Ghosting happens when someone suddenly stops communicating with you without warning. It can happen in any relationship but more typically in a dating scenario. You've finally accepted to date this person who has inundated you with attention for the last few weeks.
While some people have no intention of hurting another person and might ghost a person because they're cooling off or don't know what to say or how to say it; others, particularly narcissists, ghost to deliberately upset another person.
A narcissist will come back after no contact if they find themselves low on attention, and they consider you easy to get that attention from. Most narcissists hate being alone, and they need attention far more than most people. Narcissists don't care about your feelings, and they don't miss you.
Ghosting is abruptly ending communication with someone without explanation. The concept most often refers to romantic relationships but can also describe disappearances from friendships and the workplace. People respond to being ghosted in many ways, from feeling indifferent to deeply betrayed.
Like most ghosts people report having experienced, you're just an annoying practitioner of “now you see me, now you don't.” Ghosting is akin to Gaslighting because it's a denial, a charade. And it rejects the worthiness of another human being and the impact of the exchange that may have happened between you.
They've moved on, and they don't care enough about the other person to tell them. In most cases, people ghost because they're no longer interested in pursuing a relationship with the other person. Instead of telling them that upfront, they go for the easiest and most convenient route: just stop responding.
Ghosting itself reflects some classic traits of a narcissist, including low self-esteem, the need to have the upper hand in a relationship, and a lack of empathy for the other person. Someone with this personality disorder forms relationships based on how they may benefit them.
At its worst, ghosting is a trauma that can affect your willingness to trust others again or enter into future relationships. You might find yourself so fixated on getting closure from the ghoster that you can't move forward.
A person ghosting typically has little acknowledgment of how it will make the other person feel. Ghosting is associated with negative mental health effects on the person on the receiving end and has been described by some mental health professionals as a passive-aggressive form of emotional abuse or cruelty.
Ghosting can hurt people.
It can make someone feel disrespected, disposable, and unimportant. It is a cruel form of rejection that many people do not know how to deal with when it happens. The person who is being ghosted is given no explanation, reason, or understanding of why the communication came to a halt.
So yes, narcissists can miss you in the sense that they feel bad when an emotional need isn't being met when you're not around and thus they want you back in their life. They need someone to boost their ego and make them feel good about themselves.
The Hoovering Technique in a Nutshell
Some narcissists engage in something called “hoovering”. It's when they abandon you out of the blue, and after some time, try to get you back into their circle, as if they hadn't just ghosted and tormented you before.
The act of ghosting is a power move that someone with narcissistic personality disorder may use. There are many reasons why someone might ghost you. It may be because they lost interest and want to avoid the conflict of telling you this personally. It may be they want to see your reaction and how much you care.
By Darius Cikanavicius on March 12, 2020. If you have ever interacted with a person who exhibits strong narcissistic or other dark personality traits, you have likely experienced what is known as the silent treatment.
Ghosting demonstrates a lack of respect for the other person's feelings and a lack of empathy for how the ghosting may impact them. They assume that the other person will “get the hint” and can use this to justify their actions.
When it comes to connections beyond dating apps, reasons can vary even more—but that's not to say ghosting is okay. “Ghosting is an unhealthy and disrespectful behavior,” Manly says. “Unless a person presents a threat of some kind, it's inappropriate not to communicate that you're not interested in moving forward.”
Ghosting is a form of passive rejection and it's also indicative of emotionally immature people. It doesn't feel like it now, but they really did do you a favor by disappearing from your life. You can't have a healthy relationship with someone who can't be honest with how they feel. 2.
Sometimes the ghosting process can be a kind of self-defense mechanism. “I have been hurt so many times in the past that at this point I'm honestly afraid of letting people get close to me,” said Skylar Grossen. “When I start to get attached to someone I just leave because I'm afraid to get hurt again.
While regular silent treatment in a relationship may mean suffering the partner's cold, icy silence for a couple of hours to several days or even to a few weeks, ghosting means that a person completely and suddenly stops communicating and vanishes from the relationship – and out of the shared life.
Overwhelmingly, all the experts we consulted recommend not texting anything after being ghosted. We know! It's hard. Sending a message is just not worth your time or energy, especially since you can't control the response.
Ghosting is often used to end short-term relationships
Ghosting is a quiet means of ending a relationship, and while it has been around for a long time, ghosting has stepped into the limelight given the ease by which people can ghost in the digital age. To ghost is, simply, to disappear.