The (Underlying) Sweetness of Ghosting

After moving from Brooklyn to the Hudson Valley, I intended to keep my dating radius relegated to the city. But Hinge’s algorithms served me up Brendan, who owned a farm 15 minutes away. A former Brooklyn-nite himself, he’d left it all behind to build the regenerative agriculture engine of his dreams, complete with a red barn, tractor, chickens, cows, pigs, turkeys and two darling mutts. Cue my fantasy rom-com.

I reached out and we set a date — a tour of the farm — for the next day.

From that Sunday on I kept my rubber Hunter rain boots in the back of my car, a pile of hay and dirt forming beneath them. We went out for burgers, made a trip to the local state fair and watched remakes of old Nickelodeon shows. We reminisced about summer Dave Matthews’ concerts, lamented over Trump’s latest blunder, and showed our previous relationship cards. But my favorite time together was watching Brendan carry buckets of feed, navigate the 4x4 through the tall fields of grass, and address his pigs as “ladies” each time we visited them.

I was hungry for Brendan. His demeanor, his build, his way with his dog. His sweet nature and dry humor was like a balm after enduring a decade of life changes that had been packed into 12 months: A move! A career change! A breakup! Here was a guy who had endured many of the same things, and yet still managed to oversee 200 acres of land and nearly the same amount of livestock.

But a few weeks into seeing one another, something felt off. Conversation had gone from flowing to somewhat stilted. I felt that perhaps I was more attracted to him than he was to me. Nothing specific had gone wrong. I was having that vague, nebulous feeling I sometimes get when I’m a few weeks in and the place I thought the train was headed is replaced with disorientation. I had no idea where the train was headed now, but I had a strong hunch it was not toward long-term partnership.

On what would turn out to be our last date, I brought up my confusion. I told him I wasn’t sure how to say what I wanted to say and fumbled my words. But I pushed through to vulnerability, telling him that I wanted to hold his hand and kiss him more, and got the sense that he didn’t want the same. That I didn’t know what we were doing and it didn’t feel great.

Brendan wrapped his arms around me, assuring me he really, really wanted those things. He reiterated how he’d been feeling flat the last few weeks (he was, in fact, dealing with a virus) and that was the reason behind his behavior — not me or us. I leaned into him and pressed my head to his chest, and in so many words said “Ok, but know I’m not fishing for compliments here. I’m seeking a relationship and if that’s not where you’re at, I think we should deal with that.”

Brendan pulled me even closer with an emphatic “I want that, too.” We cuddled a bit longer on his front porch while his dog dug around in the bushes, then I got up to head home. He hugged and kissed me goodbye, then gave my butt a squeeze. I got in my car and drove the 15 minutes back to my town.

36 hours later I shot him a text:

It’s such a beautiful day. The animals must be so happy.

Two hours turned to 10 hours turned to two days, and there we were. Actually we were no longer a we at all.

In her latest memoir, Inheritance, Dani Shapiro tells the story of discovering who she thought was her biological father is not, in fact, her biological father. It was a shocking discovery to her, and yet when she went through her nine previous books, most of which were memoirs, it was all there. The stories, the characters, the plot lines. Somewhere buried deep within the folds of her subconscious, she always knew something was off.

In her work she references the psychoanalytic term, “the unthought known” — what we know but cannot allow ourselves to think.

My unthought known was: Clara, you have fallen more for this farm than you have for this person.

Perhaps Brendan’s unthought known was: I like you. A lot. But this isn’t it.

In technical terms, Brendan had ghosted. But when I looked beyond the ghosting — beyond the feeling of rejection — what remained wasn’t a fear of a lost opportunity, but a sadness. A sadness over what we had not been able to say to one another.

There is no greater prison, to my mind, than the inability to honestly express what one feels. And yet so few of us can bring ourselves to do so, especially when we like someone.

The act of ghosting still hurt, but the worry that I’d done or said something wrong to push him away, a worry that used to eat me alive — that was the true pain of ghosting — didn’t even occur to me.

Instead, my mind wove a story that Brendan had consciously meant what he said but not subconsciously. That his caring nature had proven to be a double-edged sword: He wanted to comfort me, to make me feel better in the moment, even if he couldn’t commit to his words.

A few weeks later, I considered sharing these thoughts with Brendan. I was standing in my kitchen recounting the whole romance to a group of pajama-clad house guests when my eyes fixated on my couch. I was transported back to the second to last date, when Brendan and I had sat on that couch after dinner and he’d said “Yeah, I really like you,” simultaneously nodding his head, as if it was something he had to confess, or will himself to believe.

Maybe I was mostly hot for the farm, but it was also Brendan’s way of being. I rarely came across a guy who lived in such alignment with his own definition of a meaningful life. I couldn’t fathom that same person verbally committing to feelings they didn’t actually feel. I longed to know what he actually felt. To reach out and say, “What was that?”

I also wanted him to know it was ok. That I wanted him to say whatever thing he couldn’t bring himself to say that ultimately caused him to slip out the digital back door. But since I’d deleted his contact information from my phone I’d have to either ask it in an Instagram DM or write a letter , neither of which felt right.

A few weeks later, having abandoned the idea of contacting Brendan, I woke to a message from another guy I’d been texting with for nearly two months. It read: “I can’t help but notice the irony of a dating coach who ghosts.”

He was right. I had ghosted. After two cancelled dates I’d started to feel anxious. Back in 2015, I’d matched with a guy on Bumble who I’d messaged with for weeks, but every time we got within 24 hours of a plan to meet up, he cancelled. He’d always circle back, text again, leave an Instagram comment, but never lock down a date. This situation felt eerily reminiscent.

His third attempt to meet up fell smack dab in the middle of my race to finish my book proposal and a two-week period of feeling pretty down on life. I couldn’t stomach writing:

Hey! I’ve actually been feeling super shitty lately for no specific reason…just a mini-existential crisis of sorts …so could we hold off on that third attempt to reschedule our first date? Thanks :)

So I didn’t say anything at all.

When this guy called me out, I immediately thought of Brendan and the story I’d crafted about his emotional state. I laughed silently at myself.

My desire to press Brendan on why he ghosted no longer felt so saintly. My desire to write to him, in whatever form it took, wasn’t about helping him. It wasn’t really about giving him the space or permission to say what he really felt, with no repercussions of hurting my feelings. It was about me. I wanted a reason, an explanation, an answer to my why. But did I have a right to it?

Brendan was the first person who had ghosted me in over two years, and ironically (or not so ironically), James, my digital beau, was the first person I’d ghosted in over two years.

I’d ghosted because saying something dishonest seemed worse than saying nothing at all. But mostly because the real truth felt too intimate to share with someone I’d never even had a face-to-face encounter with.

The other week as I was leaving the gym, I spotted Brendan’s pickup truck in the parking lot. We hadn’t crossed paths inside. I briefly entertained going back in and doing more ab work to create a run in. Instead I opted for a slow drive by, imagining the stray dog hairs and bits of hay stuck to the upholstery of his car. I was no longer so preoccupied with the why. Maybe I never was. Maybe it was always that I just missed him.