Author: Matt Davis / Source: Big Think
- Ghosting, or cutting off all contact suddenly with a romantic partner, is not nice.
- Growth-oriented people (who think relationships are made, not born) do not appreciate it.
- Destiny-oriented people (who believe in soulmates) are more likely to be okay with ghosting.
Most folks who have been on the dating scene since the advent of smartphones are familiar with ‘ghosting’, the practice of suddenly cutting off all contact with a romantic partner: not responding to or sending texts, not picking up the phone, unfriending on social media, and so on. In essence, it’s an effort to make your digital self disappear from the recently dumped person’s life.
There are plenty of reasons why ghosting is an unsavory practice. For one, the ghosted party doesn’t realize they’ve been dumped for quite some time. It also implies a disregard for the other person’s feelings and conveys a sense that they don’t matter all that much. However, not everybody feels the same way about this practice.
Ghosting is more popular with believers in romantic destiny
Photo by James Sutton on Unsplash
Recent research in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships revealed that people’s feelings and practices in regard to ghosting depend on which romantic camp they belong to: Those with destiny mindsets or those with growth mindsets.
Co-author Gili Freedman and colleagues write, “[People] with stronger destiny beliefs are more likely to believe that individuals within relationships are either meant to be together or they are not—that is, individuals have soulmates.” People with destiny beliefs are love-at-first-sight people. They have a soulmate, and after they find them, they’ll have the ideal relationship together.
In contrast, Freedman writes, “individuals with stronger growth beliefs think that relationships are malleable and can be improved upon through communication and overcoming hurdles in the relationship.” Growth-oriented people believe that a relationship is made rather than born. It’s important to remember that these two attitudes aren’t exactly mutually exclusive, and people can have these attitudes in different degrees.
Freedman and colleagues were interested in how these two broad categories of…
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