When you’re ghosted, the silence feels intensely personal. In this new video, I’m breaking down what’s really going on when someone ghosts: why it happens at different stages, and how to respond without spiraling or chasing someone who’s already shown you where you stand.

If you’re dealing with silence from someone right now, this will help you make sense of it and decide what to do next. Stay till the end for the perspective that will give you back your power and remind you of your worth.

Matthew Hussey: 

If you’ve been ghosted before, you know how confusing and painful the experience can be. You thought you were building something special with someone. Maybe it was in the early dating stages, or maybe you were much, much further into the relationship. When someone suddenly goes silent and you’re left with no closure. You start wondering, did I say something wrong?

Should I text them? Should I call them out? Should I pretend I don’t care and ghost them back before you do anything? Pause. Because understanding what ghosting really is will give you back your power and your control. In a situation where you feel like you’ve lost it. And in this video, I’m going to tell you what to do next.

Depending on what stage your ghosting happened. And by the way, if you are in the grief of having been ghosted right now, stay till the end of this video I promise. Where this video builds up to is the thing you need to hear today. If you’re new here, I’m Matthew Hussey, I’m a writer and a coach who over the last two decades has coached hundreds of thousands of people and written two New York Times bestselling books on love and relationships.

As always, make sure you subscribe and like this video. Let’s get into it. When we think of being ghosted in dating, we think of a sudden disappearance. But we don’t experience it as sudden because ghosting doesn’t hit all at once. It’s more like a series of moments. First, we notice a delay in their responsiveness. Then there’s the disappointment at not hearing back.

The wondering of whether they missed our message. The silent confusion as we try to figure out what’s going on in their head, and the justifications that tell us something must have happened. Let’s break down the different kinds of ghosting, from the least to the most damaging, and how to deal with them. Number one, the early messaging phase. We have to be careful of overthinking it.

When someone with only exchanged a couple of messages with on an app disappears without a closure message, the word ghosting is thrown around pretty loosely these days. But if someone fails to respond to a message that we have sent them before we even met, and then we rush to call it a ghosting. We may be revealing our own overinvestment in the situation.

We might also be showing out there and making ourselves vulnerable, just for a moment, by sending another message to clarify before deciding that they have disappeared for good. Maybe they’re not big on texting. Maybe your last message didn’t include a question, so it didn’t prompt a response. Who knows? You just have to remember that if you haven’t built rapport with that person, you haven’t met them and you’ve never made plans.

There is no emotional investment there. Sometimes the best form of closure is to stop analyzing the situation and simply send them a question the next day, or something a little more intentional that elicits a response. The second stage of ghosting is early dating ghosting. So many of the painful ghosting stories people come to me with happen in early dating.

It is the painful withdraw on that someone we had started to develop feelings for, or whose continued presence we had come to expect in our lives. The stories themselves that people tell me often leave clues as to why someone might have ghosted. Sometimes we get ghosted because someone can’t handle new information about us. Like the guy who disappeared the moment someone in my community mentioned to him in a vulnerable moment that she had HPV, an extremely common sexually transmitted disease that most people don’t even know they have.

And then there are the enormous number of stories people tell me about a whirlwind romance they had with someone, one where they talked all night, hung out all day, laughed until they cried passionately kissed, made love, felt like they knew each other forever, even began making future plans only to be ghosted by that person days later. These people are left feeling utterly confused, heartbroken, and even stupid.

They think to themselves, they made me feel so safe, so secure. They just invited me to their aunt’s wedding, for God’s sakes. Where were the warning signs? The cruelty of these situations is how aggrieved we feel while having no memory of a conversation to actually feel aggrieved by. We are pained not by their explanations, but by their silence, by the wordless severance.

This is why so often, the unjust hallmark of ghosting is the feeling that we ourselves must have done something wrong, but we can make better sense of situations like these by seeing them as a reflection of a person’s mutual desire for and unwillingness to confront intimacy. They want to get as close as possible to all of the things that intimacy brings connection, loving feelings, mutual admiration, sex, adulation, safety, everything but intimacy itself.

The moment they feel that they run in David White’s book consolations, he talks about the concept of running away in life. He says wanting to run is necessary, but it can also be extremely dangerous and unwise, especially when running exiles us from the very circumstances that we’re about to mature and cultivate our character. Let me repeat that because it’s so important.

Running is unwise when running exiles us from the very circumstances that we’re about to mature and cultivate our character. But even in these situations, I’ve mentioned why ghost? Why not just say I wanted a quick hookup? So let’s leave it there. Or the STD conversation scared me. Or despite our two week love nest, I am not capable of genuine intimacy or commitment.

This is where ghosting goes a step further. It is indicative of someone’s inability to deal with life on its own terms. To be honest about the reason for their pulling back is just too much friction. To admit to someone that they have aggressively led them on would be too painful a conversation to have, and cast them in too negative a light for their own ego to handle.

Not to mention, it might create friction if they ever want to come back. Whereas leaving it open ended might leave the door open. Which is why people who ghost, by the way, when they come back, are often relying on you, not bringing up the ghosting. Now, obviously there are many different versions of these scenarios I’m talking about, each with their own nuances.

