I happen to know this person who was in a live-in relationship with his partner for five years. They seemed so happy together. One fine day, I get a call from him saying “if my partner enquiries about me, just sound nonchalant and clueless about my whereabouts.” I was quite surprised at this sudden withdrawal from his relationship. He had abruptly ended it without discussing it. Didn’t go down too well with me. I wonder how the partner would have felt. I thought the partner of five years at least deserved to be intimated and kept in the loop about the impending end. The guy I thought was truly lacking in sensitivity and maturity. In retrospect, my jumping to conclusion showcased my lack of maturity too.
A few days went by. Still chewing over the abrupt breakup of this gentleman (gentle in no way at that point), I decide to meet him over coffee. He obliges. Our conversation over coffee turns out to be a complete turnaround from what I had expected. He talked about how his relationship had become unbearable. Reverse shift – love overtaken by control. He was feeling stifled. She was becoming a remote control wanting to control her human gadget. He was expected to explain his time to her. He would be held accountable for his busy phone calls, unattended phone calls from her, and online status on various media etc. His ‘me time’ would invariably become ‘we time’ with her. Zero space to breathe. He tried to discourage this tendency but in vain. Jealousy and possessiveness had become her second nature. Regular fights would result in him asking her to call off their relationship. Her only reaction would be to threaten him about undesired consequences which would land him in trouble. Being scared of the consequences, he continued till it went beyond the pale. Finally one fine day he just walked out.
This sudden and abrupt disappearance from someone’s life is termed as ghosting. The person almost stops to exist. Phone calls and messages are stopped and not responded to. As much as it reminds me of a scary horror movie, I had never heard this term until a few years ago. The story which sounded so immature on his part suddenly made so much sense. Maybe justified his behaviour.
Any relationship can go wrong. One wrong choice or judgement deserves a second chance. Why drag in an unhappy relationship? In the interest of both the partners, an ideal thing would be to part ways amicably. But at times, the situation is not conducive to a pleasant exit from one individual. With one partner being obsessed about the relationship, taking a toll on the mental and physical wellbeing of the other, the resultant end is sometimes instant and abrupt. The person has no other choice but to resort to ghosting. And the traits which justify ghosting are normally possessiveness, jealousy, constant bickering, suspicion and perpetual supervision, obsession, recurrent threats followed by hysterical bouts, temper tantrums and major mood swings. A person doesn’t have any other way or means to get out of this.
Ghosting instead of continual roasting in an abnormal relationship is acceptable. A toast to the ghost and this post!!!! No boast!!!!!!!!