Ghosting

I will tell you how not bothered I am about this. I’m 3 pink iced doughnuts, a mini bag of buttons and a mini bag of white buttons not-bothered-about-it. I can’t say any were purchased for the purpose of wallowing…more due to the demands of my toddler, who is currently asleep and will wreak her tiny, hellish havoc upon me when she discovers what I’ve done.
I’m not new to online dating. I’ve been there and done that, and I have a three year old to prove it. I’ve trusted the untrustworthy, been to Jamie’s Italian with the short, driven miles to see the lazy, screamed through Go Ape with the active, and quickly dismissed the shy or vulnerable or the less-than-desirable-but-such-a-lovely-guy. I’ve not been sat at my laptop on Plenty of Fish since my early 20s; I’ve had both long and short relationships, some of which have ended and dealt with by dabbles on Tinder and the like. I haven’t ever paid for online dating, but I know really that if I’m going to commit to it, especially now I’m 30, I should pay for the site to sort the wheat from the chaff for me. I do know that. But the thing is; I can’t shake this strong notion that surely I am in the majority of online daters. I might be being naïve (I am definitely being naïve), but I really think that most people are just nice and have good intentions, like me. I’m not saying we won’t be flawed, because everyone that has ever existed has flaws. What I’m saying is that when I speak to someone, I don’t like to lower my expectations just because of the medium via which we met. An example: I recently joined Tinder. I think I was on there for approximately 20 hours before I became disillusioned and deleted it again, and just before I did I engaged in a chat with a nice looking guy who turned out to be from my area. Well, my new area. I just moved to South East London. Anyway, he was pretty chatty! He had a good job, loved his kids, all that. Seemed to have a bit of a personality and could laugh at himself…I was pretty impressed. We swapped numbers so that I could go ahead and delete, and for a good 5 or so days the conversation was brilliant. Ongoing enough not to glue you to your phone, but frequent enough to maintain a good pace and keep me interested. It was flirty, but not presumptuous and the few photos that were exchanged were all in good taste. There was talk of meeting up once childcare and shift patterns matched, and we had even decided what we would do and where to eat, based on our ‘getting to know you’ conversations. It was lovely!
Have you heard of ‘ghosting’? It’s a new term that’s being banded about. It’s the short way of saying ‘I basically don’t exist to them anymore.’ I have been ghosted. At first I didn’t realise it had happened. I realised a whole day had passed by and nothing, so I sent a cheery update and asked how his day had been. I got a one word reply. Not one to be deterred, I assumed he was busy or preoccupied and responded as I would usually have done, saying I’ll catch him later when he’s got time to chat.
That time is still yet to come. You know what is annoying? Those ticks on whatsapp. If you get two ticks and they are blue, it means the person has read your message. There’s nothing more likely to drive you to near insanity than those two blue whatsapp ticks, alongside no reply. What really rubs the salt in the wound is that when you’re on there you can see if the person is online, and what time they were last online. It’s right there, in your bloody face! You can’t even not look at it! In an act of sheer desperation and to save my self-respect, I deleted his number and the conversation. No person can cope with that level of rejection and continue to be teased by the rejector’s consistent presence. It’s not on.
I’m not sure how I sound here. I was pretty happy before I joined that site and spoke to the guy. Actually, that sentence is a little off. I still am happy! But I think I’ve inadvertently rocked my own boat by assuming he was all he was cracked up to be. I feel pretty let down. I’m not going to attribute it to anything personally negative-it would be easy to call me stupid or gullible or even needy. I’m not any of those things. I’m a very independent, strong, kind and caring person. I’m also aware of how invisible I currently feel because of the actions of a stranger. It’s really weird knowing that there is someone in the world who does not care one tiny bit about you, after getting to know you somewhat.
I shall dust myself off now, after this minor blip, and update when I’ve decided what to do next!

Taking Things Personally

How often do you take things too personally?

I consider myself to be someone who is generally well liked. I try not to assume things about people and I tend to treat everyone the same. I am usually smiling and happy, and I try to keep it real as much as possible and not get too bogged down with negativity. I’m fiercely loyal about people I care about. I’m passionate and enthusiastic about nearly everything. I can laugh things off and I am able to reflect and say sorry without difficulty. Sometimes I am too straight down the line, and sometimes I am unsympathetic when I should be sympathetic. Other times I feel overwhelming empathy for people who don’t even slightly require it (I distinctly remember spending the duration of my time in a cinema once worrying about a man who was on his own and happily enjoying the film I was missing because of him). I don’t like the concept of commitment. It worries me. I struggle sometimes to even commit to making some plans, because in the back of my head I think I might not want to do that thing on that day, and so I try to swerve making absolute plans until the last minute. I’m also, despite my best efforts, reactive. The point of this is-all people have good and bad qualities. I have a thousand more of both, but it is narcissistic to think an audience would be even remotely interested in my self-analysis. This isn’t Plenty of Fish. I’m not going to say ‘I’m spontaneous and I love banter’. This is about someone not liking me.

