We have all been there. We met someone that we don’t want to see again. It can be a date, or simply an acquaintance. But the feeling is not mutual; and this person keeps coming to us, texting, calling…
Having to explain why we are not interested is not easy. Sometimes even we don’t understand why and we don’t want to hurt, so we ghost. We tell ourselves that silence is the best way to “make them understand”. In our modern relationship language, ghosting has become a practice that some think is more “polite” than just saying no, thanks.
But sometimes silence can hurt more. And no matter how short the interaction with someone was, the cruelty of ghosting lies in that it leaves most people wondering why, asking themselves what they did wrong.
Recently I came across a study that perfectly explains why ghosting is so hurtful to the majority of people. The experiment, carried out by Dr. Tronick in 1975, shows that babies as young as one already know that social interaction is all about reciprocity.
In the experiment, a mother and her one-year child were recorded in a normal interaction, playing and smiling at each other. Suddenly, the mother face becomes expressionless. The baby immediately realizes and you can see how his anxiety increases as he tries by all means to get her mother’s attention back.
This experiment clearly shows that having someone we are used to interact with withdraw from us triggers an intense feeling of stress and despair from a very early age. Left to ourselves, without any chance to understand or make ourselves understood, this feeling stays with us until we surrender to the fact that we are not going to see this person anymore.
Some are used to drawing conclusions from this, telling themselves that they are responsible, because they behaved in a certain way. Others become very good at telling themselves that the person who ghosted is a bad person that doesn’t deserve their attention. Both can be true, but we will never know. A very basic rule of social interaction is broken and a little faith in humanity is always lost in the way.
So whenever you feel that you are making someone a favor by sparing him/her of an unpleasant conversation, just remember: ghosting hurts more.
