Casper, the ghosting. You’re talking to someone, things are going well, maybe you’ve been on a few dates or you’re even dating. Then, boom, he vanishes into thin air.

Your nervous system has no idea how to complete the cycle, so it goes haywire. You reread the conversation a million times. You analyze every micro-nuance of what you said last, run the texts through ChatGPT and send your friends 70-minute voice notes. The jury is out, and it’s emotionally exhausting.

Dating is an initiation, and nothing rocks your world quite like it. I keep hearing about ghosting across the board, and I’ve lived it more than once myself, so I recorded a solo episode of the Highest Self Podcast for my spiritual girlies on why men ghost, the psychology behind it, and how to find closure when it happens to you.

What Does It Mean to Be Ghosted?

Being ghosted means someone disappears with no explanation. There’s no breakup text, no “Hey, this isn’t going to work for me,” no “Let’s go separate paths.” Back in the day people ended things in person, and breaking up by text was considered rude. Then texting became normal because it let people think about what to say and avoid the other person’s emotions. Now some people skip the text entirely.

Why Ghosting Hurts So Much When You’re Empathic

Empathic women and men are deeply attuned to other people. We notice little fluctuations in a voice, a change in punctuation, a missing emoji. Many of us learned that as children with a volatile caretaker. Maybe it was a father’s anger or a mother’s passive aggression. Something taught you, “I need to track how others respond to me in order to feel safe.”

For me, it was my father. I could tell what mood he was in by the way he walked up the stairs or set down his glass. That hyper-attunement became my gift as an empath and an intuitive. It also means that when someone pulls away, my body notices immediately.

We also live without the villages we used to have. You won’t bump into him at church on Sunday or in the piazza. If nobody makes a plan, you simply won’t see each other. So we watch the subtleties more closely, always wondering if the rug is about to be pulled.

Why First Love Is the Hardest to Get Over

I believe on some level we never fully get over our first love, because we mourn the innocence with which we loved. We loved with an open heart, without fear of it suddenly ending. That person was a figure through whom we experienced the limitless capacity of our own love.

Then comes the first cheating, the sudden breakup or the discovered addiction, and we learn that this amazing feeling can disappear in an instant. From then on, we scan for any sign that love is about to leave.

Love is the ultimate drug. It floods us with oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin. It’s healing, bonding and spiritual. Relational love is also volatile, because it depends on two people choosing it at the same time, over and over. The older you get, the more you realize how rare that is.

When Dating Feels Like Watching Planes Crash

Add dating apps, Instagram and porn to the mix, plus watching parents and friends divorce, and the waters are already wavy before anyone ghosts.

Dating can feel like standing at the airport. You start talking. There’s a second day of talking, then a date, then another date. Is this plane actually taking off? You’ve watched so many planes crash on the runway that you start to believe planes can’t fly. I was married once, and some days I can’t believe two people ever choose each other enough to plan a whole wedding.

Here’s what I want your anxiety to hear: planes do take off. It’s rare, and it only takes one.

The Hot and Cold Situationship

I was friends with someone for a long time. We ran in similar circles and saw each other at festivals. Then things turned romantic, and I thought, “This could go somewhere, because we already have a foundation of friendship.” After we kissed, he got a little weird. Then he’d message me. Then he’d pull back. Then he’d message again.

Eventually I FaceTimed him and asked how he was feeling about us. He said he felt good and asked how I felt. I told him I liked how I felt with him. He agreed. Then he went quiet for two days, sent one text saying he’d been thinking about me, and ghosted after I replied.

Hot and cold energy distresses the nervous system, because you can’t tell whether to be in love mode or recovery mode. Women need to be either moving toward a healthy relationship or fully single, living our best lives. The in-between of situationship anxiety and limerence drives us up the wall. Someone who texts one day, ignores you the next and never plans a date creates a slot machine in your brain that becomes obsessed with figuring it out. Those dynamics almost never turn into relationships.

The Psychology of the Ghoster

Women ghost too, and from what I hear it’s more often men. Either way, ghosters tend to share a profile.

