They talk to you and then disappear

[mikumiku]

Why is it, that you find someone you click with, you exchange messages back and forth on the dating site, app, and then exchange numbers, and then they just stop talking to you altogether. Or they stop talking to you on the dating site, just disappearing altogether. I am noticing this happening to me a lot, like last night me and this guy were talking for 1-4 hours, then I asked to video chat, and he said sure and asked to video chat on Facebook, so I linked him my profile, and he never video chatted or added me. I messaged him this morning asking what happened, but he just deleted my message and never talked to me again.

Another guy, I was talking too, we emailed back and forth then switched to cell phone texts, and we talked for 3 days, I asked him out, saying "Hey want to go to a concert in Downtown?" He told me "I am already in Downtown". Not giving me a yes or no to my asking out. He later texted me and still did not acknowledge me asking him out before, and we kept talking a bit more, and he then stopped talking, so I asked him straight out "You still interested in getting to know each other?" He said "yes" but never talked to me after that response.

Why does this happen? What do you think the answer is? Has this happened to you?

[breathe123]

Maybe they don't want a real gf, or relationship or maybe the pics they use are fake & that is why when you try to make it go from texts to actually seeing each other, they bail. Fakers.

[melancholia]

I can't speak for other people, but I have certainly ghosted on guys before, more often with online dating matches. Maybe they lost interest, maybe they never actually intended to meet you in the first place, maybe they met someone else, maybe they had a girlfriend or wife... who knows? All you can do about it is cast it aside, consider it a loss, and move on. There are many guys out there who don't do that. Online dating can be really hard on your self esteem because you really have to sift through a lot of duds to get to the handful of decent guys that seem to be in the online dating pool.

Don't give up though! Keep moving forward and I am sure you will meet someone who you connect with. Just be patient

[dontaskme]

Maybe when they found out that you still live at your parents house and unemployed at the same time, they lost interest. I don't know of any guy who wants to date a 30 year old unemployed woman living off his parents.

[TheEvilJester]

Online dating is a cesspool filled with pieces of garbage with a few good folks floating around, but they are very much the rarity. ....So, you know, it's basically just like real life. Honestly, if you are going to use online dating, the best thing you can do for yourself is realize that MOST LIKELY it will achieve nothing but being a colossal waste of your time. At least then you can't be disappointed. If, by some chance, you actually DO wind up finding somebody worthwhile, then that's great, but at least with low expectations, you won't be disappointed.

Frankly, I myself got sick of wasting my time. I've given up. However, I DO NOT suggest doing that. Frankly, I'm ridiculously shy and really just learning now to get over that. Combine that with the fact that there just aren't any options around me anymore, and online dating seemed like my best/only hope these days. So, essentially me giving up on online dating is me giving up on ever having somebody. Believe me, that is NOT fun. So, please don't do that.

If nothing else, use online dating as a tool to make yourself more practiced to date people you meet in real life. If you wind up finding a great fella online, then that is AWESOME! If not, at least you've gained some experience you can maybe use in the real world.

No offense to melancholia (who is one of my buddies here on this board, so I cannot think anything bad of my l'il sis, LOL), but I don't think it is ever appropriate to ghost somebody. I mean, with online dating, I can understand doing that IF the other person returns the same. Like, in other words, if you feel like the person just isn't a good match so you stop reaching out to them.... IF they then in turn don't bother reaching out to you either, then that is fine. Obviously they either weren't that interested in you either, or just weren't interested enough to bother making the effort if they felt they were the only one.

But, to me what is unacceptable is to act legitimately interested and then just disappear on somebody. That, or to keep leading them on or completely ignore them if they are actually still trying to pursue you. When it comes to that, if the other person continues to display interest, then man up (or woman up, if the case may be) and just be honest with them. So, to be honest with you, these are not guys you want to be with anybody. Take that as a hint that they are doing you a favor, because they are obviously insensitive.

I know how frustrating dating can be. Believe me, if you want to find the right guy for you, it WILL happen eventually. Don't let the a-holes of the world spoil it for you. Good luck to you. Someday you will find the guy who makes all of this worth it. Unfortunately, sometimes that is just the way the dating world is. You have to sift through all the losers to find your true match.

[melancholia]

To clarify, I've only ever ghosted on people I haven't actually met in real life. I'm not saying it's a cool thing to do, I know it's shitty; but in the past I have definitely behaved in shitty ways. I don't do that anymore though!

P.S. I love that we are buddies, TheEvilJester!

[TheEvilJester]

Dude, melancholia, you my peeps! You could tell me you killed a guy and I'd still think you were awesome. LOL!

Like I said, what you are describing does sort of sound more along the lines of what I consider acceptable. It's not like you are saying you dated guys multiple times and then just disappeared on them. If you hadn't even met in real life, there probably hadn't really been enough time to make a real connection. So, not really what I meant when I was saying you should never ghost on somebody.

[melancholia]

TheEvilJester, you my homeboy! As far as killing someone goes... there was that one time... lol jk obvs

I have a hard time dealing with uncomfortable situations, like having to let someone down. So at the time, I figured it was safer to ghost on them than it was to be mature and just say I wasn't into it. I also don't use any online dating apps anymore as they became overwhelming for me to try and find someone worth meeting, let alone someone worth dating.

