As if the dating game had not gotten hard enough, now we have haunting. This is the new twist on ghosting. Someone just had to decide that being ghosted wasn’t hard enough for someone to emotionally recover from, so now we must go deeper. This is the subtle reminder that the person who ghosted you is still around, but just outside your reach.
For those of you who have been living under a rock, ghosting is the savage act of breaking up with someone by simply cutting them out of your life. No break up, no talk, you just turn on your read receipts and leave their messages on read. Forever. This is taking people’s lack of closure to a whole new level when they do not even receive a goodbye or explanation.
Why stop there when a “ghoster” is obviously okay with breaking hearts and taking names? Why not now haunt that poor soul with a passive aggressive message that says “I’m still here, but you can’t have me”? This is where haunting comes in. This is a brutal way of continuously reminding someone that they have been dumped.
This is in effect when you cut someone off from all contact with you, but you still low key interact with them on social media. You know you’re getting haunted when all your messages and calls are getting ignored, but that person is still liking your pictures or posts on social media and viewing your snapchat stories.
They are going out of their way to view and like your stuff to continuously know what is happening in your life, but not putting in enough effort to talk to you. We all know the social media etiquette. If someone is liking a lot of your pictures and tweets, they are trying to open the floor to slide into the DM’s. When all of this online flirting comes after a breakup though, this just causes a lot of mixed signals. This may have a worse sting compared to ghosting because they are showing you “Hey I’m alive, and you may think this is your chance, but I don’t want you”.
