Ghosting
Friendship
January 31, 2023
War still On
February 25, 2023You Lost your Friend or You Are About To?
There’s a lot of talk these days about ghosting, people who just drop out. You thought things were going well and all of a sudden they’re not returning your calls and texts. How do you know when you’ve been ghosted and it’s time to just give it up, that this person is somehow giving you a signal, but not a straightforward, I don’t want to see you anymore?
So it’s really hard because honestly friendship more than any other relationship tends to be a relationship of so much ambiguity.
And that’s because in our marriage, we have this formal contract, where we’re connected, and our family, it’s blood. But friendship, it’s just, you don’t quite know what the expectations are and you’re always just trying to figure it out.
And so when it comes to ghosting, I like to maintain an air of optimism. If I haven’t heard back from someone, I like to assume they’re busy and give them that grace and not take it as personall
it’s really about putting yourself out there and taking a little bit of a risk and hoping that you get a good answer.
Connection is this schism of being the most risky thing we feel like we can engage in, but also the most nurturing and important thing we can engage in. It’s both petrifying and gorgeous at the same time.
Differences between men and women and friendship, and especially what you were saying about men, which was struck me as being very sad. I’ve seen articles in mainstream media that talk about how women are better at making friends and maintaining those friendships. Is there research that backs that up?
Science that finds that men just tend to be less vulnerable in their friendships. And vulnerability, we find in the science, the more people disclose vulnerably about themselves, the more liked they are, and people feel more connected to people that disclose vulnerably.
And so while we may fear vulnerability for its potential liabilities like, oh, someone can use this against me and exploit me, in fact, the more likely outcome, according to the science, is that it’s going to cement the connection and bring us closer. And so I think a lot of the times men’s friendship issues are actually vulnerability issues in disguise. #
There was this really interesting Atlantic article that talked about how men often need a third object in their friendships. They’re watching the game together, they’re playing a sport together, and that is a way to avoid vulnerability by having a third object to focus on.
But again, to the great detriment of the friendship, but I also have to point out, there’s this phenomenon called homohysteria, which is men’s fear of being perceived as gay.
And so what that does to men is they feel like they can’t do all of the behaviors necessary for connection because that might come off as gay.
And so I’ve even heard men say, I can’t even initiate with another. I can’t say, hey, I’d love to hang out because he might think I’m interested in him like sexually.
And so because of this way that we conflate absolutely any sign of interest or affection with some sexual interest, that leaves men in a real bind where they feel like, oh, I can’t engage in this relationship at all because then it’s going to be perceived as sexual, but then they’re left really lonely.
The thing that I am worried about is for those of us that have been chronically lonely, we know from the science that loneliness is not just a feeling. It’s a way of seeing the world. #
Lonely people actually tend to dislike people they interact with, they report liking their roommate less. They report liking humanity less. They report liking people they interact with less.
They report assuming people are going to reject them when they aren’t actually. And that’s because when we were lonely, historically, we were separated from our tribes, so we were in danger.
And so our danger signals are just going off when we’re lonely in ways that make it hard to come out of loneliness because if you’re thinking nobody wants to hear from me and I don’t really want to hear from them, I’m devaluing the value of connection, even while I wanted it at the same time, I’m pulled in two different directions when I’m lonely.
People report wanting to withdraw from people and wanting to connect at the same time. So it just makes it very hard to get out of loneliness when it’s really, really entrenched.
But I always believe that it’s possible. And I think we need to maintain our optimism. And I tell people that, so that they can remind themselves when you’re lonely, oh, it’s not that I actually don’t like this friend,
it’s not that they’re actually rejecting me, it might just be because I’m lonely and that’s shaping how I’m interpreting events right now.
work provides an opportunity for making friends as an adult. But now with remote and hybrid work, that’s changed the dynamic for a lot of people, and it’s got to be especially tough for young adults, say,
in their first or second job, but as well as more seasoned employees who might be starting a new position remotely, let’s say. So you recently wrote about ways to make work friends, even while working remotely. What did you recommend?
There’s been a discussion in the past few years about how political polarization is straining family and friendship ties.
People might feel pressure to maintain a relationship with a family member they disagree with politically. Do you think it’s possible to maintain close relationships with friends we disagree with very, very vehemently?
And so what that means is there’s going to be a different calculus when you’re deciding whether to be friends with a new friend who maybe has very different values than you that are expressing their political beliefs, versus a friend you’ve had whoever who’s providing you with a lot of different benefits just because you can reminisce and you have these shared experiences together. Right?
And so you just have to take a step back and think about this person may have different values than me in this way,
but what are the things that I also get out of this friendship and how do I weigh those two things together because — and all of our friendships should be more good than bad.
