Have you ever been a victim of the most painful kind of ghosting . . . where you’re haunted by the fact that you never got closure with someone?

In today’s brand-new video, I give you the tools you need to move on for good from this kind of ghosting, including a text message you can send . . . not to get closure from them but to give yourself the closure you need.

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Matthew:

So we recently did an episode on the podcast, the Love.Life. podcast for those of you who don’t listen already, Jameson, let’s throw something up so people can find the podcast.

Jameson:

There’s nothing to throw up, just search Love Life podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Matthew:

There was an episode we did episode 181, the title of which was “How to Deal with the Pain of Not Getting Closure.” And there was someone who emailed a reply to this podcast. She said, “Hi all, I just wanted to say that I really did enjoy your last podcast. I adore all of you guys. The banter you have is awesome. And I do agree with everything you said. However, I have a feeling you missed out on one reason why it is so important to get closure. I am now actually trying to deal with that pain of not getting closure. But the reason why I want to get closure, and I believe I wouldn’t be alone in this, is not necessarily to get any constructive criticism that I can improve, it’s neither because I can’t help but scratch the wound.

Why I need it is because this guy simply ghosted me out of nowhere. He reads my Facebook texts but stopped responding to them. We only met two months ago and have already been through some misunderstandings. But we didn’t recently argue or anything. So now I find myself left with this uncertainty over whether it’s only temporary, like he’s just struggling and needs to think about our situationship. Or we’re done for good. I simply want to get out of this limbo, get this level of certainty to close that chapter and move on. Thank you and can’t wait for the next episode.”

Well, and I’m going to call this person . . . Name?

Jameson:

Oprah.

Audrey:

Deborah.

Jameson:

Maybe let’s just go with Deborah.

Matthew:

I’m going to go with Deborah. It’s funny because whenever I read a message like this, I read certain contradictions. On one hand, Deborah says, “I’m not simply thinking about this to scratch a wound. I’m just trying to get certainty.” But then when I hear this person say, “I’m struggling because I have this uncertainty,” are they just struggling with the situationship and thinking about it and they don’t know what to say. Or is it actually over? That kind of rumination is a way of scratching the wound. It’s a way of continuing to invest in the situation.

Now, let’s rewind for a moment because ghosting itself is incredibly painful. It’s incredibly painful because it can make us feel worthless. It can make us feel like we’re not even worthy of an explanation. We’re not even worthy of someone messaging us back when we’ve reached out to them. And I think it’s worth stating that there are different versions of ghosting. There’s the version of ghosting where we reach out to someone we’ve been seeing and they don’t text us back. And then because we feel like that’s a massive rejection, we don’t reach out to them again. Now, that’s not to say that’s okay, but that’s a much more common version of ghosting than the version of ghosting where you reach out to someone, they don’t reach back out and then you decide to go back to them and say, “Hey, is everything okay? I haven’t heard from you.” When you reach back out with a message like that, if someone then ignores that ask for information then that, for me, is a much more severe form of ghosting. Neither are great, but the latter requires a very conscious ignorance of someone’s confusion.

Now, I don’t know if Deborah reached out again to get that clarity because that is one form of closure you can have. I actually think if you’re right now, anyone out there is in a situation where there is someone that has ghosted you. And you find yourself in the same place Deborah is, where you are confused, you don’t know what’s going on. Are they thinking about me? Did something happen to them? Are they just done with me? What is happening? A good step for yourself maybe to reach out to that person and to say, “Hey, I have been very confused by the fact that I haven’t heard from you. Is everything okay? It seems strange because we were consistently communicating and dating and now I haven’t heard from you at all.”

That to me seems to be a worthwhile message to send if for no other reason than once you’ve sent that you now can rest going, “Well, I asked for clarity.” And if they don’t text you back to that, or if they don’t come back to that at all with a phone call, then you know, oh, this is a person that is willfully dismissive of my confusion, of what can be causing me pain. And they’ve decided that the best course of action is literally just to ignore me.

If you are able to go on Instagram and see that they’re still living their life and that they’re not dead, then you have your answer about this person. That should be a moment where you actually can set them aside. That should be a moment where continuing to agonize over the situation and follow the thoughts of, “But what happened? Why did they suddenly ghost me? Why aren’t they getting back to me? What could I have done so wrong?” That is a form of rumination that is simply scratching the wound.

