Why do people ghost after intimacy or conflict in relationships?
Josie writes: “Why do men ghost women when conflict arises and/or after intimacy?”
Dear Josie,
I think one of the big reasons why being ghosted is so incredibly difficult is that it leaves us with all kinds of unanswered questions about what happened.
When we’ve been ghosted, we’re left with a lack of closure. No matter how much we try to understand what happened, we’ll never know for sure whether the answer we give ourselves at 3 am is even close to the real answer to the question Why did he ghost me?
Without definitive answers, it’s all too easy to begin obsessing about what happened and what the other person might have been thinking and what went wrong and how we’re probably at fault for what went wrong.
Before I get into some of the reasons why people ghost in relationships, I want to say that ghosting isn’t an exclusively masculine behavior. In my experience, women are just as likely to ghost as men are. That’s because the causes of ghosting aren’t tied to a particular gender.
In your question, you mentioned two different situations in which ghosting happens: after conflict and after intimacy. I’ll talk about each of these situations separately, because I think the causes are somewhat different.
So let’s talk about ghosting after intimacy.
Think back to the first time you fell in love. If you’re like most people, you were probably blissfully unaware of the risks you were taking by opening yourself up to another person and getting attached to them.
But once we’ve gotten hurt in love (and especially if we’ve been hurt badly), we’re no longer ignorant of the reality that being intimate with another person means risking getting hurt.
We know that being close with someone means letting them get close enough that they could hurt us.
Especially for those of us who have past relationship trauma, intimacy can feel scary and threatening. It requires letting down the walls we’ve built up to protect ourselves from getting hurt. It’s this potential for getting hurt that makes intimacy a very vulnerable experience.
If we’ve experienced a lot of hurt in past relationships—by being rejected or mistreated or simply having our hearts broken by a partner who no longer wanted to be in the relationship—we’re already keenly aware of the risks we are taking simply by allowing ourselves to get attached to another human.
We know that we have to consciously choose to let down our self-protective defenses in order to get close to someone. We have to tolerate the feelings of vulnerability and the threat of being hurt if the relationship goes badly.
So what does this have to do with ghosting after intimacy?
Intimate moments in a relationship feel magical in part because of how they take us by surprise. We don’t necessarily see these moments coming before they happen.
It’s like we hold eye contact for a little longer than we’d intended or we find ourselves suddenly sharing some private detail about ourselves that we never thought we’d share and the moment of connection with the other person suddenly becomes far more intimate than we’d expected.
Intimacy always requires openness … not just being open about ourselves but also being open to being affected by the other person. Being open like this is a vulnerable experience. It’s risky.
And while many of us are willing to take the risk of being hurt because we value being intimate and connected with another person, for others, the risk just feels too big. The vulnerability that’s required is too scary.
In other words, ghosting after intimacy is a response to being vulnerable.
It’s a response to having been more open than one intended to be. It’s a way to eliminate the fear of being hurt. Ghosting after intimacy is a way of reasserting control over oneself, making sure one stays distant as a way of staying safe.
Remember that intimate moments of connection often take us by surprise, especially in the early phases of a relationship. We don’t see these moments coming and so we are often more open with the other person than we might intend to be.
For those who have trauma related to being close to another person, this experience of unexpected intimacy and openness can feel dangerous and frightening. It’s like one’s inner defenses system that protects against being vulnerable failed. And then ghosting kicks in as a secondary defense system.
In other words, if I don’t feel safe being open and intimate and I suddenly find myself being way more open and intimate with you than I’d intended to be, I will likely conclude that I can no longer trust myself to be close to you.
Ghosting becomes an appealing option at this point because it’s likely that if I haven’t yet figured out how to tolerate feelings of vulnerability in intimate relationships, I also haven’t developed the ability to call you up and say, “Look, I know this isn’t going to make a lot of sense to you, but I can’t see you anymore. I felt so connected and open with you the other night and it felt so good that I forgot to keep my walls up. I don’t want to be hurt and I don’t know how to keep myself safe when I’m around you, so we can’t see each other anymore.”
Ghosting is excruciating for the one who’s been ghosted. But it’s also heartbreaking for the ghoster — the one who longs for closeness and connection and yet is so afraid of being hurt that they distance themselves from others again and again. The fear of intimacy is so deep-seated that it blocks any potential for a fulfilling intimate partnership.
When I work with individuals who are prone to ghosting in response to the vulnerability that’s stirred up by emotional closeness, the focus is on developing an inner sense of confidence that one can take the risk of being open and connected with another person and handle whatever outcome happens.
In other words, although we can never guarantee that we won’t be hurt in a romantic relationship, we can develop the skills to recover from being hurt, if that’s what happens.
