Have You Been Ghosted? Here Are 3 Considerations to Help You Cope

Dating experts seem to enjoy coming up with unique and fitting names for every common phenomenon that happens in modern relationships. It’s too bad that ‘being ghosted’ is one the most popularly discussed dating trends.

In case you’re late to the dating-trend-name game, ghosting is a term for when one of the two dating people disappears and stops all communication. They’re suddenly gone from the other person’s life, typically without warning.

In the Catholic dating world, we might hope that such a rude and inconsiderate practice wouldn’t be so common. But, let’s face it, sometimes we’re disappointed to find that our fellow Catholics can be as imperfect as the rest of the world.

If you’re finding yourself dealing with the let-down of being ghosted by someone you had high hopes for, here are three considerations to help you find comfort.

You deserve much better

It’s natural to feel hurt, rejected, and angry if someone disappears like this on you. These emotions are natural (and just!) because you deserve to be treated in a much better way than this.

You have dignity. You deserve respect. You’re a child of God, and should be treated as such.

When someone ghosts you, it suggests that you’re not worthy of a proper goodbye, explanation, or closure. This is an absolute lie. You are worthy of so much more.

When this person treated you this way, he or she was acting immaturely. They took the easy, selfish way out. There was not any consideration of your feelings, or what a healthy end of things should have looked like.

Have you ever heard others complain that they were dumped via text message? Obviously pretty rude on the part of the person dumping the other. But ghosting is worse. Ghosting is the most selfish way to break things off with someone.

Rest assured that it’s not you, it’s them. This isn’t to say that you didn’t make mistakes in your interactions with them,. But even if you weren’t the perfect date, that is absolutely no excuse for them to disappear on you. Try to own the fact that this abrupt, rude ending is on them and is not your fault.

There’s a bright side to the pain

There's a bright side to the pain

Give yourself time to get over the initial shock, confusion, and pain. In the process of healing, though, hopefully you can start to see that this super ugly cloud has a silver lining.

You may have liked this person and had high hopes for a relationship with them. Maybe you even started imagining that they could be “the one”.

Whether you were initially that hopeful or not, it’s better you found out their true character now than later. Someone who breaks things off in this immature and cowardly way is not someone you’d want to end up with in the long run.

As much as it hurts to be abandoned like this, be thankful that it happened now and not a few years into a marriage with them.

Right now, the only way you’re bond to them is in your emotional attachment. This attachment will heal over time. As hard as it might be to look on the bright side, you can be thankful that you’re not bound by the vows of marriage.

Christ was ghosted, too

Christ was ghosted, too

It might feel flippant to say that Jesus was “ghosted,”. But the fate of Christ on Calvary is not so very different from what you’re going through now.

Where were His numerous followers, when He was suffering and dying? His closest friends, the Apostles who pledged to follow Him no matter what?

Gone.

Yes, He did have John and His Mother there with Him at the end. Hopefully you, too, have close friends and family members to help you through your trials.

But the fact remains that Christ was abandoned by almost everyone. Your feelings of pain and rejection are not something foreign to Him. So bring your struggles to your abandoned Savior. Tell Him of the pain in your heart. Share with Him your shattered hopes and your desolation.

Make a trip to an adoration chapel and tell Him in the Blessed Sacrament, where He is so often forgotten by many of us in our daily lives. Meditate on His passion and the desertion of the Apostles. Embrace the suffering and unite it to His. If that’s too hard (and it often sure does feel like it), ask Him for the strength to do so.

Pray in the confidence that He has a wonderful plan for your life. Ask Him to speed things along if you like. But know that He wants better for you than you even want for yourself, and that the end of your hopes for a relationship with this person are not the end of your hopes for the future.

Also Read: Discouraged with Online Dating? 3 Reasons You Shouldn’t Let it Get You Down