Our mind can, in situations like that, look for story, you see it in Deborah’s message, she’s looking for that story. Maybe is he struggling with our situationship? Is he thinking about it and there’s something holding him back? That’s attributing story to a situation that doesn’t need to be that complicated. Occam’s razor, the idea that the explanation that requires the least variables is the most likely explanation. In other words, the simplest explanation is the one you should go with.

In this case, the simplest explanation is that this person, for whatever reason, decided that they don’t want to continue, or that they’re not interested, or that they can’t give you what you want. And in that moment, instead of communicating with you about that, decided to take the easiest possible way out that had no regard for your feelings. That’s the simple explanation. It doesn’t need more thought than that.

When you’re going into that place of I must be worthless because how could someone do that to me? How could someone that I was having a great time with, or that it felt like there was some kind of important relationship building with, how could someone just drop off the face of the earth as far as I’m concerned and yet, they’re still here living their life? That unworthiness that we feel should actually start to dissolve when we realize that we’re dealing with a person whose opinion should be devalued in the first place because they’ve shown us that’s how they conduct themselves. That’s how they treat people.

I would go as far as to say, if this person really liked you, it still wouldn’t matter. They’d still be a terrible person to be with because if the person that’s capable of ghosting you like that really liked you, that would still be a trait they have. It would still be a way they react when they’re not interested. Do you see that? So even if you got your wish and this person really liked you and went after you in the way that you wanted them to, the likelihood is that would just blind you to this quality that they have when they’re not interested. That would still make them a terrible person for you to be with because that person is a very dangerous person to be with.

You don’t get loyalty with those people. You can’t build trust with those people. You don’t get consistency with those people. You certainly don’t get good treatment when that person sees you as no longer valuable to them. What you are really seeing in that moment is what does someone do when they’ve decided you’re no longer valuable to them, or when they don’t need you, or when something different comes along that arrests their attention? What happens to you? What happens to anyone? Forget you. What happens to anyone in a situation like that that’s in their life?

And that’s really good information, that’s important information to know. You almost have to remove the you from it because the I is the ego in it. How could they do this to me? How could we go from having the connection we had to suddenly, I am not even worthy of an explanation? The me in it, the I it that’s all the ego. But what we have to do is go, “Oh no, what this really is a representation of how this person treats people.” And that should be an incredible turnoff, should be seen as a dodged bullet. It should be seen as in itself a form of closure because I would never want to be with a person who is able to do this, or who’s in a stage of their life where they can’t see that this is really distasteful and bad behavior.

And I’m going to push back here, Deborah. And you sent me a message with love, I’m going to send you a message back with love, but it’s going to be a tough message. I think that your email to me was a bit of a cop-out. I think it was your way of giving yourself a license to keep thinking about this person that doesn’t deserve for you to keep thinking about them. When you start to entertain, but could it be this, and could it be that? I just don’t know. I’m so confused. Matt, it’s really hard when you just don’t get an explanation. And when you’re so confused, then you can’t let go. Yes, you can. You don’t need to be coming up with all of those explanations.

The righteous explanation we give someone, which you alluded to in your email, the one where we say, but maybe they’re really confused that’s a way of packaging that person in a more positive way than the behavior they’ve given you suggests. And the reason your mind packages them in a more positive way is because then you can hold onto them. Then, you can actually keep thinking about it. You can keep ruminating. It introduces doubt, it introduces hope, it introduces uncertainty. And all of the confusion that keeps you trying to work out a riddle that has already been solved.

What is the best use of your time and your precious life? We are here for a very short period of time and one of the decisions that we have to make during this life of ours is who do we want to spend time with, and who do we want to give our energy to? It’s absolutely one of the most important decisions we can possibly make. It might be the most important decision we can possibly make. Are we going to spend our lives around positive people, or negative people? Do we want to be around people who are great teammates, or people who let us down constantly?

Life is full of these decisions about who to spend our time with and who to give our energy to. And this right here is an example of someone who I would argue is a really poor use of your life. This life, you have this bar and it’s not very long, it’s not very big. And every hour of it is precious. So who are you choosing to give your time to? Deborah, you said you had a two-month relationship, two months. And you said there was some misunderstandings along the way. Who knows if it was even a relationship from what you’ve said. But there was someone that was on your radar for two months. And then, they ghosted you and now they’re still on your radar in a big way. Enough for you to email me about this person because you’re in pain and the confusion of it.

