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The universe has good news for the lost, lonely, and heart-sick. Sugar is here. The both of us. Speaking straight into your ears. I'm Cheryl Strayed. I'm Steve Allman. This is Dear Sugar Radio. Oh dear song, won't you please Share some little sweet days with me I check my bell vibes Oh and the sugar
Hi, Cheryl. Hi, Steve. Well, today we're going to talk about... Ghosting. Ghosting. You see, that was a little moment where I ghosted you. A little tiny. Did you catch it? I didn't feel ghosted. But, you know, it's interesting. This is a new word to many of us. Yes, it is. I think it...
I don't know. I didn't look it up in the thingamajig. But I would say I started hearing it maybe only about three or four years ago. Right. We're old. So probably it's been around since like the dawn of the new millennium. But for us, it was like, what is all this talk of ghosting? I teach undergraduates and they use this term now.
With a casualness that to me, again, with the old school heart, I'm like, really? You can just completely without any explanation abandon somebody who you've been to one extent or another intimate with?
Yeah, but I want to kind of complicate this idea of ghosting a little bit because I do think that there's a reason that this term has come about in the age of the internet and this time that we are all so easily and constantly connected via social media, texting. And I will say there are so many relationships, friendships, as well as romantic or sexual relationships that I had in my 20s
I guess technically I was ghosted, meaning I had a friend or a lover and we lived in different cities, so we would correspond via postcards or letters. And then, you know, eventually that faded away. Should we explain to our listeners what a postcard is? No, no, we're okay. And eventually that faded away. And it was like, oh, yeah, he or she never responded to that last letter. And it was, I guess, a kind of ghosting, but it didn't.
have the same impact that I think ghosting has on so many people today, where some people, if you send them a text and they don't text you back pretty immediately, they feel insulted or shut out. And I think that the internet has changed our perception of what people owe us. Well, I think what you're touching on is something crucial. That is,
We now have all these new technologies that means in one way or another, you're accessible. You don't just have a private self anymore. You've got a public self out there on the social media network platforms and by your phone, you're constantly basically carrying around a surveillance device. You think it's to watch the world, but it's also the world watching you. And I think internally, if you made a decision in a relationship, especially a kind of Tinder, you know, short-term relationship that you know wasn't right for you,
There's a kind of panic that sets in. And because you're now essentially trackable, the reaction to it is to completely retreat so that it's unequivocal that you want no further contact. I think it's deeply cowardly and evasive, but it's also a response to this modern anxiety about being accessible all the time. Then, of course, there is a different kind of ghosting. And that is you have a relationship with somebody, again, whether it be a friendship or a sexual relationship.
relationship and suddenly they disappear. And I have had this happen to me once where
It was a friend. And I still to this day, the ghosting happened about 10 years ago. And I'm still puzzled by it. Every time I think it through and tell the story, I come up at this dead end. I have absolutely no idea what happened. And here's what it was. A friend, I met this woman at a writer's conference. We were roommates and we were together for a couple of weeks. And we instantly bonded.
And we loved each other. I mean, we came to love each other. We stayed friends for another couple of years after our first meeting. And one day I was going to be in her city and
And we had talked the week before. We made a plan that I would call her when I got there. I was staying nearby and we were going to go to lunch or have drinks or something. And there was nothing out of the ordinary. We had a wonderful final exchange, what turned out to be a final exchange. And so the next week when I got to her city, I gave her a call and left a message. She didn't call me back.
I called her again, left a message. She didn't call me back. I sent her an email. And what was really interesting is the ghosting came about so unexpectedly that it never occurred to me that she was intentionally avoiding my calls or emails. Right. I went from thinking, oh, she's busy to...
to thinking, is there something wrong with her? I said, listen, I don't know what's happened, but I'm very worried. And I even went so far as to Google her to see if there was an obituary or, you know, because she was a new friend and we didn't live in the same city. I didn't have anyone else to call.
