I Took Back A Ghoster… Then Ghosted Him

“Ghosting a ghoster” sounds like revenge, but when I took back a guy who’d ghosted me five months prior, I never thought I’d step into his shoes and repeat his actions. Here’s what happened.

  1. He blindsided me. When he ghosted me after almost a year of dating, I couldn’t believe it happened. My initial thought was that something bad had happened to him, like he was lying in a gutter somewhere and didn’t have his phone, but then when my texts and calls continued to go unanswered, I realized the guy ghosted me. It took me months to get over the shock and rejection.
  2. He crawled back. A few months after our “breakup,” he sent me a message on Instagram, asking how I was and apologizing for his lousy behavior. It was good of him to be man enough to apologize and it gave me closure. But then he said he wanted me back.
  3. I had mixed feelings. I went through what everyone who’s been ghosted experiences in that situation: I was scared to take him back, but I still had feelings for him so I considered it. I went back and forth, playing out pros and cons for days until I realized that I wanted him more than I didn’t want him. So I took him back. Honestly, I should’ve taken my mixed feelings as a sign that I had many doubts about him. I should’ve moved on once and for all. But I didn’t.
  4. Things were fine for a while. At first, our relationship reboot seemed to really work. We got along well, respected each other more than we had the first time around, and I felt happy. But it didn’t last long. After a few weeks, I started to see that he was falling back into his old patterns.
  5. He had one foot out of the relationship. He was never 100% certain about our relationship future, which made me feel anxious that he was going to leave me again. It caused a lot of stress on my part and showed me how toxic he was for me. How had I forgotten that?
  6. I started to feel uneasy. The longer we stayed together and fought like rabid dogs, the more I realized that this guy was seriously unhealthy for me. The thing is, I didn’t feel I could end things with him. It was too scary. He could be quite controlling and frightening, and I realized that ghosting him was probably the only way I could get out. Yup, I became the toxic one in the relationship.
  7. I stepped into his shoes. How weird to become a ghoster after being ghosted? I started to wonder if this was how he felt when he disappeared from my life. Had he felt it was too stressful to end things in person or via text? Did he just want to run away? And, the hardest question for me to face: Had he felt the relationship was toxic as much as I did?
  8. Ghosting him was the only way. A weird feeling crept up on me and intensified: ghosting him was the only way I could get him out of my life. I had to do it for my own sanity. I couldn’t bear the thought of dealing with him and how difficult he was. I just wanted out. So one day, he wanted to see me and I never replied to his text. I never replied to any other texts he sent me. I was done.
  9. It was tough not to answer. The thing about ghosting him was that it was actually difficult not to answer him, especially when he was sending me nasty texts saying that I was just ghosting him to take my revenge on him for how he’d done the same thing to me. I so badly wanted to tell him that that wasn’t true, but I knew I couldn’t. I didn’t want to get sucked back into talking to him so I had to stick to my guns.
  10. I felt horrible. It wasn’t easy to ghost the guy. I felt like such a coward and I hated that I  made him feel hurt and rejected, especially when I knew how terrible it felt. But, I also knew that I had my reasons for ghosting him and I had made my choice. I wasn’t going to turn back now. Hell no.
  11. We were never meant to last. The thing that got me through all those negative feelings and guilt was how we were never going to be happy together. He ghosted me, then I ghosted him… Imagine if we had tried to get together again! That would’ve been even more toxic. No, it was best for us to move on and be away from each other, and I’m sure that as time went by he realized the same thing.

 

Giulia Simolo is a writer from Johannesburg, South Africa with a degree in English Language and Literature. She has been working as a journalist for more than a decade, writing for sites including AskMen, Native Interiors, and Live Eco. You can find out more about her on Facebook and LinkedIn, or follow her on Twitter @GiuliaSimolo.
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