Script: Hello, everyone, how are you doing? Today I am going to talk about ghosting. Have you heard of this term? Ghosting, is a casual term describing the practice of ending all communication and contact with another person without any warning and ignoring any subsequent attempts to communicate. The term originated in the early 2000s, typically referring to dating and romantic relationships. In the following decade, with the increasing use of social media and online dating apps, ghosting is on the rise. Now, this term is also used to refer to similar practices among friends, family members, employers and businesses. The most common cause of ghosting in a personal relationship is to avoid emotional discomfort in a relationship. A person ghosting typically does not care how it will make the other person feel. The person being ghosted usually feels devastated and hurt. A friend of mine, let’s call her Mary. Mary told me her story and gave me permission to share her story here. She has been dating a guy for over a year. Their relationship has been volatile. Volatile means changing quickly and unpredictably, usually changing for the worse. They broke up every couple of months, and got back together after 2 weeks. However, Mary has had enough of this guy, and ghosted him on Halloween. She said, “When he said something rude or made an insensitive remark, I used to get mad at him or explained to him how I felt. However, after all these months, I realized he is not going to change. That’s just the way he is – a total jerk. What he said to me recently was the last straw that broke the camel’s back, and I so ghosted him, and blocked his number.” The idiom, “the straw that breaks the camel’s back” means the last in a series of bad things that happen to make someone very upset and angry. When Mary told me that she ghosted and blocked her boyfriend, I felt sorry for her. Ghosting somebody is rude and immature, however, I am sure she had her reasons. I guess she was so fed up that she didn’t even want to end this relationship in a more mature way. She could have responded to him by saying she has had enough and she wanted to break up. But sometimes a bad romantic relationship drains a person emotionally, so much that the person does not even have the last bit of energy to end it. Have you ghosted anybody? Have you been ghosted before?

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