Two Toxic Ways to Terminate a Relationship

A recent study published in the academic journal Cyberpsychology examines two relationship termination strategies, ghosting and orbiting, that have emerged from the world of online dating.

Ghosting and Orbiting

To better understand the psychological effects of these unsavory dating tactics, the researchers recruited 176 adults between the ages of 18 and 36 to take part in an online survey. In the survey, the researchers asked participants to recall a time they were either ghosted, orbited, or rejected. They read the following definitions:

· Ghosting is a practice in which one person decides to quit a romantic relationship or friendship without an explanation and ignoring any communication attempts from the other person.

· Orbiting occurs when one person decides to quit a relationship without explanation but still follows the former partner’s social networking activities and occasionally reacts to his/her multimedia contents (e.g., liking posts).

· Rejection is a practice in which the disengager directly communicates the decision to quit the romantic or friendship relationship and provides explicit explanations.

The authors found that while all three of the breakup strategies stirred up rejection-related emotions in participants, ghosting, followed by orbiting, caused the most psychological harm.

“We found that feelings of exclusion were stronger for ghosted than rejected participants,” say the authors. “This result suggests that ghosting represents a more threatening exclusionary experience. Concerning orbiting, victims’ level of exclusion was in between those felt by ghostees and rejected individuals.”

Ambiguous Signals

According to the researchers, orbiting may be less severe than ghosting due to the ambiguous signals sent by an orbiter. Orbitees may think that the orbiter is still interested in them or wants to come back. This sporadic attention, however, can be counterproductive as it potentially inhibits orbitees from closing the relationship and moving on. Moreover, ghosting was perceived by participants as more unexpected and unfair than rejection.

“Not every breakup strategy hurts the same way,” conclude the researchers. “Compared to rejection, ghosting generally leads to worse outcomes.”

Read the full article here

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