I ghosted him
Here’s Why I Ghosted Him. You don’t always owe someone an… | by Carlyn Beccia
Photo by cottonbro from PexelsIt began as an accident.
I had not meant to right swipe on Lou.* But as most online daters know, thumbs get tired and accidental swipes will happen.
Lou was nice and all. Just not my type. I am drawn to foreign men with tons of hair, humor, and biting wit.
Lou was American, bald, and didn’t speak in sarcasm.
But months passed, and I continued to go out with him because I was sure the universe was sending me a message — it’s time to stop dating your type.
Maybe that accidental swipe was fate?
Or so I hoped. But relationships sometimes end exactly how they began.
One evening, I lay on the couch entangled in his arms. Bourbon warming my stomach as time slowed to his rising and falling chest. And that is when it hit me — I was actually starting to like someone that was not my type. Best of all, he wouldn’t give me a single thing to write about.
Writer's block never felt so good.
I couldn’t wait to see him again. Emboldened by the bourbon, I did something I don’t normally do. I took the initiative.
“Are you free this weekend?”
Lou’s response should not have raised suspicions.
“I am working this weekend.”
But then I saw the almost imperceptible stiffening of his shoulders and felt his heart quicken beneath my hand.
And there it was. I knew he was lying.
Since I was a child, I have always known when someone is lying. Microexpressions give people away — the involuntary body language that exposes emotions. Microexpressions seep out when you are trying to hide your intentions. The slight nod that says yes when your mouth says no. The feet suddenly shifting toward the doorway when you ask him a hard question. It’s the body’s silent language that sometimes speaks the loudest.
His body language screamed discomfort.
Of course, I immediately assumed the obvious — he either had a date with someone else or just wasn’t that interested in seeing me that weekend.
The next day, I communicated to Lou that I was sensing a lack of interest. I am a big believer in not wearing out your precious Nikes chasing men who are not that into you. But Lou assured me that my spidey senses were off. He then gave me a long speech about how sometimes women don’t think he is interested because he is “shy.”
His reassurance felt cloying. Like when someone covers up a small lie with so many gratuitous details that you know there’s a bigger lie buried deeper.
So I began digging.
Lou lived and worked in Boston. The following weekend, I checked my Bumble app to see if his location showed up.
It did. He was in Washington, DC.
Clearly, Lou did not read my article on how I caught my last ex-boyfriend cheating.
Guys, this is not hard…close your damn Bumble app! If you have the app open in the background, you have an automatic GPS tracker attached to you. And that is the dumbest possible way to get caught in a lie.
Second, we are in the middle of a pandemic.
So if you are seeing someone on a fairly regular basis, you really should let them know if you are traveling. Traveling puts you in another level of exposure. And yes, because Lou was a doctor, he had already got his first vaccine. That protected him but not me. You can still infect someone after you have been vaccinated.
Don’t be a pandemic dick.
(End of rant.)
Once I had the chance to pull my heart out of my stomach, I sent Lou the following text:
Photo provided by the authorBoston was extremely cold that night. Washington, DC was in the ’40s. And if you live in New England…40 degrees is NOT cold. His lies must have blown in an arctic blast.
I know the adults in the room are screaming — God damn it…just confront him and stop the Machiavellian mind-fucking. But hold that thought, my happily married readers, and allow me to explain modern dating during a pandemic.
Everyone is online now, and that means everyone is juggling multiple people. And everyone also has to be ok with it.
Some relationship coaches have even developed color-coded spreadsheets for their clients to keep details about each date straight. This is modern dating.
And when you are dating multiple people, sometimes small lies happen. When that cute guy you are dating asks you how your weekend was, you might say you hung out with your pod. You certainly are not going to say you went on another masked first date. That’s just rude.
But there is something about crossing state lines that falls into a different category of shady behavior. I have gone on my share of online dates with men I later found out were married. When someone is leaving the state AND lying about it, this is almost always an entanglement with an ex or a long-distance relationship he is keeping on the side.
And to be clear, Lou didn’t need to lie to me. He could have said, “I am visiting a friend in DC.” I would not have questioned it because it was none of my business. We had only dated a couple of months and were not sleeping together.