That being said, there are people who might be like, you know what, having different values, having different politics is too much of a con for me. That’s something that I weigh heavily as a co
And I think that’s a good starting assumption. I think when you take a step back and look at the larger landscape of the friendship, does this ghosting reflect a larger lack of investment or interest in the friendship, right? How are they showing up when we interact one on one?
Are they willing to interact one on one? Are they willing to interact face to face? And do they seem interested, engaged? Do they affirm me when we’re interacting one on one?
All of that is information and the not responding to your text message should be a data point within the larger realm of information, right? The fact that someone didn’t respond to your text message alone does not indicate that they’re trying to ghost on you or end the relationship.
So I just think it takes us taking a step back and evaluating the landscape of the friendship more broadly to try to figure out what’s going on. And I say, people are so afraid of conflict in friendship to the extent that they rather just end the friendship, right?
But actually the science finds that when we have open and empathic discussion of issues in our relationships, we tend to experience more intimacy.
And so if you’re just avoiding conflict, you might actually be harming your friendships actually, because I think a lot of people avoid it because they think, oh, it’s better this way. I’m not going to bring this up. I’m not going to cause all this tension. But the tension is already there.
The question is whether you can work through it and have that opportunity or not. And so that’s another thing, if someone’s ghosting on you and you’re not sure, I would just invite a conversation like, hey, I haven’t heard back from you.
Not sure if that’s because something might be going on, but if so, I just wanted to welcome you to bring up any concerns that you have because I’m here to listen.
About platonic friendships between men and women? Are those any easier for men to initiate, navigate?
Platonic friendships between men and women. Well, there is the difficulty of obviously sexual interests, depending on if both parties are heterosexual.
There’s some interesting science on this that actually woman tend to feel closer to their woman friends than their male friends.
But men actually either feel closer to their woman friends than their male friends or feel equally as close. So men actually aren’t reporting feeling as close to their male friends compared to the woman friends that they have because often men access more vulnerability through their friendships with women.
And so I think that’s a real — we talk about men being put into the friend zone when I’m like according to the science, that should be an honor, because men’s friendships with women are some of the best friendships that they have because that what tends to look different when men become friends with men versus women is that they are able to access that vulnerability.
That being said, when men are friends with men, they access more ease and a more of a sense of relaxation than they might access around women.
The research here has actually been mixed, and finding that the pandemic has promoted loneliness, but then we haven’t been lonely, have been less lonely.
And I think part of that is we’ve kind of had to reconcile with the fact that we need to initiate with friendships. We can’t just passively engage in our friendships and rely on, I
‘m just going to rely on us meeting up every month at the potluck that someone runs. We’ve learned I think a little more in this pandemic that we actually have to initiate to keep our friendships.
And that is such an important skill that I really hope that we can take into the future. And if we can really internalize that, then it can really make our friendships better in the long ru
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The science of connecting at work is really interesting because studies actually find that the more we interact with people, the closer we tend to feel, but at work, it’s the opposite.7
And I think that that’s actually because we don’t often share vulnerably at work. And so there’s this way that we only interact with a single dimension of each other all the time. So I just also encourage a little bit more vulnerability. Like, how are you doing? Cracking jokes, things that you sometimes feel iffy about doing in the work environment.
I know people are scared. Things can be used against me, and that fear is real, but there’s just so many things that you can disclose about yourself that are safe, like your wins or your accomplishments or your hobbies, or your weekend plans. Just feeling free to share a little bit more about yourself to create that connection.
And the last thing that I wanted to say is there’s this idea that I call the employee myth, which is the idea that when we go to work, we simply become employees and we no longer have fundamental human needs like the need to belong, and it’s simply untrue.
Having connection at work is related to your engagement, your productivity, your creativity, how much teams can succeed, how likely you are to stay in the job. In fact, not belonging is the third reason that people have reported quitting their job within the last year.
And so your ability to create connections is going to have a powerful effect on whether you feel happy and satisfied and fulfilled in your work. So it really is worth it.
And I don’t think there’s an amount of pros that could counteract that. And I say, we all need to develop our own system. We all need to go through our own self-reflective process to understand what our needs are and what our values are and what we are willing to compromise on and what we’re not.
That being said, I know from theories of racial identity, that people of color who tend to go through experiences of discrimination then tend to go through a hibernation period, where they only want to interact with people from their group.
And so what that research suggests is there can be times when we feel like we need to hibernate for our own safety, but that also doesn’t necessarily last forever.
And so we need to also expect that sometimes when we have these differences and things that feel so valuable to us, and that feel like they’re part of our identities like politics tend to be, that sometimes there’ll be periods where we might need some space, but we might be able to reengage in the relationship over time.
So I think too, when we’re making friends across difference, we should expect that there’s going to be a little bit more ebb and flow.
G.I.T.C
