COLUMN: Confessions of a serial ghoster

Between stints as a serious girlfriend, I was a serial ghoster. In my mind, I owed nothing to boys who I had never met. And so often all they got from me was just that: nothing.

When I first got Tinder, I had just exited a year-and-a-half relationship. I was not ready for dating, but I was practically giddy about dating apps. I got a couple hundred matches pretty quickly but only sustained one long conversation. His name was Dave, and he was a British military vet spending a summer in the United States as a camp counselor. We talked for over a week, and when he finally got to my city, he kept asking to meet up. He started to exhaust me. So I ignored all of his texts, and when he called, my friend Hailey and I watched my phone buzz on the table in silence.

That was the first time I disappeared without an explanation. The last time I ghosted was two weeks into my current relationship. The timing sounds murky, but the guy and I had made plans to meet up when he got back from a business trip. We made the plans two days after I met my boyfriend; by the time he was back, it was official. But I didn’t explain any of that — I just left the message in my inbox.

I realized I regretted behaving this way online when I was interviewed for a podcast. The concept was a roundtable discussion about the perspectives on dating app behavior, and I started joking around about my old habits. All of this was true.

“If a guy sent a message I didn’t like, I’d ghost him.”

“If he sends me something that I can’t think of an answer to, I’m done responding.”

“If the first date isn’t good, you don’t have a responsibility to text them. There isn’t a need for an explanation until you’ve met twice after meeting on the internet.”

Then, the guy across the table shared his opinions about how girls behave online. And, as weird as it sounds, it was the first time I’d heard a straight guy talk about dating apps in earnest. And I realized he was genuinely affected, albeit not deeply, when someone stopped giving him the time of day. So I thought about the unsaved numbers in my phone and the conversations that ended with nothing. I thought, especially, about the really sweet, good-looking boy — a graduate student at USC — who had asked for a date after a trip only to be purposefully ignored.

I thought about the four dates I had planned for the weekend I met my boyfriend. My date with him was the second out of four, and I don’t think I offered any explanations to the other guys. The third date was the one I had been most looking forward to. When I went back to delete my Bumble, I realized the guy from the fourth date had messaged me once more.

Sometimes, in my head I imagine redownloading Bumble, just for five minutes, to send politely worded explanations to those who I interacted with most regretfully. Then I remind myself, of course, that I deleted my account, that these people probably don’t remember me and that — in general — that would be a really weird thing to do. I also remember that some of the guys treated me unfavorably too.

Many asked me out and never followed through.

One guy I didn’t respond to for a day sent me another message asking me if I was really dull enough to need a direct question to keep a conversation going. When I didn’t respond to that (it’s not ghosting if he was being rude), he passive-aggressively assured me that we wouldn’t be going on a date.

One guy, at the texting phase, couldn’t come up with any plans,  so he thought we should meet at his house. I had certain rules — never meet past dark, always meet in public, don’t go over to someone’s place until you’ve met them at least twice — and made it clear to him that I wouldn’t be visiting him. He proceeded to send me a screen-grab of an Instagram rant about “girls these days” and how they assume all any guy wants is sex, especially when guys invite girls over to their place. “No thank you, internet stranger,” I thought. I did not ghost him. I told him quite unapologetically that he was rude.

Of course, none of the behavior above excuses my petty irresponsibility on dating apps. I don’t believe I caused any of these guys any significant emotional distress by simply not responding to them. But I recognize now that my habits were disrespectful and lazy. And although the bizarre boys I described above were not always lazy, they were disrespectful too. There’s a culture of casual ambivalence about the person on the other side of the screen — almost as if that person doesn’t exist. At that podcast, however, when I sat across the interview table from the personified, anonymous, straight guy on Bumble, I snapped out of that point of view.

Now, I’m firmly anti-ghosting. If the stories above show anything, I hope they show my tiny call to action. Dear reader, do better than me.

Emma Andrews is a senior majoring in international relations. Her column, “Before & After,” runs Fridays.