I was still going on dates, and I assumed he was too. Bottom line — we had never talked about exclusivity because there wasn’t any need to yet.
But that’s the problem with unnecessary lies. They almost always lead to more desperate, necessary lies. The vermin breed, and then you end up with one nasty infestation taking up space in your heart.
The men in my past never needed to make excuses for being jerks. I did it for them.
As soon as Lou landed at Boston’s Logan Airport, he texted me. (That Bumble GPS tracker is scarily accurate.) And over the following days, he sent a few poking “how are you doing?” texts.
I did not respond. I meant to. I meant to ask him why he lied and have it out once I was in a calmer space. But pathologizing bad behavior gets exhausting. I just didn’t have the emotional bandwidth for it.
I know many will find my actions immature and cruel. I could have given him a chance to explain why he lied. No one is perfect.
Blah. Blah. Blah.
But I also know myself well. I know my capacity for forgiveness is boundless. If I had given him a chance to explain, I most likely would have forgiven him. There have been far too many times that I have pushed bad behavior under the carpet only for that dust to settle elsewhere.
The men in my past never needed to make excuses for being jerks. I did it for them.
It’s a painful lesson we all eventually encounter — liars don’t change. They just get more creative with their lies.
When someone shows you that they are not worthy of your heart, the bravest action you can take is also the simplest — silence.
Ghosting is a gray lie. It’s a lie of omission. And many label ghosting as cowardly. But when someone directly lies to you, you don’t owe them your truth or any closure in return. The same applies if there was any abuse or the person violated your boundaries.
When someone shows you that they are not worthy of your heart, the bravest action you can take is also the simplest — silence.
I will never know why Lou lied. But if I had to guess…he was probably doing something in DC that would have hurt my feelings. And it might have hurt me enough not to want to continue to date him.
That would have been a tough conversation. He chose not to have it. For my own sanity, I chose to walk away from the needless drama.
And I am sure Lou didn’t mean to hurt me. And he certainly didn’t mean to get caught in a lie. He meant to close his Bumble app before getting on that plane. He meant to swipe up.
It ended with an accident.
*Names changed to protect the undead.
16 Reasons People Ghosted In Relationships
*As a refresher, "ghosting" typically refers to when someone abruptly cuts off all contact and stops responding to any communication from the person (usually a romantic partner).
Note: Some of the following contain mentions of abuse.
"I'm not really proud of it, but I ghosted a guy I went out with once. He kept on talking about marriage and he even brought me home to meet his parents on the FIRST DATE.
"
—melialexander
"I ghosted my boyfriend of three years. We were on and off — we broke up numerous times and he became emotionally abusive. No matter how hard I tried to make him happy, he would constantly invalidate my feelings, make me feel like I was crazy for being upset over things, and isolate me from my friends. I tolerated it because I loved him and thought, if I was putting so much effort into the relationship, there was no point in throwing it away. This past year, I finally took off my rose-colored glasses and started viewing it for what it was: a completely toxic relationship that was truly breaking me down. Once I finally decided I was leaving, he spammed me with messages begging me to stay, saying that I was ruining his life. I tried to give him closure, but it became too much, so I ghosted."
—ariannaramirez1
"I didn’t have the heart to tell her, but this girl was so clingy. She wanted me to meet her family after two dates and wanted to hang out several times a week.
Every little thing was a full-on discussion. I just couldn’t do it anymore. It was suffocating."
—fearlessadvisor
"I ghosted a guy after six months of dating. He could never decide if he actually wanted a relationship and was always blowing me off. Once, I didn't hear from him for three weeks, then got a Myspace message explaining that he had driven 2000 miles to California, gone on a massive cocaine bender, and drove his car off a cliff. He asked if I wanted to hang out. I did NOT. So, I ghosted his ass. I still stand by that decision 15 years later."
—blithespiritkc
"I got in a fight with my boyfriend and tried to break up with him. I went out later and gave my number to another guy. My boyfriend and I ended up making up — when the other guy called, I didn't have the heart to tell him the truth, so I just didn't say anything. My boyfriend is now my husband of 13 years, so I guess it all worked out."
—katishea04
"This guy I was seeing would disappear for days or weeks at a time, and as soon as I would move on, he’d pop up again.
