Ghosting – How Rude!

So when I listen to the Kane Show in the morning on 99.5 FM, they frequently do this thing where they call someone to find out why they’ve ghosted their lover or friend. 

Invariably, it often turns out that there is someone else in that person’s life. 

The person is usually either too scared to confront the other person or is just a cheater and doesn’t want to tell the other person, instead wanting to “have their Kate and Edith too.”  LOL

So “ghosting” is where the person just disappears, cuts off contact, or goes incommunicado. 

It’s sort of an avoidance strategy. 

This leaves the other person not knowing what happened or why. 

It’s like the line just goes dead between the two people.  

Sometimes, one person is clingy or forces themselves on another in which case, the other person may feel smothered, and therefore repels or wants to run in the other direction. 

Other times, how do you tell someone that you just don’t like them anymore? 

Worse is if the person is cheating behind the other person’s back, hiding it, and denying it–that’s unforgivable!

When a person ghosts another, it’s sort of like at work when someone get’s marginalized. 

No one wants to give honest feedback to the other person, so instead for some people it’s just easier to avoid them and the topic  altogether. 

I think the point is not to hurt other people. 

The question is how do you cut the strings with someone you don’t like without getting into a huge, ugly confrontation?

Honesty is the best policy, and treating people the way you would want to be treated. 

But for some people who don’t take no for an answer, it’s understandable that you may just want to have the phone on busy signal or you attempt to break contact.

Relationships are tough, and when they go bad, ghosting without at least trying to end it nicely can not only be rude, but also it’s chicken to break it off as a ghost, and not a person. 😉

(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Needy And You Know It

Some people are so needy–they are almost like children in adult’s clothing, while others are so distant they may as well be living on another planet–they are in there own world.

The Wall Street Journal (15 July 2013) asks why some people seem to demand so much?

It explains that there are three types of people:

1) Secure–these people were raised in a consistently caring and responsive manner and they become warm and loving people themselves able to form healthy balanced relationships–where they can be apart from and together with others and function well in both situations.

2) Avoidant/Dismissive–those who are raised in an environment where neediness was not tolerated and was seen as suffocating, and so they learn to minimize closeness to others–they are distant and detached.

3) Anxious/Needy–People raised in an inconsistent environment, where they got mixed messages about nurturing, and they end up constantly feeling insecure and needy, like they will get drawn in and then rejected again, so they smother other people with their neediness and don’t recognize and respect appropriate boundaries.

This third personality type, who is always needy and ends up pushing away other people, who feel suffocated, reminds me of a funny scene in Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” where a couple visit the therapist, who asks each of them how often they have sex? The man says, “Hardly ever. Maybe three times a week.” But then the woman when asked the same question says, “Constantly. I’d say three times a week.”

Just like people can’t really change their basic sexual needs (men apparently wanting physical intimacy more often then women), so too people can’t change the home life they were raised in–good, bad or indifferent.

Whether people are needy and clingy, aloof and dismissive, or plays between hot and cold, we need to figure out how to care about and love them for whoever they are.

Boundaries are key. Taking some personal space is healthy. Together time and intimacy is critical.

It’s all about finding a balance–where each person has the time and space to be who they are, and then come back to a warm and caring relationship to share, rejuvenate, and laugh and cry together. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)