Although ‘ghosting’ is typically viewed as a negative experience, there are times when it’s a blessing in disguise. Ending a relationship by ghosting is abrupt and harsh. It’s also effective.
One of the places where ghosting is a good thing is when you’re ending an affair. Not because it leaves the person you’re with shocked and wounded, but because if they don’t know much about your life in the first place, they won’t be able to track you down easily. This is a blessing when you happen to live in separate locations and want a clean break that doesn’t end up leaving one or both of you hurt.
This reduces the likelihood of ‘Fatal Attraction’ type episodes from happening.
In many ways, it’s one of the preferred ways of ending the affair.
Another is just for ending the affair with a clean break. It needed to end. Dragging it out only prolongs the pain and drama for all involved.
Paul Simon sang of 50 ways to leave your lover. Although he didn’t mention ghosting, it should be added to the list.
There’s no easy way of ending an affair and leaving your lover. When you let them down easy, it only prolongs the pain and suffering for everyone.
It’s better to end it quickly, cleanly and definitively. It may be a last minute decision, but once you’ve made it you’ll never look back.
Even if the person is crying at your feet telling you how much they love you and what a mistake this is, there are no do-overs here.
Then there are the threats of hurting themself over you. Those are ploys designed for keeping you hooked into the relationship. If that happens, call 9-1-1 rather than you attempt consoling them.
There is no painless way of ending what shouldn’t have started. Finding the easy way out, typically only prolongs the pain.
Although abrupt endings that come with ghosting are jarring and abrupt, they’re effective. It severs the relationship and all the emotional entanglement it brings.
So when a reader wrote about ‘ending a long term affair with her ghosting him’ looking for answers, my response was one of relief. He’s got a lot to be thankful for.
He should be giving thanks that his affair is over and that she chose one of the least painful ways of ending it. Although his focus is on his pain with questions about why it happened to him, and why she did this, he’d do better in stopping the assumptions that it’s all about himself.
Instead of leading him on and dragging things out, she ended it abruptly. Keeping it going would only take both of them down a deep dark relationship hole.
Ending the affair gives him new options.
No one enjoys abrupt endings of relationships, even when it’s in their best interest to end it. At those times, its important looking at the longer term benefits rather than the short term hurts.
In the video “Help for the Cheater: Starting the Road to Recovery”, I share how to start turning your life around. Rather than running back to the lover, when the affair ends, you can turn your life around.
You no longer have to be defined by your relationships. You can move past them.
Click and download your copy of the video today.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