Even after I told him I was done, he would send a 'hey, what are you doing?' text. It was too much, so I just stopped answering. He eventually sent me one last message telling me that if I didn’t answer, he was done. Cool, thanks — that was the point."
—Anonymous
"I had just gotten of a 10 year relationship, was going through a divorce, and had a toddler. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I didn’t want to be in a relationship (and frankly, I didn’t need to be in one). It was easier to just ignore the texts/calls and find the next person."
—Anonymous
"He was engaged...to the mother of his two children. NONE of whom he had mentioned at any point. Instant ghost, zero regrets."
—Anonymous
"Our flirting was going well, but I wasn't ready for a relationship. I had some personal stuff going on and, maybe because of my past experiences, was afraid of being stuck in a relationship with no freedom.
So, I unfortunately ghosted him. I connected with him a few months later to apologize and explain my side, and then he ghosted me too since he wasn't in the right place mentally. But now we've been together for four months, and it's going great with no problems."
—Anonymous
"I met this girl on Tinder about four years ago, and we went out to dinner and a movie. Overall, it was great — until I asked if I could kiss her. It didn't feel right and I felt like the chemistry we had built up throughout the evening was just lost. Instead of telling her that, I just never replied to her texts or answered her calls. I still think about it and wish I could apologize."
—Anonymous
"I ghosted a guy when I was 21. He had told me he was 24, but when he left his I.D. out, I looked at it and saw that he was actually 34. If he had been honest from the start, he would have had a chance. I've never seen or talked to him since then."
—Anonymous
"I was talking to someone who often wouldn’t respond for two-to-three days.
I realized that if he could go a few days without talking to me and not think anything of it, it wasn’t worth spending my time on."
—ez510
"I ghosted a guy in college about 15 years ago, before ghosting was a known thing. We had kissed and I liked him, but he kept sending me overly intimate chat messages on AOL Instant Messenger that made me feel uncomfortable. The final straw was when I told him I was signing off for the evening and he said he wanted to join me in the shower — this was after, like, three days of knowing each other. He seemed like a nice guy on the surface, but he could not take a hint. I just stopped responding to him, and he eventually stopped reaching out."
—Anonymous
"I was really good friends with this guy before we started dating. The problem was that he was very sexual, while I had an extremely low sex drive due to trauma. The one and only time we had sex was nine months into our relationship. I ended it a few weeks later because I realized I didn't want to sleep with him ever again.
Soon after that, I ghosted on our friendship because I was embarrassed."
—mockingbae
"I’m a very confrontation-averse person and, at the time, I thought it was the easiest way to avoid a difficult conversation. I had already met someone else and wanted to move on — I was only 22 then, and I just didn’t feel like I owed the other person an explanation. Looking back, I should have communicated better and thought about how it might have negatively affected the other person."
—Anonymous
"They sent me their TikTok account. I looked through it and was IMMEDIATELY turned off by their videos."
—Anonymous
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
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The history of the song "Blue Light" - Aquarium
The album "Navigator" of the rock group "Aquarium" begins with the mysterious composition "Blue Light". Its name and words made music lovers guess. Indeed, Boris Grebenshchikov refers listeners to the New Year's TV show of the Soviet period or alludes to the blue flashing beacon installed on police cars? And what is the black car in which the author imagined his death?
Boris Borisovich was repeatedly asked similar questions, but the musician evaded direct answers. Let's find out what we know about the song. nine0003
The history of the creation of the song "Blue Light" BG
Boris Grebenshchikov composed in a tiny village located on the road to Kingisepp. He bought an old hut from a drunken peasant, in which he lived from time to time, dissolving in the creativity and delights of rural life.
In the countryside, I wrote quite a few songs… almost the entire Navigator and almost the entire Snow Lion were written there… There is such a routine: I got up, got dressed, then gradually went to the bathhouse, then drank vodka and went to bed.
nine0003
Rublevka-dacha, 2003
I was sitting on a tree stump, reading mantras, and songs appeared in my head on their own: “Religious Ficus”, “Blue Light”. The songs were pouring in. For example, while I was heating the bathhouse, “The Last Turn” was written. And when I began to compare the texts, I realized that the spirits of this place are attuned to the old owner. The person is no longer here, but they got used to him ... And I got into this wave.
