It’s normal to match with a guy and have a conversation, interesting or otherwise, that randomly ends because he stops responding.
This can happen at any point. It could happen after one response, five responses, one week of talking, two weeks of talking (if you let it go that long). You will never know when it might happen. This uncertainty, the fact that ghosting is common and can happen any time, is a key part of the stress of the whole experience.
Every time I open whatever app I’m on (I never turn on notifications unless I’m actively setting up a date with someone), I might have a response from a match or I might not. If I don’t have a response, it could mean he is ghosting me—or it could mean he has a life and just hasn’t had a chance to reply to me yet. Who knows?
Side note: Once I realized I could be dropped at any point along the way, l also recognized that, this early on, a rational person would try not to have any expectation or hope of things moving forward. But you know, that’s hard to do 100% of the time, or it has been for me anyway.
Eventually, someone comes along whose profile photos are interesting and who seems cool and his text conversation is fun. And finding someone who can actually have a conversation is so exciting that it’s hard not to get hopeful that we might go on a date and see if we get along. Maybe we even have some mutual values or interests! And then…I get ghosted again.
Sometimes I’ve moved through the disappointment well. Sometimes it’s sent me into what a friend once called the “mind vortex,” spiraling into a black pit of negativity, all because some rando ghosted me after a few messages.
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Anyway. If I overcome these obstacles (which I have plenty of times), I’ve still had to face the challenges of setting up a first date. Here is a scenario that happened to someone I know. The guy planned a date for a certain time. My friend hoped to hear from him the night before or at least the morning of, confirming that they were still going out. She didn’t.
She messaged to ask if they were still going out but heard nothing in response. The time when they planned to go out came and went. The guy finally messaged the next day, apologizing for not responding and saying that he was just busy (too busy to take a few seconds before the date and let her know he couldn’t make it, apparently). He asked if they could try again. So, trying to give this her best shot, she agreed. Surprise, surprise, he canceled again. This type of situation is not uncommon.
One time, a guy set up a date with me at a specific Starbucks in town on a certain day and time. Then all of sudden, I noticed he was no longer on the dating app. His profile disappeared. But he never canceled the date. Me being me, I showed up anyway, knowing he would probably not be there. He wasn’t.
This sent me into the mind vortex and I had to take an online dating break at that point.
Or take another situation that happened to me twice. It boggles me that it happened once, and the fact that it happened twice leads me to believe it might be an increasingly common mindset among some online daters.
I matched with a guy on a dating app. I don’t remember us messaging very much on the app or feeling very strongly that I would find him interesting. But he asked if I wanted to meet for coffee, so I agreed, and we planned on a place and time. The night before the date, he messaged me to let me know he just didn’t feel that we had a connection, and he canceled the date.
That’s right, folks. This total stranger who only knew me from a few photos, prompts, and text messages expected to have some sort of emotional connection with me before going on a first date or even hearing my voice.
The same thing happened to me again, several years later. I matched with a guy, we messaged a few times, and he asked me out for coffee. I don’t think we settled on the time and place, but after asking me out, he changed his mind and told me he didn’t actually want to go out for coffee because he didn’t feel we’d made a connection while texting on the dating app.
Again, in both of these cases we had not even had a phone call. These dudes were making their decisions based on photos, a few text messages, and whatever I had put about myself in the profile. Actually, you could argue they were basing their decisions on the text messages alone because they were at least interested enough in my profile to match with me. I apparently did not do enough in the texting to keep their interest.
That leads me to another pitfall. When ghosting happens all the time, at any point in time, you can get really messed up in the head overthinking everything you’re doing. Did I say the wrong thing? Should I have been funnier? More serious? Did I overshare? Did I seem too guarded? If I do or say the wrong thing, how’s he gonna feel that connection????
What people should do, I believe, is just be themselves. The right people won’t have those ridiculous expectations and will like you for who you are. But it’s easy to fall into the overthinking trap—especially if you keep not meeting the “right” kind of man—and also if that trap is combined with people in your life giving you unhelpful advice, like “put yourself out there more” or something. I’ll have more to say about dating advice in a follow-up article.
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