Question for you, what is your position on the slow fade? I personally think it's a little more reasonable than ghosting, especially if you've met/dated the person for a while. I have certainly been the victim of the slow fade before and it isn't a great feeling; but I had to pull the slow fade on the firefighter I was seeing. To be honest, I think it was the best move because I felt like he was slow fading me, and I didn't want to drag it out with a conversation over texting (because he's been away fighting wild fires since May) but I didn't have the opportunity to talk to him in person, plus after 7 months of seeing each other, he still wouldn't call me his girlfriend. I didn't want to have to wait until he came back from the fires in the summer and waste 3 months of my time waiting around just to tell him it wasn't working... especially when we weren't even in a committed relationship to begin with. I did not want to miss out on the opportunity to meet someone else, who would be better suited to me. So after putting a lot of thought into it, I decided to pull the slow fade. So far it's worked. We talk here and there, in fact I was talking to him the other day and he said he'd been home for a few days and he's waiting for a call out to the next fire tour... so if he really wanted to see me, or even cared about seeing me at all, he would have said so because we live in the same town lol.

Anyway, I'd love your thoughts on that.

[TheEvilJester]

Glad I caught this. I was just about to sign off for the day.

To be honest, I'm not all that much more of a fan of the "slow fade." Though, I do think it is a little better than ghosting. However, I still think it is better to just be honest and break things off, at least if they've progressed in any sense. For example, you say you've dated this guy for 7 months. Which, by the way, IS long enough that I agree with you that it would feel unacceptable to me not to be considering you his girlfriend at that point. But, hey, that's just me. Some people are more casual about that kind of thing, I guess.

But, again, your specific situation also falls under the same gray area based on the fact that he's not making any special effort to reach out to you. It would be one thing if he kept reaching out for more dates and you just kept blowing him off and slowly "fading out" more and more. However, you started to fade out and he didn't exactly make any effort to stop you.

Honestly, if you are at a point where you feel done with the relationship, it is probably just best to end it. Even if for no other reason than the fact that you deserve to be able to move on and find somebody else who may be better suited to be your match. But, in this instance, if this "fade out" approach is working for you, then I don't blame you for continuing to use that. Hopefully he takes the hint and moves on. Though, if he doesn't, I do think you should eventually just level with him.

[melancholia]

Yeah, well even in the 7 months we were seeing each other/dating/whatever you want to call it, we only saw each other maybe once a month... It felt like pulling teeth to get him to hang out with me. He never seemed excited, or really interested in talking to me or seeing me, unless I initiated. I also felt myself recoil all the time, and I would constantly try to edit myself around him. For example, I would try to seem interested in things he liked just to seem more appealing to him...like UFC... f*ck UFC lol... tbh it is THE gayest sport! I do not mean that as a homophobic slur in any way, shape, or form; but it is seriously pretty gay to watch half naked beefcakes roll around with each other on the floor. Especially with moves like "twister" or "rear naked choke"... (which ironically enough, sounds like something I'd like to try ). He was always closed off and such a private person, which made me feel the same way. Even when we'd have sex, which I absolutely REFUSED to initiate, because I'd had to initiate everything else, he would approach me at the absolute last moment of the night, lights always off, and we had morning sex maybe twice through our entire endeavor. I never felt like he actually even liked me all that much, but I was desperate for a relationship with someone I thought would be great; and I talked myself out of what I really wanted so I could hold on to what we did have in the hope that things would progress naturally, but they didn't.

He went away to the fires in May, but he was still able to text/fb message/snapchat/etc... and he wouldn't send me anything! He was active on FB though, and I could see he was sending snapchats to other people, but none to me. Don't get me wrong, I don't care about him snapchatting other people, it was the fact that he wasn't sending them to me, which meant he wasn't thinking about me enough to want to share his experience with me. I got to the point where I felt it wasn't necessary to tell him how I felt, because I never felt like I could in the first place; and so I felt the right way to go about it was to pull the slow fade. It seems to be working, because he will reply to my posts on snapchat, or like a few things on FB, but other than that, our interaction is minimal at best, and nonexistent most of the time. I don't owe him anything, so why should I bother having a drawn out conversation about not wanting to be together, when we were never really "together" in the first place? In fact, I felt like he wanted to pull the slow fade on me, so I figured it was the right move.

He is still home, by the way, and has not made any moves to try and get together with me. But, if he does want to talk about things (which would surprise me, because he is not the "lets talk about 'us'" type of guy, then I will explain to him that he can't give me what I need from a relationship, and even though he is a great guy, he is not the right guy for me. I don't have to tell him I'm dating a new person, because again, I don't owe him that; and I think it would just cause tension. I don't dislike him, he *is* a great guy, but it just so happens that we are not compatible. After all the times I've told other people on this forum that, "if you have to shake the head of the person you're with to make them see you are worth dating, then you will never be worth it to them; at least not in the way you should be", I realized I had to start taking my own advice, and drop him and what we "had" in order to open myself up to the opportunity of meeting someone better matched for me (and I did! )

[mikumiku]

Yeah, it sucks when this happens, but oh well. I will find someone and if not oh well. And someone will accept me, for living at home and not working.

[dontaskme]

And someone will accept me, for living at home and not working.

I highly doubt that...

[TheEvilJester]

In your case, then, melancholia, I think you have the right attitude/approach in this. Like I said, if it works for you, it works for you. The more you share about it, though, the more I agree this is actually not a situation where you owe him anything. Obviously even while he had the chance, he still never made any effort to keep you. So, yeah, I agree with you. If I were you, I would just stop contacting him. Hopefully he'll take the hint. If not, like you said, just deal with it then and tell him that you have nothing against him but you two are just not the right match.

You are too groovy to waste your time on somebody who can't be bothered to see that for themselves.

[melancholia]

Thanks, TEJ (which is what I'm calling you now, for brevity's sake). I would have started a thread for this, but didn't have to thanks to mikumiku lolol.