Acceptance: How to Swallow Ghosting Without Physically Killing ‘the Ghost’

It goes like this.

You hope this might be it, the person vanishes out of thin air.

You look for every reason to hold on to hope, you try to find answers through every blurry image — every story they post, the song they choose as background, the pictures in your WhatsApp chat history.

You re-read the ‘I love you’s’ from a week ago and your brain actively tries to wrap its head around this sudden shift in direction: it cannot be true, it cannot be over.

But it is true.

It is over.

It’s over because even if at this point they decide to come back you know it as well as I do — you cannot welcome them back in.

Forget ego. Of course that’s bruised.

Forget what’s right or wrong. To each their own.

The reason is: if, like me, you are trying to build a life with someone, if you are actively hoping to meet the person of your life, then honest to God I cannot imagine you hoping for someone by your side who is incapable of a simple phone call, message, explanation as to why they decided to abruptly exit your life.

I know you already know this, however I know how healing it can be to read it again: this person is an emotional moron.

In my case, it was a ‘I will fly in on Saturday at noon’ followed by pictures of him on a beach in Lisbon instead.

No explanation, no call, nothing.

In all fairness, he had mentioned that I recently was always complaining, so I had apologized for expressing my need to know when I would in fact see him (as he changed dates so many times), and I tried to accommodate his need best I could, with sweet and happier messages as we were meant to meet that same weekend.

He shut down completely and hermetically.

Typically at this point of grieving, I look for clues that he was in fact a good person. He must care. Perhaps he’s in pain as well. Perhaps he did this because I said something off. Perhaps he misinterpreted something I said.

But it’s not like that either.

He messaged he really likes me. Silence.

I texted back a day later trying to find the right words.

Miss you — I wrote

Why? — he replied a day later

Haha that’s a brilliant response — I said. So mean.

Because in theory you are mine R, until you call me and tell me that we’re doing something else.

Also I don’t get it. You said you were coming, you changed plans so many times you didn’t even tell me till I asked.

I’m pissed off and instead of showing up with flowers you disappear.

But I like you obviously and whatever we decide to do we did say at the beginning of this we’d always communicate properly so let’s do that because I’m sure we have different perspectives of the same situation

And we respect each other enough not to do this.

The next day he replied.

I respect you. Let’s have a call tomorrow.

I waited for that call. It never arrived.

Not all people are all that great

I always want to believe the best in everyone but sometimes we need to simply look at evidence. I made it so easy for him to speak, to be friendly; to remove shame and pressure.

Silence this time is a clear sign of disrespect.

It’s time to cut.

Sometimes we need to look things as what they are; without searching for double meanings that don’t actually exist and that can be nothing more than sheer interpretation.

Reality hits and your heart curls up on a dark corner, shrinking to the size of a nut with a hard shell outside that will bite anyone who tries to go near it.

I argued with pretty much anyone close to me for no reason. I cried at hellos that had nothing to do with this ending.

My heart couldn’t really take one more trauma and let’s face it: ghosting is not normality.

We should never normalize disappearing with no explanation.

Ghosting is never okay.

There is no situation, apart from situations of abuse, where one should be ghosting another human past the age of stupidity and youth. At 23, you’re well past that age, in my books.

At 40, you must be an emotional moron not to be able to give that person some shred of dignity by saying what’s wrong or learning to repair a relationship when something feels off.

How can you can easily tell someone you want to marry them and create a life together and then be capable of total and complete silence at the first sign of something feeling stressful?

In summary: you must be an emotional idiot.

And in my view, you shouldn’t be dating, because you’re very likely to ruin someone’s wellbeing, balance and mental health.

Go to therapy.

Why have we become so terrible at the repair phase of relationships?

Unfortunately in 2026 we all know how much choice there is out there. At each sign of difficulty most people who are still available in the dating scene tend to think ‘let me find someone more suitable, someone easier to be with.’

There is so much choice. Not everyone realizes it’s an illusion of choice, because in the end there are so few people we actually connect with.

It feels a bit like we all collectively decided to skip the repair cycle of relationships.

You don’t just leave at the first sign of a difficult conversation needing to happen, I mean, who does that?

How to overcome ghosting

Every blog, every expert, every guide tells us we should put that energy and effort that is currently being consumed in a bubble of obsession over nothing (otherwise known as ‘them’), into our own wellbeing.

I did it all.

I went to therapy, I went to my favorite cycle class, I travelled home where I feel safer and more supported, I saw friends, I tried hard to work. Nothing seemed to work.

So I decided to try a new approach: somatic healing.

In simple terms this means that instead of talking it out with your therapist, you go into a soft light-up room, with a wonderful practitioner, who takes you through a journey that doesn’t require words but that rather helps you connect with your emotions through your mind and body.

You visualize, you reconnect, you heal from the inside.

In one of the sessions I tried angelic meditation.

If any of you have been following this blog for a little while, you probably know that it is the least likely thing for me to try, however I was out of self-love options.

It shifted something within me. I reconnected with myself in a different way, it was just the very beginning but was able to breathe into my chest where all the emotions felt completely bottled up and clamped together and by accessing different brain waves, I was able to start dissolving my inner knots.

The practitioner pulled me aside at the end and without knowing anything at all about me said she had a message for me:

You are a nice person, but there is someone actively seeking to ruin your energy, to harm you. You need to pull up boundaries, stop trying to be the nice person, the balanced person, the understanding and kind person. You need to cut this person out of your life completely and now.

She asked if it made any sense to me and if I knew what she was referring to.

Yes. I replied.

I left the center feeling lighter. I was feeling every word deeply, that’s exactly what I was doing, being kind and trying to be the bigger person, but there was no need for it.

His new silence, after I had tried so hard to remove pressure and judgment, spoke loudly on its own.

This new approach, trying something different, really putting the work in to access my emotions in a new way, softly shifted something inside me that has taken me into the most important part of any ending: acceptance.

As I realized my feminine energy had been entirely replaced by defense mechanisms I experienced a soft blanket of compassion wrapping around me.

As I breathed deeper into my soul I reminded myself that I am loved and that like all other waves in life, this too shall pass.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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Photo credit: Samuel Cruz On Unsplash