And finally, I wrote her one last letter, maybe about a year after this ghosting occurred. And I said, I'm still completely befuddled. And you don't have to be my friend. Clearly, you don't want to be. But will you just tell me what happened? Because it is a great mystery.
Absolutely. And it's interesting. It's that moment where is there something wrong with you pivots into is there something wrong with me? This is what ghosting does. And the reason I think even though it's kind of like one of those cool kid words, it feels resonant because it's not just that somebody disappears like a ghost. It's that they haunt you.
That's where we're going to take up this episode, and we're going to have some help from the wonderful writer Tim Kreider, who wrote this amazing book of essays, We Learn Nothing, that I babbled about before on the podcast, but specifically about an essay called The Anti-Kreider Club, which is a long and bruising searching exploration of being abandoned by a friend, a long-term friend. And one of the things he writes in that piece that you made me think of, this line, just as you were talking about your experience, he writes about how you walk around the
When you're ghosted by a friend, you walk around effectively heartbroken but afraid to admit it. It's a special open-ended kind of pain like having a disease with no name. Not only are you rejected, but you have to absorb the psychic mystery of why. Is this her? Is this me? How did it happen? And in fact, we also got letters from people in our inbox who are ghosters.
There was one brief letter. I won't read the whole thing, but a woman who was involved with the guy and wanted more from him than friends with benefits of relationship. And when she finally mustered the courage to ask him to say, you know, here's how much I care for you. Do you feel the same way? He hesitated and she bolted. And what she writes is it eats away at me that I was never honest with him about my feelings.
And to me, this episode is not just for ghosties. It's also for ghosters. And all of us have been ghosters. I've been a ghoster. And it is directly, I feel, the result of somebody who's too frightened of their own unbearable feelings. It's like the fight or flight version of intimacy. You just flight. So let's hear our first letter. Yeah.
Dear Sugars, last year I decided to date one of my good friends. We had been friends for years. I knew there was a chance that our relationship wouldn't work out and then our friendship would never be the same. After months of courtship, we decided to give it a try. A couple of months into the relationship, he told me he loved me. Shortly after, he began to distance himself from me. In response, I became needy and constantly asked him for reassurance.
He assured me that he was all in and that I made him happy. Then one day, without a warning, aside from my gut feeling, he disappeared from my life. We'd made plans to hang out with our friends that weekend, so at first I thought something bad happened to him. It didn't take long for me to realize he was okay. He was more than okay. He was seeing someone else. A mutual friend finally broke the news to me after days of agonizing. I was devastated.
He chose to end all communication with me and our mutual friends as though I'd been so awful he'd rather shut everyone out than spend one more day with me. This made me feel extremely insecure. It does to this day. I'd moved on and forgiven him, but in the back of my mind, I've always wondered why things ended the way they did. Why couldn't he tell me he wanted our relationship to end? Didn't he owe that to me after all our years of friendship? Why did he tell me he loved me and then walk away?
yesterday more than a year later i found a handwritten note from him on my front porch table he wrote that he was sorry for the way things ended between us that he thinks about me often and wants to meet with me to talk
I do want to hear what he has to say, but I'm worried that this will open a wound that I've worked so hard to heal. Also, I don't think there's anything he could say that could make me feel better or less humiliated. And even though I have forgiven him, I'm not sure that we can restore our friendship. Lastly, I don't understand his intent. Why now?
Does he want to smooth out the situation so he won't feel awkward around our mutual friends? Is he doing this so that he can sleep better at night? Or is he really, truly sorry that he hurt me? I knew him to be a womanizer. He loves and idolizes women until they become too real for him. But he promised it would be different with me. He promised never to hurt me, but he broke my heart and made me doubt myself in every possible way.
