(October 17, 2019)

In honor of the temperatures finally falling and the upcoming Halloween holiday, I found it only appropriate to discuss a spooky new trend for singles-being ghosted!  So sit back, swipe right on this column and lets dive into some mind-boggling behavior. 

We live in a culture of instant gratification like I’ve never seen.  You want a juicy ripe piece of watermelon out of season? No worries, it’s fully stocked at your local grocery chain.  Want soup at midnight?  Uber Eats can help.  How about those new curtains you’ve been eyeballing?  With 2 clicks, Amazon Prime will have it to your house tomorrow morning.  While this is all well and good, it seems we’ve forgotten the value of putting time into something.  No one remembers how much better a movie was after you had to drive to Blockbuster, pray it was in stock, drive home, watch an FBI warning and then 10 minutes of previews.  We don’t want to put in hours at the gym, prepping healthy food and watching our diets just to have the body we want.  Instead we take HCG, fat burners and inject our bodies with silicone to achieve the results in a fraction of the time. 

These luxuries have spoiled us into thinking everything is supposed to happen instantly and it’s seeping its way into our relationships and the way we date.  How many times has this scenario happened to you?  You meet someone online, say Instagram or a dating app.  You spend weeks, sometimes over a month chatting with this person through messages.  For whatever reason or the other you both put off meeting, typically it’s fear of rejection.  You discuss every topic under the sun, they might even send you pictures of their privates, because apparently people are real proud of them these days and can’t wait to whip ‘em out. You finally meet in person, have a seemingly decent time, then poof, you never speak to them again.  

We are dating in the laziest possible way.  Most people literally meet laying flat on their backs, by swiping through a slideshow of faces alone on their couch.  There is no longer an effort to “hunt,” thus decreasing the feeling of reward when you finally get the person in real life.  Most of the time, there have been weeks and weeks of chatting through text, that when you finally get to meet in person, you haven’t got much to talk about, which can lead to a feeling of being unimpressed.  Maybe all this time spent through non-verbal communication has allowed you to build this person up in your head to be something they’re not and so you’re immediately disappointed when you meet them.  Due to the lack of actual communication in this day and age, we are missing a real sense of intimacy and natural chemistry when seeking out partners. Nowadays, people feel more comfortable having full-on sex with someone than holding hands or looking in their eyes. 

Because of the ease and availability of “the next best thing,” people are seemingly disposable.  If you meet me in person and I don’t live up to whatever you had in your head, or I don’t sleep with you immediately or whatever else you decide in the 1 hour of time you spend with me in person, it’s on to the next one in line in the DMs and that is a screwy way of living.  Humans are not disposable, and no matter how jaded or hardened your heart may be, rejection never feels good.  Instead of taking the time to give someone a chance, it’s easier to just never speak to them again.  We are now so lazy in dating that we just skip breaking up because it’s “too hard.”  No explanation, no reasons-you just go from having people in your life every day to never hearing from them again. 

The truth of the matter is that 99% of the dates you go on, you will be incompatible with that person.  And maybe some people don’t want to have to face hearing someone else admit that incompatibility.  For me personally, I will always respect someone far more who decided after giving it a fair shot to just give a brief farewell as opposed to disappearing back into obscurity after one date.  And I would like to emphasize, I am not referring to a time period of meeting someone online, going on a date in person within a week and then nothing.  I’m specifically addressing these people who invest weeks and months into BS only to disappear when they finally get the real deal.  It’s so bizarre. 

I work a job where rejection is a daily occurrence, so this type of behavior doesn’t phase me, so much as it just leaves me baffled.  But I can see how it can be hurtful to others who take it more personally.  At the end of the day, we all need to remember the times we weren’t attracted to someone who was interested in us and how we handled that situation.  And remain focused on the fact that dating is now so superficial, we are judging people at face value in the most literal sense of the term.  Don’t let it affect your sense of self worth if someone decided you weren’t their cup of tea after an hour together or after chatting online.  There are plenty more people out there and at this point, dating is simply a numbers game.  Guard your heart but keep an open mind and eventually the losers weed themselves out.  Happy haunting, boos and ghouls!