Five hundred square feet.

That’s what my life compressed down to when my marriage of ten years ended—a five hundred square foot studio apartment containing only a fraction of the things I once considered priceless.

I still think about the mountain of possessions we piled on our worn living room rug as we prepped our three-bedroom, 1600-square-foot home for sale. We’d reached the dreaded moment of sorting out who got what, and let me tell you, making those decisions was one of the hardest parts of starting over for me. I didn’t have room for sentimentality. Once my ex took what he wanted, I had the impossible task of choosing only the most important things that could go with me.

Back then, it all seemed important. We weren’t hoarders, but we kept a lot, more than we should have—and any attempts over the years to clean a junk drawer or two never succeeded. I was the type who, when asked if I really needed that useless doodad that went with that thingamajig I bought five years ago, would invariably respond: “Why yes, yes, I do!”

As I unpacked the few boxes I could squeeze into my cramped new apartment, I found myself purged. I was still devastated by the split, but the elimination had actually been cathartic. I felt lighter after discarding the remnants of my past and ready to fill my tiny new home with new memories.

Back in the Digital Saddle

When I decided to start dating again, I never worried about how I would go about it. Online dating had been a thing in my early 20s, and I used it regularly until I married in 2010. Given the advances in technology since then, I assumed people of all ages and walks of life were using dating sites more than ever before—and I wasn’t wrong!  

With so many men to choose from, I didn’t ease back into dating so much as I dove headfirst off a cliff. For the first few months, I swam those waters with the vigor and enthusiasm of my 20s—chatting with men all night, meeting up for dinner, going out for drinks, engaging in the occasional fling. It was exhilarating! And for the first time in more than a decade, I felt alive again.

Ghosted

Looking back now, I see that ghosting was present from the very beginning. Potential suitors disappearing after the first few exchanges had been a thing long before the internet gave it a name. I honestly wasn’t affected by the early bailers common to digital dating. After all, it’s easy to shrug off being ignored when you aren’t yet invested in the person ignoring you.

It was the ghosting I later experienced that revealed how the book on dating had been completely rewritten over the past ten years, and now included a new set of cutthroat rules.

At first, I thought it was just a fluke or a bad dating slump. After a few months of ongoing conversations and dates with a handful of great guys, one by one, the replies came to a screeching halt. Thankfully, I wasn’t emotionally invested, so while it hurt to feel so easily disposable, I carried on post-abandonment feeling more perplexed than devastated. Even my established casual relationships were abruptly cut off without a reason or a simple goodbye. As a writer, I could only think, “Don’t all good beginnings deserve an ending…of some kind?”

More Than Ghosted…Haunted

I met “David” a few weeks later on a new site I’d recently joined. He messaged a few times, but I hesitated to respond, unsure if I was interested given our ten-year age gap. Eventually, I succumbed to his adorable persistence and was pleasantly surprised by how much we had in common. Even though he was a decade younger, so much about our lives and interests mirrored each other that we were eager to meet a few days after our first conversation.

The immediate chemistry between us was intense. We were more than fireworks—we were stars going supernova! We talked late into the night, cuddling up and enjoying each other’s company for hours on end. When he left, he did so with a deeply passionate kiss at the door and then asked if he could see me again the next day. “Of course!” I said. It was Sunday, and we planned to meet again the following evening for dinner at my place.

The next day at work, I floated on clouds. Long cocooned butterflies came to life and frantically beat their wings in my stomach, making me feel like a teenager again. I watched the clock, counting every second of every hour until I could rush home and get ready to meet him for our second date.

That night, the butterflies keeping me afloat miles above the earth died off one by one as our meeting time came and went…but no David. When I felt my feet touching solid ground again, reality finally hit, obliterating my euphoria. I knew exactly what was happening but bit the bullet and texted him anyway.

He quickly replied that he’d just arrived home from work and was too tired to do anything and asked if we could move it to Friday instead. He suggested we meet at a quaint little bar and listen to a local band. Butterfly flutters slowly revived, and I agreed.

I never heard from David again. I texted a couple of times over the week to confirm our plans, but he was long gone. I wasn’t just ghosted. I was haunted by his cold dismissal, and it hurt like hell. I replayed every conversation and analyzed every text message, looking for a clue that would tell me why. Did I do something? Say something? Not do something? Not say something?

Why did he make plans to see me again the very next day if he never intended to do so in the first place? Or did something happen after he left that changed his mind? I picked everything apart, believing there had to be answers somewhere, and that somehow I’d find them.

Ghosting: The New Dating Norm

I never got those answers. I wish I could say David was the last ghost to go poltergeist on me, but he wasn’t. Even as I was in the process of trying to make sense of why he disappeared, other bodies continued to pile up. One after another, men were falling off my radar. I was becoming the Bermuda Triangle of dating.

For a while, David’s younger age fed my belief of what I call “deep ghosting,” disappearing after establishing a deeper connection with someone. I naively assumed it was a generational thing used only by younger, immature men. But I eventually found that even gentlemen of my generation had embraced ghosting as their way out too!

Apparently, everyone was doing it, and I just couldn’t wrap my head around why. How hard is it to reach out to someone you’ve been interacting with daily to say: “Thanks, but this isn’t working for me.”? How can people connect, share intimately with others and then just walk away without a single look back?

What made everything worse was feeling alone in my loathing for ghosting. When I mentioned my dating woes to the younger women at work, I was shocked by their laissez-faire attitudes about it. Shrugging their pretty little shoulders, they nonchalantly replied, “Sounds about right. That’s how dating is done nowadays.” They weren’t the least bit offended but rather viewed ghosting as an acceptable norm, claiming to do it just as much themselves.

By then I knew I needed a break and stopped dating altogether.

The Gift of Ghosting

It’s been over a year now, and I’m finally dating again. Looking back, I see it was never the men who ghosted me that hurt so much. It was the fact that I wasn’t ready to be dating to begin with. I realized I hadn’t allowed myself enough time to heal from the divorce. I was putting myself out there while vulnerable and still in an emotional freefall, which only amplified the negative effects of being ghosted.

Now that my wounds have healed and my head is clear, I’ve come to realize that men who ghost aren’t necessarily bad guys (and yes, this includes David). Ghosting is an easy, nonconfrontational way to disentangle yourself from someone, and those men simply chose the weaker, easier way out. They didn’t create this culture of abandonment—social media has with its digital dopamine hits and shortening of attention spans. With so many dating apps serving up a steady supply of options, why invest time in goodbyes when you can swipe left to the next hello?

The sad reality is, ghosting is the new dating norm, and from all accounts, it’s here to stay. Gone are the days of easy letdowns; in its place is a fade to black where the ghost is your goodbye. So if you’re back in the dating game, especially after years of being off the scene like I was, the best advice I can offer is to accept that you’re going to be ghosted—a lot. And the truth is, you will survive.

In fact, life has taught me to embrace the ghosts because at the end of the day, they’re doing me a huge favor. In so many ways I’ve changed since my divorce. Top on my list is I no longer keep useless things around. Much like my tiny studio apartment, I don’t have room for noncommittal occupants—and that junk drawer I once had is long gone too! So when the next guy decides to go ghost on me, he’ll just be one more useless doodad that came with that thingamajig I bought five years ago. And you know what? I don’t need that kind of junk in my life anymore.

Stephanie Parry is a writer and poet who spends her weekdays managing projects as a government worker bee and her nights and weekends being Supermom to a tween. Recently divorced after ten years of marriage, she navigates mid-life like a pro thanks to her love for romance novels, EDM, and strawberry margaritas.