My question to you, Sugars, is, if I do meet with him to talk, what should I expect to get out of this conversation? Will it be helpful to me in any way to try to talk things over? Could we mend our friendship, or should I leave things as they are, sincerely dealing with a ghost? Wow. Yeah. I think this letter is such a great one to begin this discussion on because it's
dealing with a ghost, you write about so many of the feelings I think many people who've been ghosted have. And the first one is that you, in some fashion, blamed yourself. You said, as though I'd been so awful, he'd rather shut everyone out than spend one more day with me. And I just want to say to you, you probably figured this out in your own year of healing, dealing with a ghost, but it wasn't you. The reason he shut you out is he is so ashamed of
of his behavior. And so he can't bear to see you. And he also can't bear to see your mutual friends because he knows what he's done is wrong. It really, really has nothing to do with you, even though it feels personally painful and humiliating. And so I hope in your journey over this past year, you say you have forgiven him and you have healed, that you've let yourself out of that equation. It's not on you. Yeah, I actually see this as like first degree ghosting. This was not just he panicked. This is a pattern of
And people are destructive because inside something in them is destroyed. Some capacity for empathy, for decency, for allowing themselves to not feel the whip of guilt. And, you know, this guy, some part of him must feel despicable, not just about what he's done to you, but about the fact that he was known as a risk. He convinced you that he was going to be different. He's a deeply manipulative person and I would say really toxic. And I don't say that because...
I'm trying to dismiss the possibility that maybe you would feel some sense of relief in talking with him. But honestly, I don't think you talk to this guy at all. Yeah, I think...
For me, the rule is, you know, when I do decide to allow a toxic person like temporarily back into my life for the course of one conversation, for example, I have to go in feeling really clear about the reasons I'm doing it. And the reason has to be that I'm going to get something from it.
that I have something to say. Otherwise, you know, I really don't think that this conversation is worth having dealing with the ghost. I mean, what more can he tell you? He's already said he's sorry. He wrote you the letter, right? He said he's sorry for the way things ended. Okay, that's something.
But one way that, you know, if he can make amends really to you and all the other women he hurt is to stop behaving that way with the next woman. But you don't have to be her. You don't have to be his test, his test case. And, you know, people who really take responsibility for past bad behavior know that.
Part of genuinely making amends to people you've harmed in the past is not asking you to put yourself in harm's way again. It's respecting that boundary where you say, you know what? I appreciate your apology. I wish you the best. And I don't want to talk to you. I think that being very clear and setting a boundary with somebody who so deeply violated your boundaries dealing with a ghost is going to be the best path for you. Yeah, it's interesting because...
I think with ghosting, we can say that if you break up with somebody and you're honest with them, maybe not immediately, but eventually honest with them before the relationship ends and you say,
It's some combination of things, but for me, I can't be in this relationship any longer. I know that hurts, but I've got to tell you that face-to-face and give you some accounting of it. That still hurts, and it still sucks, but at least that person was up front with you. When somebody just takes flight and leaves you for months and now more than a year really haunted with self-loathing and so forth, I don't know that they get a second chance.
And it feels like that second chance is likely to do as much damage. Because what happens? Maybe this guy is suddenly a changed man. Well, that's what he said the first time around. Yeah, enact that change with somebody else. That's what I say. Let's pull in our guest, Steve. I think we should call Tim Kreider. Yeah, so I'm so excited. You know I'm Tim Kreider, groupie in my own way. He's the author of this amazing book of essays called We Learn Nothing. He's both an essayist and a cartoonist, and he's fantastic at both of those things.
And this book, We Learn Nothing, this collection of essays, has that amazing essay about ghosting the anti-Crider Club. But I'm even more excited because he has a new book of essays that's going to be coming out. It's forthcoming called I Wrote This Book Because I Loved You. We're reaching him down in Argo Studios in New York City. Hello, Tim. Yes. Hi, Tim. It's Steve Allman. Oh, hi. Hi. I'm in the studio here with Cheryl Strayed. Thanks so much for making time with us. Hi, Tim. Sure.
Hello. We're both big fans. Steve especially is kind of dietic. I think I almost fall into the fanboy category. I teach your essays and think about them. They're absolutely astonishing. And that's why we wanted to talk with you about this. You write so intelligently about the dynamics around relationships, friendships, and romantic relationships, and specifically what we've been taking up, which is when one party abruptly and without explanation exits the relationship, which
We just got finished sort of digging into dealing with a ghost, the woman who had this boyfriend who insinuated himself into her life and convinced her that he was the one and then immediately exited stage left. Did you read that letter? Yeah. What were your feelings as you read over it?