When I was in school I don’t think I ever noticed anyone not liking me. There were loads of groups of girls who all hated each other and I was well and truly part of that, but none of them hated ME. They didn’t know me. All the people that knew me (my friends) definitely liked me, and I them. I am still friends with them now we are all in our 30s, so they can’t be pretending.

What do you do when you realise that someone who knows you fairly well doesn’t like you? It is such a strange concept. Everyone initially ‘doesn’t care’. I’ve heard myself say it. “I don’t even care!” and then following with something dismissive about the person being irrelevant. People have, in turn, asked me why I care? And I’ve responded (very maturely) that I don’t.

I CARE!

I really wonder if there are people who honestly don’t care. I am not comfortable with the thought of someone knowing my habits and my good points and my bad points, and concluding that I am not likeable. On this flip side of this, I don’t necessarily want to be associated with the person, but I do care that they haven’t found me likeable. It’s a hard pill to swallow!

I have a really good friend who often says “Don’t take it personally.’ She says it about most things. When I first knew her I used to wonder how I could NOT take some things personally, because if they are aimed at me then surely they are personal?

As time has gone on I have mellowed somewhat. I can see that actually, people are rarely personal. They may try to be, or think that they are being, but they aren’t, because the only person who is being represented in their actions is them. Not me, or anyone else.

If you had asked me a week and a half ago whether people can be personal I would have said definitely yes. I’ve been spending quite a large amount of time (not out of choice necessarily) with someone who doesn’t like me and who thinks they’ve made it personal. This has been a purposeful choice by them, although I don’t know why it’s happened. It has affected me greatly over time because I actually didn’t mind this person  I felt we had built a small friendship. Some time ago I realised that I’ve become anxious and serious and snappy, and the more I worried about how I was acting, the worse my actions got. I didn’t realise what I was dealing with because I was ignoring the person’s hostility and therefore thought it didn’t matter to me. I developed an agonising tooth pain that after three dentists appointment was attributed to grinding my teeth at night due to stress. I had two panic attacks at really random, unrelated times. In the last week or so I have not had to be around this person and I can clearly see that I have taken it personally. My tooth hasn’t hurt for the whole time I haven’t seen them. I feel pretty calm and balanced. All of this is a massive shame for me, because I have been out of character for quite a while and I feel resentful that I chose to let that happen to me.

The decision that I made poorly was to try to ignore the situation for as long as I did. Some people (maybe the people who really DON’T care?!) are able for this, but I am not one of them. I have to tackle things head on and get them sorted. I must say that I did try this quite a few times with this person, but it didn’t work and they made it clear they didn’t want to be my friend. Or be civil. Because I didn’t find a solution and didn’t know how to cope, I chose to ignore, and all that did was put a huge, Vegas-style, neon-lit question mark over the person’s head for me to be blinded by every time I encountered them. I’ve been taking the piss out of the situation quietly for some time to people close to me (a coping mechanism) but I should have settled it in my own mind if I couldn’t settle it with the person. I know that there is no question mark for this person when they see me, just a big red cross that flashes like a hazard sign when I’m approaching.

Now that I’ve had some space from the whole scenario, I feel quite sorry for the person who doesn’t like me. I know they have tried their hardest to make my life pretty hellish for a good few months, but actually my life has been pretty nice other than encountering them. It’s a shame for me that I’ve had to experience this, but it’s probably more of a shame for this person because they’ve lost a potential friend and are existing in a somewhat isolating state of hostility and hatred. I’m not saying that I think they’ve lost out because they now haven’t got me particularly as a friend (I mean I’m fine, but I’m a total pain). I just mean that it’s sad for them that they’re going through something which has made them think this is an OK way to act. In a non-patronising way, I feel bad for them.

Sometimes I can follow this advice about not taking things personally and sometimes I can’t. Everyone is a work-in-progress, and I’m not in any position to be advising an audience on how to act. I’m guilty of over-thinking things and blowing up over them quickly, which is not only a waste of my time but I am usually wrong, and then I have to apologise. I’m getting better and still working on it.

All I can say is that when you feel a little compromised, remember the words of my good friend and “Try not to take it personally.”. It has helped me a lot recently.

Enjoy x