Boy meets girl*.
They go out, have dinner or drinks.
Maybe they have a sleepover.
Maybe they sleepover several times. Maybe a holiday is planned.
Then suddenly, the Whatsapp/iMessages stop.
Despite the “read” notification, repeated question-asking and requests to meet up, boy or girl is never heard from again.
Image caption A typical ghosting conversation
This is called ghosting.
If it hasn’t happened to you, it’s almost definitely happened to one of your mates.
Instead of being broken up with, you just get blocked, deleted or ignored, until hopefully you go away.
This is reportedly what Charlize Theron did to Sean Penn when she wanted to end their engagement.
It’s also something most people who use dating apps will have experienced.
Image caption It started with a kiss. And ended with a ghost.
Why why why? Everything seemed fine
Philippa Perry, a psychotherapist who works as an agony aunt for Red magazine, explains to Newsbeat why ghosting is a particularly modern dating woe.
“If you behaved badly like that within a social circle, you would get a reputation and people would think badly of you.
“But you can get away with online because the social circles of the two people don’t necessarily overlap at all,” she says.
Guilt and cowardice
Image caption At least Casper was friendly
Philippa thinks ghosting is a way for people to avoid feeling guilty too.
“People want to shy away from being told off. If you’ve slept with someone and then you don’t want to see them again, you kind of know you’ve been a bit of a cad.
“People are scared of hearing about how it affects another person.
“If you were to ring someone up and say: ‘Thanks for last night but I don’t want to see you again,’ the other person might say: ‘Oh I feel a bit hurt and betrayed,’ and then they would feel bad.”
How do I cope with being ghosted?
Image caption When your Whatsapps are more lonely than this deserted road
If you’re trying to get over being dumped, kicked to the curb, ditched by silence, there’s a few things you can do to help minimise the pain.
One of the things Philippa suggests is talking to a cushion.
“Say to yourself, ‘OK this cushion represents my ex’, then put it on a chair and tell the chair or cushion off.
“You will be left with things you want to say to that person and it will be very frustrating not being able to say them.
“We might want to tell the other person off. Maybe we want to say, ‘I only wanted one night as well but I would have liked to say bye nicely. I still want to be treated with respect’. You can say that to your cushion too.”
Get it out
Image caption Write a letter
She also says: “Write a letter you can’t send, just so it stops going round and round in your head. Just get it out somehow.”
Don’t turn it on yourself
There’s a few things to avoid too; ways of thinking which can make you feel worse.
“You don’t know why you’ve been ghosted because they haven’t told you,” she says.
“So don’t use the speculation that will obviously arise in you to do yourself down.
“Be careful you don’t use it as evidence that you’re not a great person.”
Don’t generalise
Image caption Not everyone will be awful
The other behaviour to avoid is generalisation.
“People who’ve been Tindering a lot, they get to a state of despondency. They think all women want is my sperm or whatever it is and all men want is no strings and then this becomes the lens through which you look through at other people, which isn’t fair on those other people.
“I think we have to be really careful about thinking everybody on this dating site is horrible. They’re not, you’ve just met four horrible ones, that’s all. Generalising is normal but it doesn’t work in this modern world of dating.”
What if I’m tempted to ghost someone?
It takes two to Tango. But ghosting isn’t the answer according to Perry.
“Face the music. Don’t ghost, it’s not a nice thing to do.
“Just say bye if you’re going to say bye.
“These days people seem to equate dating with shopping and think someone out there will be perfect for them so they will dismiss someone for being too short for example, which is kind of daft because no one is perfect for anyone.
“We become perfect for each other when we spend time with each other so we can mutually influence each other. No one is going to be perfect.
“You’re just going to have to spend time with them so that you rub off against each other a bit. That’s how relationships work. Before you ghost have a think about that.”
*For the sake of the phrase this reads boy meets girl. It can of course be girl meets girl, or boy meets boy.
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