I would say, first of all, that everybody pretty much behaves worse in romantic and sexual relationships than they do in other relationships because they always bring up a lot of very primal, infantile stuff. And people are being driven by irrational motives they don't really even understand and aren't aware of. That said, it has to be said like he behaved like a cad.
I mean, it sounds like she more or less knows what his deal is. I mean, he can't be sexually intimate with people he's emotionally intimate with. That's why they had a successful friendship. And then as soon as they got involved, he panicked and ran. Right. So in your essay, The Anti-Kreider Club, you wrote about your own ghosting experience. Could you share that story with us?
Well, that was a story about someone whom I'd been friends with since first day of fourth grade in 1976, well into our 30s, and then just disappeared on me. And I think it's harder when friends ghost on you than romantic partners. You know, there's just not a good breakup talk. There's no protocol for that with friendships. And so more often than not, one person just quietly...
lets their friendship drop in what is the most craven and painless way for them, but is pretty excruciating for the person, the defriendee. Right. What about in your case? So you called your friend, noticed he wasn't calling you back. What happened next? I mean, did you... I would say it took me about a year to get the hint.
And, you know, then ensued years of second guessing myself and trying to figure out how I defended him or what I'd done wrong, which is which on some level intellectually understood was pointless because, A, you're never going to know. And B, it's almost certainly not about you. Well, in thinking about dealing with the ghost, that letter specifically, this woman who's had her ghoster essentially come back into her life.
What was your instinct? Her question was, gee, if I do meet with them, what should I expect to get out of this conversation? Cheryl and I were more of the mind, wait a second, do you want to meet with them? What was your take? I think what she might get out of that is what psychologists call cognitive closure. She might find out what happened.
You know, I did reconnect with the friend in that essay years later at a mutual friend's funeral. And we ended up having a thousand beers together like we always did. And somewhere in the wee hours, we got down to the question of, hey, whatever happened to you, man? And, you know, he didn't have a good answer. There's no good answer. He just kind of got weird on me.
And, you know, he was sorry about it. And I was sorry we'd missed out on about 15 years of friendship. But mostly I was very happy and grateful to have the guy back in my life, even sporadically. That's almost so adult that I'm resentful of you, Kim. It's like, wait, you just... No, actually, I can see kind of this. Here's my question. So when he didn't have an explanation, was he embarrassed? Did he try to hide from you? Or was he like, oh, yeah, hey, sorry I never called you back, dude. What?
Well, it was a funeral, so the overall atmosphere is awkward. Everyone's being kind of stiff and awkward and formal. He told me later he was a little worried I might be mad at him. And I want to reassure you that I'm an extremely petty, vindictive person and I'm capable of holding grudges that go back to grade school and before. But this was more of a – I don't know. It was too big a grudge to hold. And to me, it was like getting somebody back from the dead almost.
I mean, we did meet at a funeral, which tends to put things in perspective. And we had a terrific secret laughing fit at the funeral, which was just like something that would have happened in fourth grade. And it just made me glad that I'd lived long enough to experience this. You know, when I say he didn't have an explanation, it's not quite true. He did. It just wasn't a good one. You know, he just said that...
Sometimes he moves on to a new phase of life and his way of doing that is to sort of completely close the door on the last one. And he asked me, I mean, you know, man, do you think that's fucked up? And bear in mind, this is after about 100 beers. I said, well, it's not ideal. And we both laughed and that was about the end of the discussion. And I'd pretty much gone through the whole process of being angry and sad about it. And all those emotions were gone.
done with by the time I got him back in my life. Right. You know, that's how I'm able to impersonate this gracious person who's able to forgive such things. Right. So just add a decade and we'll all become gracious. I gotcha. Spring savings are in the air and at Ross, where they have savings on all the brands you love. From the latest fashion to outdoor decor and even pet supplies, savings are in every aisle. Go to Ross and save 20 to 60% off other retailers' prices on your favorite spring finds.