AQUARIUM. Dreams about something more”, 2004
The meaning of the song “Blue Light” BG
A reporter from the magazine "Autopilot" asked Boris Grebenshchikov what kind of car the song "Blue Light" is talking about. BG answered:
A complete mystery. The song is written by itself, and only then, maybe after a few years, I begin to understand what it means to me. I shudder when I sing this line. Wrote - so it will happen to me. What exactly will happen, how it will actually happen, I have no idea.
Autopilot, 1996
The interviewer tried to find out the model, number of the car, the meaning of the phrase "blue light", but Boris Borisovich was adamant:
I don't know... I didn't see her, I just got the words... I don't know. Guessing doesn't make sense.
So we can only guess at the main idea of the song "Blue Light" by the group "Aquarium".
Release and achievements
The song opens the Navigator album, recorded at Livingston Studio in London and released on the Triary label in September 1995.
The track was often played on Europa Plus radio, which greatly contributed to the promotion of the album.
Within a week, the entire 20,000th edition was sold. nine0003
Clip "Blue Light"
The group "Aquarium" did not shoot a music video for the song "Blue Light". There are amateur clips on the net. Let's see one of them.
Lyrics of the song "Blue light" Aquarium
Black wind circles over the bridges,
The earth is covered with black burning.
Strangers look like wolves,
And one of them, maybe I am.
My life rattles like a trolley,
A could fly like a moth;
My death rides in a black car
With a blue light.
Do not reproach me for my arrogance,
Do not be ashamed of my broken face.
I would like to get married to the kingdom,
Or just walk down the aisle -
But you can't buy fate in the store,
You can't burn her tail with coal;
My death rides in a black car
With a blue light.
I'm not sorry that I didn't settle down here;
I'm not sorry that I was born and lived;
If I got caught, who thought it all up -
I would strangle him here myself;
Only late - we are all on top,
And now only down barefoot;
My death rides in a black car
With a blue light.
What do people think about and why do they say strange words before they die?
And no one can predict. However, brilliant people are capable of miraculous insights. The Periodic Table of the Elements appeared to Mendeleev in a dream. Jules Verne's technological fantasies came true decades later. And many brilliant Russian writers not only foresaw, but in their works even guessed the atmosphere and circumstances of their death. nine0003
Who said what when leaving
- Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle, dying, calmly said: "So this is what this death is like!".
- Composer Edvard Grieg: "Well, if it's unavoidable.
..".
- The father of dialectics, Friedrich Hegel, even in the face of death remained true to the principles of opposition on which his whole philosophy is based: "Only one person understood me throughout my whole life," he whispered, but after a pause, he added: "But in essence, And he didn't understand me! nine0003
- Queen Marie Antoinette was completely calm before her execution. Climbing the scaffold, she stumbled and stepped on the executioner's foot: "Forgive me, please, monsieur, I did it by accident ...".
- The Roman emperor and tyrant Nero cried out before his death: "What a great artist is dying!"
- Vaslav Nijinsky, Anatole France, Garibaldi, Byron whispered the same word before their death: "Mother!"
- When the Prussian King Frederick I was dying, the priest at his bedside recited prayers. At the words "I came into this world naked and I will leave naked," Friedrich pushed him away with his hand and exclaimed: "Don't you dare bury me naked, not in full dress!" nine0003
- Dying, Balzac recalled one of the characters in his stories, an experienced doctor Bianchon: "He would have saved me .
..".
- At the last moment before his death, the great Leonardo da Vinci exclaimed: "I have offended God and people! My works have not reached the height to which I aspired!"
- The author of the well-known saying "a thought uttered is a lie" Fyodor Tyutchev before his death said: "What a torment that you cannot find a word to convey the thought."
- Mikhail Romanov before his execution gave his boots to the executioners - "Use, guys, after all, royal boots." nine0003
- Spy dancer Mata Hari blew a kiss to soldiers aiming at her: "I'm ready, boys."
- The philosopher Immanuel Kant said: "Das ist gut".
- Sick Anna Akhmatova after an injection of camphor: "Still, I feel very bad!"
- One of the cinematographer brothers, 92-year-old O. Lumiere: "My film is running out."
