An Unexpected Apology Part 2...Week 18

Ghosting, being left for dead and sorry for what?

Last week feels like a really long time ago because of the holiday. We had our college son back yet hardly saw him. Another mom said having a son this age feels like a “he’s just not that into you” situation. Yep! He’d rather hang out with his girlfriend and friends instead of us! :(

But now I’ll pick up on the thread of the unexpected apology I mentioned last week. There’s a twist to the story. Someone I consider a friend, though there were many years when we didn’t see each other, said she wanted to apologize for something. I thought I knew what it was. I was wrong. She came over and sincerely apologized for “ghosting” me during a time when she had a lot going on in her life. For the record, I never considered what she did as ghosting.

I thought she was going to apologize for a conversation we’d had years ago when she expressed some opinions mostly related to my oldest son. I thought, given that conversation and because we simply lived in different areas and had different demands on our time, it made sense that we drifted apart. Drifting apart isn’t ghosting in my book. Ghosting to me is when you’ve had some form of personal or even work relationship with someone and then the person continues to reach out to you and you essentially intentionally don’t respond. You vanish without explanation despite the fact that the person is trying to be in touch with you. Of course, we all know the term “ghosting” but I just want to be clear.

The Trouble With Ghosting

What I find really troubling lately is that ghosting has become an acceptable form of dealing with sticky situations. Several weeks ago on a FB group for women writers someone asked advice on how to handle an annoying friend. Most of the respondents told the person that she should simply ghost this friend! They thought this strategy was the simplest, most humane and sensible thing to do.

If you need to distance yourself from a serious abuser — maybe the kind of person you might get a restraining order on—of course you can ghost. Other than that, though, I think it’s gutless and actually one of the most cruel things you can do to someone. If you don’t have the courage and the integrity to explain to someone why you can’t be friends (or work associates, etc) any longer then you should be required to suck it up and put up with the person. Until you DO muster the courage to be honest. You don’t have to be rude or even brutally honest — you can candy coat a bit! — but everyone deserves some explanation. (Of course, if the person then stalks you even after you’ve told them it’s finito then that’s also another story).

I’ve written a bit about ghosting (i.e. this piece in Parade) and once I understood it I became a vehement anti-ghoster. Humans are pack animals. Do you know what happens in the wild when one of the pack — even the one who is the most popular, most treasured head of the pride in a lion family — gets an injury? The whole pride ostracizes that lion. They essentially ghost him, leave him for dead. That’s what you are doing to someone when you decide to ghost. Everybody has felt that painful and confused feeling of being ghosted. It makes sense that it’s extremely painful — even physically painful. Being socially isolated or ostracized registers in the brain as pain — much like a burn, cut or injury. It evokes the primal feeling of being left for dead.

Apologizing for What?

Again, I didn’t think this old pal had ghosted me. I thought we had a real difference of opinions. There was something she saw in my kid — or maybe me as a parent — that she didn’t like and didn’t want her 4-year-old (at the time) around. I remember being taken aback by this judgment, but also accepting it. When we spoke about this recently, she acknowledged that in retrospect she may have unfairly judged my son. He was only 4! But she didn’t necessarily apologize for her stance. She explained that she was simply determined to raise good (I would say “obedient”) kids and didn’t want a little friend around who might be a rabble rouser.

What I realized is that if she would’ve apologized for her judgment of my child or my parenting she would essentially be apologizing for who she is. I wouldn’t expect her to apologize for who she is any more than I’d want to apologize for who I am (someone who doesn’t mind rabble rouser kids).

I probably apologize everyday — for dropping something, bumping into someone, forgetting to tell someone something, misspeaking, etc — but these are really such minor foibles. I’d bet that most things we do that truly hurt other people are actually things we can’t easily apologize for. Because they are usually us being us. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try if we really want to, but sometimes I do wonder if we know what we’re sorry for.