Ghosters Are Avoidant

Ghosting usually comes from avoidant attachment and emotional unavailability. Ghosters don’t know how to say what they feel or how to hold space for your response. They likely grew up in a family where it wasn’t safe to share feelings, often with the opposite-gender parent. So they think, “If I tell her how I feel, she won’t like it, so I’ll play dead and assume she’ll forget.” Then they think about you later, come back, ghost again, and keep watching your Instagram stories until the end of time. I swear it’s a playbook they all read.

Many of them want access to you without the commitment or responsibility of a relationship. Imagine Titanic in 2026: Rose asks Jack to hold her hand on the raft, and he says, “Just so you know, I’m not looking for anything serious. Once we hit shore, I need to keep my options open.”

The Magician Archetype

Many of these men can’t bring themselves to say, “I’d love to sleep with you, and I don’t want a commitment.” So they stay vague. Now I’m here, now I’m gone. Like a magician, they create chaos around themselves so you can’t see who they are, and so you can’t have expectations of them.

The Fear of Not Being Enough

Most women’s deepest wound is “I am too much.” My emotions, my dreams, my desire, my sadness are too much for any man to hold.

Most men’s deepest wound is “I am not enough.” If she really saw me, she wouldn’t want me. I don’t make enough money, I’m not where I thought I’d be, I’m not tall or rich enough. So they keep you at a distance until they’ve arrived financially, at which point they plan to find their dream girl.

It’s an illusion. Ask men in their forties, fifties and sixties if they’re where they thought they’d be. Nobody is. A lot of men’s deeper work is realizing, “I’m worthy of love even when I’m not at my best financially or fully healed.”

Looking back on the friend who ghosted me, I was talking about wanting kids, starting a family, my books and my career. He wasn’t in a place to be a father. In a way, his ghosting was a service to me, because if he’d been honest, I probably would have tried to make it work.

Ghosting Shows You Someone’s Character

Someone who ghosts shows you exactly where they are in their consciousness, no matter how many books they’ve read, retreats they’ve attended or years of therapy they’ve done. If he can’t close a container with a simple message, how will he show up when you’re pregnant or when your parents pass?

Ask yourself:

• Would I put this person in the role of my most important attachment figure?
• Would I want him as the father figure for my inner child?
• If I had a daughter, would I want her father to ghost her?

Instant ick. You didn’t choose your parents, and you do get to choose your partner. We attach to romantic partners through the same patterns we formed as children. So many of us believe we have an anxious attachment style when really we keep choosing deeply avoidant partners.

There’s a difference between personality and character. His personality might be super cool. You might share music taste and laugh all night. His character, inconsistent and avoidant and incapable of a hard conversation, is what you’d be living with.

Close Your Own Containers

Since being ghosted, I close the loop even after a single date with no vibe. I send a message the next day thanking him for his time, telling him he’s an amazing person and that I’m calling in my sacred union partner and this isn’t the fit. Ghosting leaves the other person with an open tab in their mind, which creates more obsession, not less.

Years ago, a friend I’d had a brief romantic spark with sent me a text a few weeks after a date: “Just to close the loop, I feel more of a friend connection with you. Let’s definitely be cool when we see each other around.” It stung for a second, and I’m so grateful, because now when I see him, it’s easy. Being in right relationship with everyone is a spiritual tenet. If we’re calling in sacred union, we can’t keep open loops.

How to Find Closure After Being Ghosted

The deeper you went with someone, the harder this is. More memories mean more hopes. Know that your response makes sense. Humans have never had to live this way before.

Step 1: Recognize What You Learned About Him

You just learned one of the most important things you can know about someone: how they communicate. This person can’t have a hard conversation. Do you respect that? Would you build a life with it?

Step 2: Write the Words Unspoken

Write a letter with everything you want to say. Paper connects you to a different stream of consciousness, and your Notes app works too. You can also record voice memos and talk it all out. Be angry. Be sad. “How dare you ghost me after all these memories?” Say it for you.

Step 3: Consider Sending a Message

If you were dating consistently, send a simple check-in to make sure it isn’t a mistake. If you’re ghosted after that, especially after being intimate, I believe you can tell him how it made you feel. We normalize ghosting by staying silent. Men need to know what their actions do to a woman’s heart. Word it however feels true for you.