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Okay, so let me read our next letter. Sounds great. Dear Sugars, I'm writing because I'm stuck, having trouble feeling a sense of belonging, and I need you to spin this problem for me in a way that I can live with. My best friend from college, who I've known for 19 years since we went to elementary school together, ghosted me.
I listened to your episode on friendships, and it seemed to focus on how to break up with friends by drifting away slowly. But for those of us left behind by our most trusted friends without explanation, this process is on par with losing someone through untimely death, but with the added caveat that your rejection is so complete that you're not even worthy of an explanation. My life has not been easy since I graduated from college three and a half years ago, and I know I have asked for help from my friend and leaned on her for support.
My boyfriend died six weeks after graduation in an accident, and I was wrecked. I didn't live near my friend at the time, but we spent many hours on the phone together in the months that followed. She offered a lot of support to me, and I took it. I know being friends with a grieving person is not easy, but at the time I didn't feel any reluctance or resentment from her.
Then last spring, I could feel her pulling away. We live about an hour and a half apart, and I wanted to bring her a birthday present. For three weekends in a row, she canceled on me right when I was getting in the car to drive to her. I'm not stupid, and I knew what she was doing, so I didn't push it. One day, when I was in town for a different reason, I left the gift on her doorstep. She called later to thank me, but I gave up on making an effort.
A few weeks later, my younger sister died. She struggled with addiction and borderline personality disorder, and she killed herself. I didn't call my friend. She found out a bit later when it came out on Facebook. She called me, and we talked about everything. She said she was sorry about constantly canceling on me, and that she was better at texting than calling for staying in touch. She drove up and came to my sister's memorial, for which I was very grateful.
We resolved to see each other more, and I was happy when she called to invite me to a demolition derby at the county state fair. The two of us are bookish, knitting, young old people, the last ones you would think to see at a demolition derby, but we had a great time. I spent the night, we went to the farmer's market the next morning, and I left. I kept combing over that last meeting, and I can't find anything.
When I called a few weeks later, no response. I waited two weeks and called again. Nothing. Two weeks after that, I called once more, said I was sorry and that I wouldn't call anymore. That was five months ago. She hasn't unfriended me or unfollowed me on my social media, but she doesn't interact. Her mom will communicate like nothing happened. I recently asked her mom not to because it was too painful for me and she agreed.
It's blatantly clear my friend is done with me and doesn't care about my feelings at all. We had a loving, affectionate relationship, so this was very hard for me to understand and integrate into the story of our friendship. I don't want to just feel bitter about all those years. We've been friends since we were seven, and we're only 25, so that's most of my life. My question is, how do I let it go? How do I understand all of those years of my life and our friendship?
I can't help feeling like her leaving in this way is a statement of my unworthiness. I fear that if anyone really gets to know me, they will do this.
I have many loving friends, a wonderful boyfriend, and a great supportive family. But I miss her. I wish she would tell me what I did. Signed, Bewildered Ex Bestie. So it sounds, Tim, you guys have some things in common. An old childhood friend who suddenly disappears. Yeah. It's quite painful, no doubt about it. And it sounds like it's recent and like she's young and
you know, maybe doesn't have that much experience to help buffer the pain of that sort of thing. I would say from my own experience that, yeah, I also re-examined the last couple times we saw each other, wonder if I had done something really thoughtless or insensitive. And no, you didn't. It wasn't about any one specific time. And it's also really not about you. Yeah. I mean, it's not a referendum on your worth as a person. But it does have to do, I mean, the thing for you, Bewildered Ex-Bestie, that sort of
seems to be lurking underneath the waves a bit is this feeling that in your life have been all these tragedies, right? Death of your boyfriend and then your sister's suicide. And each time you turn to this friend and this friend was really there to support you, but her disappearance, consciously or unconsciously, sends the message, well, you're just too much drama. When things, it's just too much for me to take on this friendship because I'm
all this unhappiness has come into your life and you've leaned on me, or at least that's the way that you portray it. I wonder if there's a sense in which you're carrying around the idea that, gee, I can't really rely on friendships from now on because I've got all this tragedy in my life. And if I try to lean on anyone, they're going to bolt. Right. Well, and the awful part of not knowing this mystery that all three of us have mentioned is
You know, when you don't know the story, you make a story. You tell a story. And sadly, most of us, I think my instincts are like yours, Tim's, and I think most people, they blame themselves. You know, why am I hideous and unlovable? You're going to tell yourself the worst possible story. You do. Which is that I suck. It's all because I suck. It's all because I suck. And, you know, and of course we know that's not true. We all have flaws, but I don't think that this is why the friend rejected you, bewildered ex-bestie. But I do also want to say...