Every situation is different. Every person is different, and sometimes, even when you know you probably should walk away from something, a part of you still wants to try a little harder. Maybe you do want to send one last text to tell that person how you feel more for your own closure than to get them back. Or maybe your question is if they reappear, what do I do?

What do I say? Do I give them another shot? All of your nuanced, specific questions that aren’t answered by this video can be answered by Matthew AI. It has been trained on 18 years of my data, my courses, everything I’ve ever said, and you can access it for free at AskMH.com. And the cool thing is, Matthew AI, remembers your conversations so you can keep going back for more contextual advice.

As the story evolves with this person, check it out. It is an extremely powerful tool to have in your pocket. Okay, let’s move on to talk about the third type of ghosting. Ghosting in a long term relationship. What about situations where ghosting happens in real relationships? Maybe eight months of seeing each other every single day, maybe three years together and planning for a baby or a 15 year marriage.

This isn’t just confusing, and it is not just painful. It can be deeply traumatic, and it is something that requires a great deal of processing. It shakes our sense of reality and makes us question our judgment. How could I have missed something so big? And this leads to self-blame and a complete loss of self-worth. Sometimes when you look back, you can connect the dots.

You look at the red flags, you minimized the moments you brushed aside. But other times it truly feels like it came out of nowhere. Here’s the hard truth about these situations. Some people can appear incredibly loving when their needs are being met, but when things become inconvenient, when the novelty fades, when they’re no longer getting what they want, or when they suddenly get scared, you see who they are, their true character.

And it can be chilling to learn how different their character is from your own in ways you never knew. We discover the extreme and callous lengths they are willing to go through to avoid confronting reality, the reality of a terrifically difficult conversation. The reality of the damage they have done. The reality of life. When you play by the rules of common decency, it is not just their attempt to avoid you.

It is an attempt to avoid themselves. The realization that they are the person whose decisions are the cause of so much pain. In short, these people have an antagonistic relationship with life itself. Now look, while the effects of this may mean devastation, regret, loss of time, or even loss of finances, it is so important to remember. Perhaps the most important consolation of all is that we get to continue life on the real ground.

We have always occupied, while they drift untethered in a morally bankrupt alternate reality that we would never wish to inhabit. We may in time come to realize that a far worse fate than the one we have been dealt would be to continue to be wedded to that world that is antithetical to the standards and the principles we hold dear.

This is why ghosting is truly never a verdict of our worst. People reject each other every day in life without disappearing. They communicate. They show basic respect. They show up for the hard conversation. Ghosting goes beyond rejection. It tells you something very specific about the other person that no matter how they feel about someone. The moment there’s internal friction on their end, they will disappear.

Now, you may be left wondering, but Matthew, if they could just leave like this without even considering my feelings, did they ever even love me? And here’s the truth. They may have loved you, but not in the way that you love. Real love has an outward focus. Includes care. Responsibility. Humanity. Even in the endings. Especially in the endings.

What they felt was more self-centered. They loved how you made them feel. They loved what they got from the relationship. And when that stopped, so did their decency. So did their attention. So did their effort. That doesn’t mean you imagined the relationship. It means you are loving someone who defines love very differently than you do. Here’s what can help you heal from the deep pain you’re feeling right now.

You are not grieving who they truly are. You are grieving the version of them you believed in. The relationship as you experienced it, and the future you thought was unfolding. You are grieving an idea. And once you see that clearly, the grief slowly changes shape. It becomes less confusing and more freeing. I want to finish with a very important note for you to take away from this video.

Ghosting is a doorway into the many different kinds of disappointments that occur when we risk ourselves in dating, in relationships, and in life. But this particular disappointment isn’t just the place where we find our cautionary lessons for the future. It’s a place where we can be reminded of our courage and our sincerity. There is no sincere life that does not include heartbreak.

And in seeing someone else’s unfortunate behavior, we can be pleasantly reminded of how far we’ve traveled in our own lives to become the caring, intentional, loving person we are today. Where our words mean something, where we ourselves are more careful with people’s hearts than we might have been in a different time. And where, unlike so many people, real connection is something we are willing to risk our hearts for.

Ghosting doesn’t just give us a window into the way someone else has failed us. It gives us a unique vantage point from which to view ourselves, to feel proud of the way we treat other people. To feel proud of the energy we represent in the world. While for some, ghosting understandably fuels their insecurity. It can, if we choose, actually serve as an invitation to a much more foundational kind of confidence.

The confidence that arises from being proud of the way we ourselves show up in the world. The way we treat other people, and therefore the kinds of people we believe we deserve to be around in the future. How have you dealt with ghosting in the past? How are you dealing with it right now? Is it something you’re going through now?

Leave me a comment. Maybe your comment will help others going through this situation, and I will certainly be reading them. I’ll see you in the comments section.

*This transcript was whipped up with the help of AI. While it does a pretty impressive job, it may have the occasional typo, mix-up, or moment of creative interpretation. If you spot anything that looks a little . . . adventurous . . . thanks for your patience (and your sense of humor).*