I think it is very difficult to say what is reasonable unless you’re able to observe the situation on both sides. I got to 54 years of age never knowingly being ghosted or being the ghoster. But now I have ghosted someone who was a good friend who I saw once a week for coffee and who I really liked. We were close and she knew my parents who lived a couple of roads away from her (relevant). I expect she doesn’t know what my problem is. So perhaps you might form a negative opinion of me from a ghosting perspective.
I don’t want to be long-winded (but this will be - sorry!). I’m just giving an example of a ghoster’s side of a story. I really never thought it was something I’d do. It’s now in the past and I don’t think about it much and our paths don’t cross as she moved a few miles away last year. Here goes - sorry it’s long.
During the second lockdown my DM finally succumbed to the cancer that had been diagnosed as terminal just as the first lockdown started. Anyone who had the experience of losing a loved one at that time will understand the extra elements that made a hard situation more difficult. My friend was aware that my DM was dying as she knew about it as we went into lockdown. The day before lockdown started she was with me when my DM had a heart attack after recent chemo and was blue-lighted to a hospital we couldn’t by that stage accompany her to. When my friend left my house that day I didn’t know if my DM had survived and I realised later that my friend never asked whether my DM was still alive.
She messaged me twice that year asking for some information but never asked how my DM was or how we were. Fair enough, communications were strange and people were preoccupied with other things. I was also busy trying to deal with it all but it was odd that she never said a thing and then stopped communicating. When my DM died in April 2021 it was public and well known with obituaries in the media but I never heard from my friend, not even a text. I was still preoccupied with it all but I guess I did feel hurt that such a monumental thing in my life wasn’t worthy of a mention by someone I thought was a good friend, especially as I knew she was aware.
Then a few months after my DM died I bumped into her in the supermarket and she said, ‘how was your lockdown? I loved it!!’. I said, ‘not great really as my mum died, I don’t know if you heard?’ She said, ‘oh yeah I heard about that from someone, can’t remember who. You must be relived she didn’t die of Covid. I can’t remember who told me she’d died, what am I like??!’, all said with a laugh as if she’d forgotten something trivial. I was already struggling and to be honest it hurt that she was so dismissive. I sat in the car in Tesco car park and cried.
That chance meeting kicked off renewed whatsapping from her, mainly when she wanted a favour. I just felt so hurt by the silence through all those traumatic months when I could have done with some communication, or a response to my messages. I didn’t respond to her texts in an act of self-preservation and because I didn’t have the bandwidth to explain. It was easier to get on with life and stick with supportive friends and not have to face her going on about how much she loved the peace of lockdown. After a while I found it easy to ignore her sporadic requests to meet up. What would be the point of explaining to her? I guess that makes me a ghoster.