that I don't know that your friend has ghosted you. She has been rudely out of touch. It's been five months. And what I'm curious about is, at what point do we say, okay, somebody has actually shut me out of his or her life? I know before you got on the line, Tim, with us, I told a story about a friend doing that sort of same thing, like suddenly not returning my calls. And for me, it actually took...
close to a year before I realized, oh, she's actually ghosting me. It isn't just she's busy or just, you know, because I go through phases of being like, I just, I know I owe you a phone call. I can't do it now. And so I'm curious about what do you guys think about this? Do you think five months is long enough to actually say, you know, this woman has really shut her out of her life? It's hard to say. She's sent mixed signals. I mean, you know, she keeps sporadically reappearing and apologizing. She's probably...
Ambivalent or conflicted about it. I mean, we seldom give people credit for being as ambivalent or conflicted as we are about everything. Right. People tend to disappear when someone gets seriously ill or someone dies. I mean, people are crept out by that and want to get away from it. And so I think Lionel Shriver wrote about this or talked about it in an interview when she realized.
wrote a novel so much for that about cancer, how suddenly everybody disappears on you because they just don't want to be around it. What's interesting and especially kind of pernicious in this letter, Bewildered Ex-Bestie, is
She ghosts on you a first time, and then she finds out that your sister has killed herself. And this is the impetus for her to reconnect to you, and you talked about everything. And she says she's sorry, and you have this wonderful day at the demolition derby.
And then she does it again. And this is where it feels to me related in some sense to the pathological behavior of dealing with a ghost, Lothario, is that there's something especially manipulative about coming through in a crucial moment where you really need her to be your friend and being there and catching you and allowing you to lean on that and offering the possibility of reconnection. And then she disappears. That's what feels...
especially devastating about this is that there's this kind of dangling of the possibility of reconnection and being solid in this person's life that immediately is followed by a complete ghosting. You know, I see it differently, Steve. I feel like this might just be somebody who's
not able to be such a great friend right now. I mean, I've had friends who, you know, were really out of touch for a year and then we get together and the friend is like, listen, yeah, I was just struggling with depression. I sort of hid myself away from everyone and, you know, that you don't take it personally and that, you know, that you can recover from those things. I think the jury's out on this friend. Like what if the friend calls next week and
and says, oh, I'm sorry, I've been out of touch. You know, I think that the question bewildered ex-bestie that you have to ask, and maybe you have a discussion with your friend, you know, that you obviously have a different expectation about how much contact you're going to have with this friend. You know, maybe she wants to be your friend. She just wants to be one of your friends who sees you and talks to you once a year, you know, and I don't think that there's
anything wrong with that. I think that that might be that the nature of this relationship is changing, but it doesn't exactly yet, to me, seem like the kind of ghosting that Tim experienced or that I experienced or that others who've had somebody who just permanently blocks you out of their life. I mean...
Usually when friendships end, it's because people's lives have changed. I mean, these two people are young, you said, right? They're 25? Yeah, they're 25. People get really intensely bonded with their friends at that age, and they're also intensely selfish, and necessarily so. So if one person gets a boyfriend or husband suddenly, say, or buys a house or gets a new job, suddenly the dynamic can change. One of them needs the other a lot less than they used to.