So now let’s talk about ghosting after conflict. Just like intimacy, conflict in relationships feels threatening to many people. We’re never taught the skills for how to handle conflict in relationships, which leads people to either do conflict poorly or to try to avoid it altogether.
In addition to this, many of us grow up in homes where conflict was genuinely scary and unsafe. Individuals who grow up in homes where conflict is scary often end up having a trauma response to conflict in their adult relationships.
When such people encounter conflict, or even sense it looming in the horizon, they might freeze or freak out or run away. It just feels like too much to handle. And so they avoid conflict as much as possible, even if it means leaving the relationship.
When we’ve never seen any examples of what healthy conflict looks like, we might overlook the fact that conflict (when it’s done well) is actually an essential part of having a healthy relationship.
When we’ve only ever seen destructive conflict, we might put all our efforts into avoiding conflict altogether, which means that we never develop the skills for constructive conflict.
And because conflict is usually minimal during the honeymoon stage of a new relationship, we might even form the belief that it’s possible to have a long-term relationship that’s entirely without conflict. Then, when conflict does happen, we might assume that the problem is with the relationship itself, not with our faulty belief about relationships.
In this situation, if we don’t want to let go of the fantasy of a conflict-free relationship, then we’re likely to decide that it’s best to cut our losses with this particular relationship (in other words, we might ghost after conflict) and keep looking for that ideal relationship that will be perpetual smooth sailing.
I’m a firm proponent for learning how to engage in constructive conflict in relationships. But I don’t want to underestimate the amount of trauma-based fear that some individuals carry related to conflict. It’s very real.
When conflict triggers your past trauma, it takes a lot of emotional energy to willingly engage in it and try to work through issues until you come to a resolution. This is especially difficult if your self-protective response to conflict is to get away from it as quickly as possible.
Individuals who know that having healthy relationships requires working through their relationship trauma also know that they will need to invest time and attention in healing the past as well as developing the relationship skills that they missed out on. Not everyone is up for that kind of personal work.
Ghosting … and moving on … can seem like the preferred option, even if it means a never-ending series of superficial relationships that are never close enough to involve true intimacy or conflict.
Every person who ghosts in relationships is unique and they might give different explanations for why they’ve ghosted. In our experience, a pattern of ghosting in romantic relationships is often rooted in survival strategies left over from past hurt.
At its core, ghosting is a reaction based on closeness being associated with threat, danger, and pain.
It’s usually a behavior that’s not particularly well thought out or intentional. It’s an indication that one is lacking the skills to have open, honest conversations about what’s going on.
One question you didn’t ask is how to avoid being ghosted in the future. While there’s no way to guarantee that a partner won’t ghost you after intimacy or conflict, if you’ve been experiencing a pattern in which men ghost you, it’s possible that you might be drawn toward men who are emotionally avoidant, who aren’t capable of managing their own feelings of vulnerability in their relationships with you, and who have patterns of ghosting their past partners as well.
In the process of getting to know someone, you will often have the chance to discover if this potential partner is comfortable talking about their past relationships.
These kinds of conversations will often help you discern whether this potential partner is self-reflective and insightful about what’s gone wrong in previous relationships and how they’ve grown or changed as a result of their past relationship experiences.
If an individual isn’t willing to have these kinds of conversations or doesn’t seem to display any self-awareness, curiosity, or interest in their own past relationships and why things didn’t work out (or they blame everything on their former partners), these are generally indications that someone isn’t likely to be interested in engaging in deep intimacy or have the skills to maintain a long-term healthy, fulfilling relationship.
And on that note, I am wishing you future romantic encounters with those who are able to tolerate the vulnerability of connection and the risk of being hurt in a relationship with you, with people who are able to have the difficult conversations with you when needed …and if things aren’t working out, to tell you directly.
~Angela
Ask Angela is an advice column dedicated to the topic of having fulfilling relationships after trauma. Click HERE to submit a question for Angela.
DISCLAIMER: this content is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute professional medical or psychological advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other licensed health care provider with any questions or concerns you may have regarding a medical condition.
about angela Amias, LCSW
Angela Amias, LCSW is a relationship therapist and nationally-recognized expert on trauma and relationships. She’s the co-founder of Alchemy of Love, which provides trauma-informed relationship programs and resources. She’s also the founder of the Institute for Trauma Informed Relationships, which provides training and education to therapists and coaches who want to help their clients heal past wounds and create more fulfilling relationships.
As an expert on trauma and relationships, Angela has been featured in numerous publications, including Today, Oprah, Cosmopolitan, The Independent, Well + Good, Inc., Forbes, Business Insider, Salon, MSN, Women’s Health and the Toronto Sun.
