Ever been ghosted? Ever have that trusted person who had been a close contact refuse to acknowledge you even exist? Refuse to respond to your texts, emails, calls, letters? You repeatedly reach out as you had in the past but now only silence screams back every time in return. What in the world happened? Closure feels unattainable. How do we overcome the emotional pain?

Still trying to figure it out myself. I’ve googled the question. The only helpful piece of information I stumbled across was when someone out there in cyberspace stated how painful ghosting was. I was validated. I had confirmation I wasn’t crazy for feeling so much pain. So in this post I want to echo what that fellow human wrote – ghosting hurts. Bad. Very bad.

I’m trying to hold myself back from reaching out yet again. I’m trying to trust God. Trying to surrender the fractured relationship to Him. Or should I say broken relationship? I don’t know. That’s part of the pain of ghosting. I don’t know where I stand. I feel totally rejected. The once strong relationship feels absolutely shattered with no explanation or hope for repair. The present is incongruent with the past. I’m trying to wait for God’s timing of restoration. Trying to focus on the people still in my life. Trying, trying, trying. How do we overcome the pain of ghosting? First, we keep trying.

Perhaps more importantly, we learn from it. Personally knowing how excruciating ghosting is we refuse to ghost people in our lives. When we’d rather stay silent (sometimes that will feel easier!), we respond anyway. When we need to walk away from relationships for a season (sometimes we might need to!), we honestly and lovingly tell the person rather than leave them hanging. We choose to not engage in ghosting no matter how tempting. Perhaps it is not until we are tempted that we can even grasp a glimmer of why someone would choose to ghost us. Sometimes relationships get complicated, making ghosting seem like a viable option. I don’t recommend it. But the temptation has helped me bear the pain slightly better.

If you are bearing the pain of silence in a once sweet, close relationship, I am so sorry. Keep trying to overcome. I hope you will be slightly encouraged knowing I’m out here trying as well.

A few more thoughts for you to consider. First, are you really being ghosted? Two different times I was sure I was being ghosted only to find out in time I was not. Situation one involved a friend who dropped the phone in the toilet and literally was without ability to text for weeks. Being overwhelmed by life and not eager to return to the device and the seemingly constantly barrage of communication from everyone, the person took a while to fix the problem, which consequently prolonged the inexplainable silence. Meanwhile, my feelings of rejection were mounting when in fact I was not being rejected at all. Second situation involved a person moving several states away and then needing to return a work phone after getting settled in and then acquiring a new one, which meant a new number. However, in all the upheaval that came with moving and a new job and a new city, some of us old friends were not informed about this communication change. As the phone sat idly in transit and then apparently sat unused at the former work place for some time, it kept receiving texts for weeks. I was not the only one who felt ghosted. But in that situation like the first, no ghosting had occurred to any of us. So, first, realize what seems like ghosting isn’t always ghosting. In this digital age of incessant instantaneous communication, be very careful about assuming that no response automatically means you are being ghosted. None of us knows exactly what someone else is facing. Even if we are actually being ghosted, we still don’t know what that person is dealing with. When a reply does not appear in our desired timeline, let us show a lot of grace, patience, and humility. The world does not revolve around us.

Sometimes the signs all shout loud and clear that ghosting is occurring. In that scenario, these thoughts might be good to consider. If possible, trust the good intentions of the person. From all I can ascertain, someone in my life is currently ghosting me. Months of reaching out has elicited zero response. While the impact is painful, I am totally confident the person has good intentions. We have history, which includes a time when good intentions led to an unintended painful impact. Remembering that hard time actually offers me a small measure of comfort in believing the best about the intentions this time. Sometimes we just don’t know how to handle relationships. We do the best we know how at the time. We’re all in process. When silence is the only response we receive, let’s once again show a lot of grace, patience, and humility.

Another comforting thought for me that I apply to ghosting is found in Psalm 84:11b, “No good thing does [the LORD God] withhold from those who walk uprightly.” For some reason, a response is not a good thing right now. God sees the big picture. He knows the heart of the person ghosting you. He knows your heart. He knows whether a response is truly good for you. Will we trust Him? Will we believe His word promising He will not withhold one good thing from us?

Lastly, my husband firmly believes that me sending yet another text, email, letter, etc. not so discreetly begging the person to acknowledge me is a very bad idea. I still wrestle with this counterintuitive wisdom. Being a writer and adverse to disconnection, surely I could come up with some convincing way to reason with the person and make them finally respond. Surely this next clever attempt will do the trick. Unfortunately, each additional effort has been met with only deafening silence, increasing my confusion and pain. While self-justifying another email is so easy to do, I’d encourage you to follow my husband’s advice. Stop reaching out. Let it go. Move on. Are we going to let ghosts haunt us the rest of our lives? Let’s focus on those who do respond, do engage, do seem to want us in their lives.

When a friend stepped out of my life for six years, silence reigned. Then out of the blue she stepped back in. For months God had put me on her mind until she finally decided to contact me. Our friendship is restored. I do not share that true story to conjure up false hope but to point to who is ultimately at work in every single situation we face. I used to believe I chose my friends. While I do play an active role, I perceive much more clearly these days that it is God who is the ruler of my relationships, bringing people in and out of my life according to His sovereign will. Ghosting is a clear indication that God wants to direct our attention elsewhere. Will we submit to the ruler of the universe? Or will we buck up, type out another unhelpful email, and create only further heartache? How long will we cling to a ghost?

Waking up in the middle of the night, the familiar strong urge to write yet another unhelpful email once again assaulted me. Instead, this time I wrote to you. I need to move on. I must move on. How about you?