During my divorce, after a period of no contact, I felt it was important for my ex to see the pain he had caused. There were times I sat with him on FaceTime and simply let him see me in my pain. He’d ask, “What do you want me to do?” I’d say, “I just want you to see that this is how I feel.” As a little girl, I cried alone in my bedroom praying someone would come check on me. That little girl needed to be witnessed. Being witnessed is very different from crying to get someone back, which is manipulation.

Stop Asking ChatGPT If He Likes You

The moment you’re sending screenshots to ChatGPT asking if he likes you, it’s over, girlfriend. Do you want to decode your future husband’s texts with a robot? It needs to be so obvious that he likes you that you can barely handle it, the kind of love that melts the walls around your heart.

Stop playing detective too. Researching his childhood, watching his stories from a secret account and analyzing his sign all still give him your energy. Trying to figure someone out is energetically chasing. Be the bodyguard of your own thoughts.

Don’t Get Excited Until the Third Date

When I first got on dating apps after my divorce, a man unmatched me mid-conversation, and I was rattled for days. Now I’d barely notice. That’s nervous system resilience, like a rubber band that can stretch without snapping.

My rule: save your excitement until you’ve had three dates. How many times has a friend sent you a photo of a guy she hasn’t even FaceTimed? Go on one date. You’ll learn more than any psychic reading his aura could tell you. In my first year single I matched with someone who seemed like my dream guy on paper and spent hours wondering if his mother would like me. We never even met.

The Love That Feels Obvious

Fall in love with how someone treats you over time. That’s what the real queens do. Choose the man who makes effort, plans dates, sends flowers and makes sure you got home safe. My college boyfriend once rented an ice skating rink for us. I was so young that I took it for granted and kept pining after unavailable guys. Years later, after my divorce, I remembered what it felt like to be consistently loved.

This is different from love bombing. A man calling you his dream girl before your first date is a red flag. I mean the friend who’s been in your life for years, the one you’d say is amazing but “not your type.” If you’d want to be a man’s friend, that says a lot. Would you want to be the ghoster’s friend?

Ghosting is a microcosm of life’s uncertainty. Some people come into your life to show you how you meet perceived abandonment. Maybe being ghosted used to take you years to recover from, and now you can say, “That wasn’t in integrity, I don’t want someone who ghosts,” and keep it moving. That’s growth.

Love will find you again, because you are love. Build an amazing life with incredible friends and passions, so that if something ends, your life stays beautiful. The relationships I once cried over not working out made room for me to go to Brazil and write my book without worrying about anyone else’s opinion.

Listen to the Full Episode

Press play on Highest Self Podcast episode 678: Why Men Ghost, or listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Send it to the girl in your life who just got the vanishing act.

I go much deeper into this in my new book, Maybe This Love Story Is Really About Me. It’s the companion I wish I’d had in my own heartbreak.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do men ghost instead of ending things?

Men who ghost are usually avoidant. They struggle with hard conversations, fear disappointing you and often carry a deep belief that they aren’t enough. Disappearing lets them avoid both the conversation and being truly seen.

Why does being ghosted hurt so much?

Ghosting leaves an incomplete cycle, so your nervous system keeps searching for an ending. For empathic women who learned hyper-attunement in childhood, the silence can feel especially alarming.

Should I text someone who ghosted me?

If you were dating consistently, a simple check-in can confirm it wasn’t a mistake. If you’re still ghosted, you can share how it made you feel to close the loop for yourself, without expecting a response.

How do I stop overthinking after being ghosted?

Write or voice-record everything you want to say, recognize what the ghosting revealed about his character, stop investigating his life, and return your energy to your own friends, passions and purpose.

If you’re healing from a disappearing act, my Ultimate Heartbreak Healing Course will help you glow up through it. I also share my own anxious-avoidant love story in my new book, Maybe This Love Story Is Really About Me, and you can explore more on the father wound in relationships and settling vs. standards in dating. You deserve the love that feels obvious, goddess.