- Ibsen, after lying paralyzed for several years, stood up and said: "On the contrary!" - and died.
- Nadezhda Mandelstam - to her nurse: "Don't be afraid.
" nine0003
- Einstein's last words were not known because the nurse did not understand German.
Polina ORLOVA
Do writers know in advance how it will be?
Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev died on August 22, 1883 at the age of 65 in the town of Bougival near Paris. His last words were strange: "Farewell, my dear, my whitish ...".
Heartbroken relatives did not stand around the bed of a dying man: despite several novels, the writer never married, spending his life in the ambiguous role of a true friend of the family of Pauline Viardot. The death of Turgenev, all his life, by his own admission, "huddled on the edge of someone else's nest", was somewhat like the death of his famous hero - Yevgeny Bazarov. Both were escorted to the other world by a dearly beloved and never fully owned woman. nine0003
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky woke up at dawn on January 28, 1881 with a clear realization that today is the last day of his life. He silently waited for his wife to wake up.
Anna Grigorievna did not believe the words of her husband, because the day before he was better. But Dostoevsky insisted that a priest be brought in, took communion, confessed, and soon died.
When Elder Zosima, one of the key characters in the novel "The Brothers Karamazov", was dying, his friends were amazed by this, because "they were even convinced that there had been a noticeable improvement in his health." The elder felt the approach of death and humbly met it: "He bowed his face to the ground ... and, as if in joyful delight, kissing the ground and praying, quietly and joyfully gave his soul to God." nine0003
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov died on the night of July 2, 1904 in a hotel room in the German resort town of Badenweiler. The German doctor decided that death was already behind him. According to an ancient German medical tradition, a doctor who made a fatal diagnosis to his colleague treats the dying man to champagne... Anton Pavlovich said in German: "I'm dying" - and drank a glass of champagne to the bottom.
The writer's wife, Olga Leonardovna, would later write that the "terrible silence" of that night when Chekhov died was broken only by "a huge black moth, which painfully beat against the burning night lamps and dangled around the room." nine0003
Here is his hero, the merchant Lopakhin, who bought a cherry orchard and was about to cut it down to its roots, suggested to Ranevskaya, for whom the loss of a family nest is tantamount to spiritual death, to celebrate the purchase with a glass of champagne. And at the end of the play, in front of the curtain, in the silence one can hear "how far in the garden they knock on wood with an axe."
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy spent the last days of his life at the remote Astapovo railway station. At the age of 83, the count decided to break with an orderly, prosperous existence in Yasnaya Polyana. Accompanied by his daughter and family doctor, he left incognito in a third-class carriage. On the way, he caught a cold, pneumonia began.
nine0003
The last words of Tolstoy, spoken by him in the morning of November 7, 1910, already in oblivion, were: "I love the truth" (according to another version, he said - "I don't understand").
In "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", an official on his deathbed, exhausted by pain and fear, admits that everything in his life was "not right." "What is 'that'?" he asked himself, and suddenly fell silent. Resigned to the inevitability of death, Ivan Ilyich suddenly discovered that "there was no fear, because there was no death either. Instead of death, there was light."
Gennady Poroshenko, Doctor of Biology: "Our souls remain in the noosphere"
Comment by the head of the scientific and organizational department of the Institute of General Resuscitation of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences
"I think that some spiritual particle of a person remains alive even after death. They say that the soul of a deceased person goes to hell or heaven, depending on his way of life on earth.
deprivation of the presence of God, while in paradise he is always there.0003
Vernadsky was probably closest to the truth in this matter. By the way, he dreamed of his theory of the noosphere in delirium when he was ill with typhus in Yalta. According to him, the non-material component of a person after physical death merges into a certain noosphere. Somehow the noosphere affects living people. I can't say that our thinking is born within ourselves, something is brought in from outside...
It's hard to say how writers, let's say, anticipated the circumstances of their death. But... When I was finishing my fifth year of medical school, a misfortune happened to me. I received a serious head injury. 21 days was unconscious. After my recovery, I suddenly discovered that I had acquired unusual abilities: I could guess other people's thoughts and predict some events. True, it did not last long - about a year. Then these abilities disappeared. But the healthy looseness that appeared in me after this injury remained with me.
