Ghosting is brutal enough - having someone abruptly disappear from your life without explanation or closure. But a new equally-haunting phenomenon has been spooking daters everywhere: trickle ghosting. And trust, the slow burn execution stings just as much.
What is Trickle Ghosting?
Trickle ghosting refers to the insidious practice of gradually phasing out communication and contact with someone you're dating, rather than ripping off the band-aid all at once. It's the torturously drawn-out version of ghosting.
Instead of disappearing into a cloud of smoke overnight, the trickle ghoster puts their replies and presence on an annoyingly slow leak. Their responses get increasingly spread out over days or weeks, slowly draining the momentum from your burgeoning connection until things flatline completely.
What is Ghosting?
More abrupt and total, ghosting is what happens when someone you've been dating or talking to simply goes radio silent out of nowhere. No "it's not working out" text, no closure-granting conversation, nada. They disappear like a spectre into thin air.
It's the cowardly dating move of ducking out on someone by cutting off all communication without a shred of responsibility or decency. No call, no text, no explanation - just someone who was very much there one day now culpably vanished the next.
The Difference Between Ghosting and Trickle Ghosting
While regular ghosting can be pretty jarring and leave you with unanswered questions around that total vanishing act, trickle ghosting almost feels more insidiously cruel in how drawn-out and ambiguous it lets the breakup drag out. The slow leak can fuel false hope that things can be resuscitated.
Whereas ghosting gives you a harsh Band-Aid ripping sensation of being abruptly dropped, trickle ghosting sees you both slowly watch the momentum drain from a once-lively rapport until theategoes dry. Trickle ghosters get to ease themselves out over an extended time period while you're left twisting in those winds.
Both suck in their own sadistic ways. But while ghosting leaves the relationship deader quicker, trickle ghosting often draws out the demise by depressingly slow leaks and dehydrating mixed signals.
In an ideal world, neither would exist - because one partner would always be brave enough to have an honest conversation about their feelings and doubts long before the hauntings began.
Why Does Ghosting and Trickle Ghosting Happen?
Possible Motivations for Ghosting
1. Fear of Commitment/Confrontation
Many ghosters struggle with an overwhelming fear of intimacy and commitment. Even if they enjoyed the initial sparks and honeymoon period, the prospect of being vulnerable and working through inevitable relationship challenges triggers panic.
Having an open discussion about doubts or dwindling feelings feels excruciatingly difficult. So rather than voice their reservations directly, ghosting gives them an escape hatch to simply disappear without any messy conversations. Disappearing from someone's life entirely requires less confrontation.
2. Lack of Emotional Maturity
Some people who ghost are lacking fundamental emotional intelligence and coping skills to handle complicated interpersonal situations. They haven't developed the tools to communicate through hard things or take accountability.
Ending a relationship through respectful conversation requires empathy, self-awareness, and confronting someone else's feelings - skills many emotionally immature people simply don't possess. Stonewalling is the easier out.
3. Unresolved Trauma/Baggage
In certain cases, deep-seated personal traumas or unhealthy relational patterns from past experiences can spark the ghoster's avoidant behavior - even if their current motivations feel confusing or subconscious.
For example, someone who experienced deep abandonment wounds in childhood may instinctively recreate that dynamic by bolting first as an act of self-preservation. Ghost mode becomes an automatic fear response rooted in psychological projections and unhealed emotional wiring.
The Psychology of Trickle Ghosting
1. Fear of Being Alone/Keeping Options Open
Trickle ghosters often have a core fear of being alone and existential dread around closing doors entirely. So they take the cowardly half-measure of allowing the momentum in one connection to fizzle out, while still leaving a faint line lingering to avoid total void.
Essentially, they choose to keep that prospect on a lukewarm, perpetual back-burner rather than flat-out letting them go. The lack of a hard shut-off preserves a scrap of convenience and false hope to cling to whenever their other dating options seem unexciting or dry up.
1. Avoiding Accountability
Similar to ghosting, trickle ghosters often want to skirt the discomfort of admitting their waning investment through open dialogue. But instead of disappearing completely, they take a more passively tormenting approach.
By starving the connection of energy, consistency, and enthusiasm over time, they can inspire their conversation partner to eventually self-reject and shoulder the blame for walking away first. It's an avoidant attempt to induce the other person to do the emotional heavy lifting and "ghost" themselves.
2. Enjoyment of Pursuit
Some trickle ghosters harbor a deep-seated fear around anything feeling too complacent or comfortable. The gradual fading keeps their flame of pursuit temporarily lit so they can selfishly milk that chase for their own ego.
