What does it mean to ghost someone

Suddenly, and maybe without any warning at all, your partner seems to have disappeared. No calls, no text messages, no connection made on social media, no responses to any of your messages. You may never know for sure why you were ghosted. Other research found that people who are believers in destiny, who think that relationships are either meant to be or not, are more likely to find ghosting acceptable than people who believe relationships take patience and work.

Originally it referred to the soul of a dead person or a disembodied spirit, and this meaning is still in use. In the recent past, ghost and ghosting have expanded in meaning, and today this term is often evoked in relation to dating. The verb form is also widely used; you can date someone for a few months and then ghost. With ghosting there is no break-up conversation, perhaps because the relationship was not serious enough to warrant a formal break-up or because confrontation was seen as too difficult or not worth the trouble. Whatever the reason, the act of ghosting effectively ends a relationship.

The term originated in the mids. In that following decade, media reported a rise in ghosting, which has been attributed to the increasing use of social media and online dating apps. The term is attested since at least , [1] in the context of online exchanges, [2] and became popular by through numerous articles on high-profile celebrity relationship dissolutions, [3] [4] and went on to be widely used.

Verified by Psychology Today. Living Forward. No phone call or email, not even a text. The more it happens, either to themselves or their friends, the more people become desensitized to it, and the more likely they are to do it to someone else.