This, to me, is not someone that’s worth your life. But you’re making them worthy of it. And the more we go down the rabbit holes of discussing these people, and having conversations about what their intentions are, and what did they really mean when they ghosted us and what are they thinking right now, the more we’re just invest . . . It’s a form of investment. Do you understand that? It’s a form of investment in that person. When we invest and invest and invest like that psychologically we care about it more. But this is one story. And it’s a story that’s not even interesting. Life offers you so many different stories with so many different people. There are more stories available to you to begin in this next chapter of your life than you possibly have time for.

It’s one of the great tragedies of life. There are so many stories you can engage in. There’s a story where you move to India and you live out this whole adventure, doing something you’ve never done before there. There’s a story where you begin a new business. There’s a story where you go and meet the great love of your life in a different city. There’s a story where you have an amazing friendship. There’s a story where you have four more amazing relationships in your life. There are so many stories you could be living, the real tragedy is when we are continuing to play out this story that’s not interesting that has finished, by the way, there’s your closure. It finished. We made a video recently on the nine confusing things men say and what they really mean. Well, of all the confusing things men say, ghosting isn’t one of them. Ghosting is pretty obvious. It’s pretty direct, it’s pretty clear-cut. Our job is to give ourselves the closure so that we can go and live one of those other interesting stories.

The reason I say that what you said is a cop-out is because you’ve made this person responsible for your ability to move on. You’ve given them that power, I can’t move on until I get some kind of explanation and figure this out. Life isn’t that simple. We don’t always get the closure that we want. In fact, a lot of life doesn’t give us the closure that we want. How many people out there watching this video have a parent, nevermind a parent that died that they never felt they got closure from? How many people watching this video have a parent who’s still alive that they get no closure from? A parent, that they don’t feel seen by? A parent that will never truly understand them? Or they’ll never have that great turnaround that you always wished they would have? How many people watching this video will never get that closure? Life is like that.

There are so many situations that don’t have a happy ending where we don’t get to have closure, not in the form that we’re seeking it. The closure is the closure we give ourselves where we say, “Ah, my happiness does not reside here. My closure is reinventing my happiness somewhere where it’s actually possible. My closure is beginning a new path and saying, ‘Oh, the way that parent treated me, or the way that person was in my life, I never want to be like that.’ The closure I’m going to give myself is being better than what I see over here. The closure may be that I get to treat people better than I’ve been treated.”

One of the greatest ways to be unhappy in life, one of the easiest ways to be unhappy in life is to look for closure where closure will not be found. And you’re stalling Deborah, and you’re waiting for this person to give you closure that you’re going to have to give yourself. And, by the way, you’re going to have to give it to yourself in many other ways in life yet. This is not the last time you’re going to have to give yourself closure. But you’re stalling and waiting for it is a way to be really unhappy. And it’s a way to just run out the clock on your own life. And there are no prizes for that waiting. No one waits at the end of your life with a medal that says, “Look how long you held out waiting for closure. You get the medal for being the most resilient day, after day, after day holding out for that closure.” There is no trophy for that later on, there’s only how much you lived.

Your job is now to go and live to set whatever energy you were going to use to put into this, use that energy to actually go out there and live. And that starts by having a different standard to the kind of person that right now you’re looking for closure from. And you may say, “I already do have a higher standard. I would never do that to someone.” So in that sense you do. But you also have to have a standard for whose opinions you’re looking for in life. You have to have a standard for who you listen to. A standard for who you give time to. And right now you’re not having a standard for that.

You’re choosing to give time to someone who’s giving no time to you. Give energy to someone who’s giving no energy to you. And try to figure out what the opinions are and what the story is of someone whose opinion shouldn’t be valued that highly in the first place based on their actions, which aren’t suggestive of someone who you’d want to model in your life.

Thank you so much for watching. Leave me a comment, let me know what you thought of this. Let me know if it helped you with a particular person in your life right now that you’ve been holding onto and seeking closure from when you shouldn’t. Be it a romantic person, a family member, a friend, or anyone in your life. I’d love to hear from you. How has this helped you with the closure in your life, and how has this video affected you?

Did you know, before you go, that I’ve been doing this for 15 years now? And over those 15 years, I’ve created an entire buffet of programs that are designed to help you with whatever stage of dating and relationships you’re at. And did you further know that there is a place you can go to get the best one recommended for you based on what you are going through right now? If you go to YourDatingSolution.com, you can tell this tool on my website what your particular challenge is, and it will recommend you the best solution from the suite of solutions that I’ve created over my entire adult life so far. Go check it out at YourDatingSolution.com. And I’ll see you next time.