Even if the connection had built amazing early rapport, they'll often sabotage and create hot/cold dynamics just to experience the adrenaline rush of having topersuade back someone whose enthusiasm they've actively dampened. It's attention-craving through confusing mixed signals.
No matter the particular neurosis driving these avoidant behaviors, the core commonality is an inability to take responsibility and be direct about their shifting needs or intentions. Both tactics represent a breakdown in emotional courage and maturity when it comes to letting someone down with empathy and care.
Impact of Ghosting and Trickle Ghosting
In today's dating landscape, ghosting and trickle ghosting have become all too common unfortunate norms. Ghosting refers to the abrupt cessation of all communication and contact with someone without explanation or warning. Trickle ghosting is the even crueler sibling - where someone continues sporadic and insincere communication just enough to string the other person along without any intention of following through.
Both ghosting techniques are the ultimate act of avoidance and emotional cowardice. They deprive the other person of closure, decency, and basic human respect. The psychological impacts of being ghosted can be emotionally devastating:
1. Feelings of Rejection and Abandonment
Being ghosted sends the clear message: You aren't worthy of basic courtesies or an explanation. This can reopen deep wounds around past rejections and abandonments, shattering self-worth. Even if the relationship was short-lived, the abruptness can feel cruel.
2. Endless Self-Doubt and Questioning
With no communication or closure, the person is left obsessively questioning what they might have done "wrong" to prompt suddenly being dumped by ghosting. The lack of resolution can create pervasive self-doubt, shame, and overthinking every interaction and personal flaw.
3. Inability to Find Closure
Ghosting robs you of the ability to find true closure through understanding and communicating feelings. Being able to discuss why a relationship isn't working in an honest, respectful way is the healthy way to achieve closure. The ambiguity of ghosting leaves loose ends dangling indefinitely.
4. Breakdown of Trust
At its core, ghosting demonstrates a profound lack of integrity, empathy, and respect for the other person's humanity. This betrayal of trust can create lasting difficulty opening up vulnerably in future relationships out of fear of experiencing that again.
5. Lost Time Spent Ruminating
Ghosting situations tend to mentally consume people as they drive themselves crazy looking for possible explanations, rereading old texts for clues, or hoping the person will eventually re-emerge with answers. It keeps you trapped in the past rather than able to move forward.
While ghosting is never acceptable, sometimes the wisest course is to realize you'll likely never get the communicative closure and answers you desire from someone capable of such cowardice and disrespect. The most closure you can achieve is moving forward with the self-respect they couldn't give you.
How to Respond to Ghosting and Trickle Ghosting
Here's how to respond to ghosting and trickle ghosting:
Ghosting: Setting Boundaries and Moving On
When you've been abruptly and completely ghosted, the writing is on the wall that this person has zero respect for you or emotional maturity. As harsh as it feels in the moment, their cowardly vanishing act ultimately reveals they weren't someone who could offer you the open communication and care you deserve.
The healthiest response is to establish firm boundaries by blocking their number/socials and deleting any lingering contacts. This prevents a single-sided open door that allows them to haunt you again down the line. You shut it decisively.
Then focus on radically accepting the reality that this connection is over and preserving your self-worth. Grieve it if needed, but don't let being ghosted shake your belief that you are still worthy of love and decency. Their lack of courage has nothing to do with your value.
Trickle Ghosting: Addressing the Fade or Moving Forward
This fading act is a trickier situation - without total silence, there's always that glimmer of false hope that things can be revived or properly closed out.
You have two choices: Initiate one direct, honest conversation calling out the mixed signals and gauging if things are salvageable. If they can't match your energy and be straight about their waning investment, you have closure to walk away after giving it one last shot.
Or you can skip that step and simply start emotionally disengaging yourself from someone not showing up fully for the dynamic. Match their efforts, let conversations lapse, and reallocate your time/energy into connections where your presence feels genuinely appreciated.
While trickle ghosting may be a slower burn than outright ghosting, both reflect someone unwilling or unable to communicate with care and respect. Ghosting offers an abrupt, gutting end with no closure while trickle ghosting is the torturously long fade into oblivion.
Regardless of which action someone takes to neglect or avoid a relationship, the underlying truth is the same: they were never truly capable of showing up as an accountable partner. Grieve the false hope, but know that their unreliable confusion ultimately revealed their unworthiness for the genuine love you have to offer.
Never sacrifice YOUR communication standards or confidence just because someone else was too cowardly to meet them. Keep upholding your value through clear personal boundaries, and focus on attracting those who desire the same authentic vulnerability you do.
