiness of life a few years later. It’s been painful, joyful, quiet and loud…..but authentic.
Thank you for your writing. Each piece gives me so much on which to reflect and grow.
I am grateful for the beautiful unraveling you describe, from curated clarity to chosen chaos. That shift, from the tidy timeline to the unpredictable texture of real life, is brave and so profoundly alive. And I like how you frame it, not as failure, but as escape from boredom. Because that’s the secret no one tells you…. perfection is soooo dull!!! It leaves no room for awe, or rupture, or transformation. Messy, on the other hand? Messy has plot twists!
I admire you for abandoning the blueprint in favour of depth. And yes, it hurts. And yes, it hums. But it’s yours. I think that’s the most amazing thing we can do in a world of scripted lives, choose the unscripted one, even when it scrapes.
Thank you for letting these words accompany your reflection!
I hope the next chapter of your messiness be just as rich, just as real.
One morning
Eating buttered toast
With the girl
I like the most
And with my chewing
So engrossed
Not noticed
She’d become a ghost
It’s not just that
She didn’t care
My darling
Wasn’t even there
The smell of perfume
Everywhere
But she had vanished
Into air
Oh the horror!
Oh the pain
All my love has been
In vain
She left me
On the midnight train
And she’s not
Coming back again
She’s gone forever
Now I see
A ghost is all
Transparency
Was it her?
Or was it me?
No matter
What will be will be
Ohhhh this is so good, melancholy with a wink, a heartbreak wrapped in rhyme and marmalade.
The way you smuggle existential despair into buttered toast is a kind of dark art.
But what I like the most is the final shrug: “Was it her? Or was it me?” That’s the ghosting curse, isn’t it? It leaves you performing necromancy on your own breakfast, parsing crumbs for meaning. Yet you’ve managed to turn it into poetry, which is the most dignified kind of revenge.
Thank you for this lyrical lament! May your next toast be warm, your coffee strong, and your lovers real.