«FAbrizio disappeared from one day to the next. He started not responding to texts and phone calls anymore. He won me over at a work event by showing me a piano video of Rammstein, a German band I didn’t even know. Until then, he from Genoa, I from Milan, we had exchanged 1,594 messages in five months, between weekends together and video calls.
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Ghosting is on the rise
What had happened, so suddenly? I was incredulous. I let a few days go by, wallowing in anxiety. Maybe he’s not well, he had an accident, he doesn’t have any power, has he lost his phone? What did I do wrong? Why? I started leaving him messages in an obsessive loop, like a drug addict going through withdrawal. He read them, there was the blue check. Until he reappeared with a “how are you” except to be present at his pleasure citing reasons of work stress. I ended up in the abyss of questions. I realized then that he was slowly ghosting me. So, it was happening to me too.”
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Silvia – the name is fictitious – is a forty-year-old Milanese journalist, cultured, brilliant, full of friends. From one day to the next she saw her partner disappear. Without an apparent reason, at least for her. Silvia also ended up a victim of “ghosting”, the rapidly growing sociological phenomenon of the moment. The word derives from the English term “ghost”, which means phantom: in fact, those who “ghost” disappear from the other person’s life, ending a love or friendship relationship, just like a ghost, without giving explanations and making lose your tracks. Research shows that it mostly affects 18-30 year olds, regardless of gender, and that 23 percent of people have been victims of it at least once in their lives.
Identikit of the ghoster
Let’s be clear, the phenomenon – transversal because it can happen to anyone (even the actor Chris Evans, the star of Captain America, suffered it, as he recently told People magazine) – has actually always existed. Just think of the recent case of the 55-year-old from Romagna discovered by Who saw him? who even faked a suicide and then disappeared ten years ago in Patras, Greece, leaving his wife and children in Italy (only to be found alive and well). With social media the theme has become more accentuated. The spread of dating apps (those for searching for online relationships) has triggered greater speed in creating and closing relationships, experts explain.
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«To the point that Tinder (already on the occasion of Halloween three years ago) had even launched a site (ItsYourBoo.com) to give the possibility of mending relationships that had run aground in the dry spell of ghosting» explains the psychologist and psychotherapist Michele Spaccarotella, author of the book Digital Pleasure #sexandthesocial (Joints). Manuela, fifty years old, for example, she was ghosted three times in a year by partners she met in a dating chat. She had become so frustrated that she thought she had become the problem herself, to the point of debasing herself. «After weeks of virtual courtship, the invitation to dinner, the prosecco and the compliments arrived. The day after the sentence: silence and oblivion. At least the most polite one wrote to me: “We’re not there.” I have cancelled from the App with such huge self-esteem problems that I had to take a leave of absence from work to love myself again.”
Walking away without explanation: the phenomenon of ghosting has become a widespread practice to end a relationship (Getty)
Alarm bells
The consequences are serious for those who undergo the treatment. According to psychotherapist Jennice Vilhauer, who coined the term in 2015, ghosting activates the same regions in the brain that are stimulated when experiencing physical pain. Studies reveal that victims even reach higher levels of anxiety than those who have not experienced it. Along with guilt, anger, insomnia and loss of appetite. A débâcle, a defeat, in short. For the victims it is similar in some ways to psychological violence. «The ghoster is not necessarily a bad or evil person, he just hides a strong unresolved emotional immaturity» explains Marinella Cozzolino, psychotherapist, clinical sexologist and creator of dimmy.it, the psychologist online 7 days a week. «He simply chooses to disappear to avoid the conflict thinking that, perhaps, silence or a neutral response hurts less than clearly expressing his point of view on the interruption of the relationship. And unfortunately it is often men who behave like this.” A 2021 study from the University of Padua has outlined in the ghosters three personality disorders: psychopathy, Machiavellianism and narcissism. This certainly does not mean that they are psychopaths, but simply that those who do so tend to have more accentuated traits of Machiavellianism than those who do not disappear from one day to the next.
The alarm bells
«A phantom partner leaves the circle open, there is no motive, but only abandonment. Anyone who gets entangled in it ends up in a mental limbo in which he tells himself about it and repeats to himself that maybe it’s not over, that he will return, wallows in doubts where the main question is always the same: why? » continues Cozzolino. «Leaving things unfinished doesn’t allow you to put a stop to a situation and move on. In what I call the “dignified burial”». What hurts, therefore, is above all the lack of a possibility of appeal. Are there any warning signs? «Some “red flags” of the “ghoster” that can raise suspicion are being a person already prone to lies and disappearances, showing a behavior that is usually contemptuous and devaluing towards others, the need to keep relationships under one’s own control, the lack of stable relationships in his life, an attitude of coldness and detachment especially during stressful periods” underlines Spaccarotella.
Ghosting can be healed
The “worst” ghosters are, apparently, the ones who gradually dissolve into a sort of “friendly” disappearance. They call it “caspering”, from Casper, like the ghost character from the comics. A drip. It must be said, however, that in couples the blame is always divided in half: could there be co-responsibility in the estrangement? “Yes and no. If the ghoster senses a “stink” of attachment, for example, she runs away, causing arguments or exasperating her partner » the psychologist further reveals. «They are also people who demonstrate a very strong initial love in the first six months. They bombard their partner with attention, messages and phone calls, causing a very strong emotional dependence in them” adds Cozzolino.
«Sometimes, however, ghosting is misinterpreted. I remember a patient who went out to dinner with a group of friends and was accompanied home by one of them who then kissed her. She never called her again and she was upset about it. Was it ghosting? I don’t think so, they just enjoyed the game of seduction. I always repeat to my patients: if it happened it’s also because, ultimately, perhaps they didn’t like you enough. It happens in life.” Fortunately, recovery is possible. It takes, on average, six to twelve months to grieve. Most of the time victims end up in psychotherapy. At the end of the tunnel, however, they find themselves again, and often with new motivations. They heal dark parts that would not have come out. «The ending doesn’t change, this is the most difficult part to accept at the beginning» concludes Cozzolino. «Anger can be transformed into determination and ghosting into a springboard, into an awakening, to start again. Without considering that after all that person is paradoxically doing a favor: who would want such an immature and unreliable partner?”.
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