When I first came across the term ‘micro-ghosting’ online, I rolled my eyes. What does that even mean? Either you’ve been ghosted or you haven’t: surely you can’t be ghosted a little bit? But after a quick online search, I learned that micro-ghosting really is A Thing.

Micro-ghosting, if you’re unfamiliar, is defined as ghosting that happens periodically. Micro-ghosting behaviour may include taking a long time to reply to messages, being unreachable for days or weeks, and then finally reappearing. Micro-ghosters will usually be evasive about why they dropped off the face of the earth too, often picking up the conversation where they left it without offering any explanation for their radio silence.

In defence of ‘micro-ghosters’, given that we are living increasingly online lives, taking some time to reply to messages rather than instantly responding can often be understood as a establishment of healthy boundaries, pushing back against the expectation that we remain online and reachable at all times. But while it might be fair to leave your long-term bestie on read for a few days (and vice versa), things are different when you’re being inconsistent with someone you’ve been on a couple of dates with who doesn’t know you as well.

22-year-old Alice Cameron once connected with a performer she met on a cruise ship. There was an instant attraction, so the pair exchanged numbers and continued to speak once she returned to the UK. Despite him working on a cruise ship, the communication between them was intense, explicitly romantic and flirtatious, with the pair speaking almost daily for hours – on one occasion, they FaceTimed for eight hours. The lengthy conversations and intense contact made Cameron feel as though the blossoming connection between them was progressing towards a relationship, until she began to notice a gradual ebb in communication.

“Things would go well for two weeks and then he’d go completely off radar for three to four days,” she explains. When he reappeared, he would act as though nothing had happened. “Each time, the no-contact length would get longer. It started as a few days of not responding, then it became a week of not responding, before it got to a point where he went two months without responding.” He leant on his work situation of being on a cruise ship as the reason why he would drop in and out of communication, but this didn’t ring true for Cameron (what cruise ship doesn’t have WiFi?).

She eventually met up with him in London after five months of on-and-off contact, believing that they would work on progressing the relationship. But even though their date was a success, he continued to be evasive. “Two days before meeting up he was telling me how he couldn’t wait to see me, and saying things like, ‘you’re definitely the one for me’, ‘I can see a future for us’, ‘when I met you, I couldn't stop thinking about you’. Then afterwards he told me that he was confused and wasn’t fully sure where his head was at.” The back-and-forth dynamic left Cameron confused and doubting herself, wondering whether she had said or done something to offend him. “Eventually I started thinking that I was saying something wrong,” she says. “My friends told me I was being ridiculous, that they had heard me on the phone, and I hadn’t said the things I started to think I must have said.”

So much of our generation treats communication as a game: you can’t text back too fast, you can’t look too keen, you can’t show too much interest. It’s become normalised to be unresponsive

NHS therapist Rosie Jenna explains that micro-ghosting can perpetuate self-doubt and low self-esteem. “Having someone gain your trust, build up your hopes and desires, then having those things continually taken away and the reimplemented can tap into the core values of those who are more vulnerable, triggering thoughts such as, ‘I’m not good enough for a stable relationship’ or ‘I’m not good enough for this person’ or, ‘maybe they don’t see me as a stable partner, maybe this is all that I deserve’,” she explains. “People don’t appreciate that while micro-ghosting is taking place, there is a psychological context present. Micro-ghosting can have a hugely negative impact for some, stirring up quite uncomfortable thoughts and feelings.”

Ashleigh Cunningham, 29, has been on the receiving end of micro-ghosting more than once. On one occasion, she met a guy at work, who began making plans to see her over the weekend, only to ghost her when the day came around. But when they next spoke, he acted as if nothing had happened. “I started to think, oh, did I misread or misunderstand or something? Looking back on the messages, he had plausible deniability because he didn’t make concrete plans.”

It’s this murky grey area of non-commitment between ‘seeing someone’ and being in an exclusive relationship with them where micro-ghosting thrives like fungus. Cunningham was micro-ghosted a second time by someone she dated for five months. “When we started speaking, it was very intense, very quickly.” They had weeks where things were going great, followed by a week of practically no contact at all. Again, mixed signals and ambiguity around the relationship status concurrently caused confusion but then reignited her hope. “He wasn’t officially my boyfriend, but he was doing things like cleaning my room and buying candles for it.”

Evidently, the internet’s role in modern dating has added extra layers of complexity to the business of finding love. “Although the internet was seen as a way to connect – the idea of social media to encourage being social – in many ways it has driven us further apart,” Jenna explains. “This is because being online makes it easier to not have personal or meaningful interactions with people because you're not actually seeing them and therefore not seeing the consequences of your interaction and behaviour once you put down your phone or log off an app.” 

Jenna explains that instant messaging over the internet can make people less likely to invest in the person they are speaking to, because there is a reduced sense of emotional responsibility towards the other person. Cameron agrees. “So much of our generation treats communication as a game: you can’t text back too fast, you can’t look too keen, you can’t show too much interest,” she says. “It’s become normalised to be unresponsive.”

When it comes to dating, the level of emotional investment required dictates a certain etiquette when it comes to the mode and manner of communication. Sure: there are times when not replying to a message or email is a reasonable response to somebody else’s unreasonable expectation that you must be contactable at all times. But allowing someone to be vulnerable and encouraging them to invest their time, emotional energy and hope into you, only to blow hot-and-cold with them? That isn’t reasonable at all.