And that's painful for the one who still needs the other just as much as ever. Yeah. Well, here's one question I have for you guys, which has to do a little bit with this question of social media and around-the-clock accessibility.
You know, Bewildered Ex-Bestie, you say, she hasn't unfriended me or unfollowed me on social media, so you presumably can see what she's up to and, you know, that she's doing whatever it is she's doing, going to the demolition derby with somebody new, some new set of friends. But she doesn't interact. Well, that's what it's like, right? Imagine you've been ghosted by somebody who won't return your phone calls, three or four phone calls, but you see on social media that ex-Bestie
campaign for everybody's happiness. I mean, that's an especially painful kind of torture to have to see that the person who ghosted you, who represents your own self-doubt, incarnate, is out there having Sunday brunch with her best friends and, you know...
Gone on without you.
Yeah, that would be a good idea, which, like most good ideas, no one will take. I mean, yeah, social media is a major source of torment. And I think the less time you spend on it, the happier you probably are. Oh, my God. Both of you, both Tim and Steve, the anti-social media people. We're actually the anti-misery people. But OK, you can frame it that way. You know, I will also note, she did say to you, bewildered ex-bestie, I communicate best via text instead of phone calls.
And then when you say all the ways you reached out to her, you called and called and called and called. And maybe, you know, maybe it's just that you sort of do a more soft response.
sort of read of what's going on here and just say, okay, maybe I'll just send her a text and say, hey, how are you doing? What are you up to? I haven't heard from you in forever. I think like most people, this friend of yours feels maybe a little hunted. She knows that she's let you down, but maybe your piece of this problem is that you're expecting more from her than she's willing and able to give.
I actually have had a couple occasions when I've explicitly renegotiated the terms of a friendship, like how often we'll get together and stay in touch.
That's usually initiated by females who I think are more experienced at directly addressing relationships. But, you know, there are times when one person's life changes. Like, you know, I used to go over to a friend's house once a week and talk to her after her kids were in bed. And then I got a teaching job and I was just too exhausted to do it anymore. And I kept standing her up.
And she felt like I didn't like her anymore, which is not the case. And we finally had a talk about it and just renegotiated how we would maintain the friendship. Yeah. It can be done. It's just hard to force yourself to have the explicit conversation. Well, and I think that's such a great, I mean, that's like so healthy and good. And it's really this kind of collision, you know, different expectations. You know, your friend thought you'd be coming once a week and that used to work for you. And then it doesn't. And what happens is she takes it personally. Right.
And, you know, that could have been what ended your friendship. Instead, you guys actually talked about it. You said, no, it's just that my life changed and you made a new pattern. And I do kind of suspect that this might be what's happening because I'm just not seeing indications, bewildered expacity, that your friend's really dumping you. It might be that you just have to have an explicit talk about...
about expectations and what people are willing and able to give. And that sounds fantastic, but the painful dynamic with ghosting that's at the bottom of it is...
It takes two people to have that discussion, which is an uncomfortable discussion because there's an imbalance of desire to spend time. And you have to address that and manage on one side disappointment and on the other side guilt. And that's a big ask for people whose pattern it seems like in both of the letters we talked about is really to just retreat.
Yeah. It's worth bearing in mind that even though it seems passive, it's extremely cruel. I mean, everybody who ever had a sibling knows the meanest thing you can do to them is ignore them. Right. You know, I've got a friend who never gives anyone the silent treatment. If she goes out on one date with someone, she'll write them a nice note saying, I liked such and such about talking to you. Didn't feel a click or chemistry. Nice meeting you.
She's about the nicest human being I know, and that may seem above and beyond, but, you know, it's not that much effort. No, no, it's not. It lets people off clearly and gently. Well, I'm all for that. Tim, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. You were really helpful. Yeah, it was a pleasure. Nice meeting both of you virtually. We promise that we'll call you back when we say we're going to call you back. Always, forever. Take care, Tim. Bye, Tim. All right, bye.
What I love about Tim Kreider, and it's in his work, is he's this deeply, deeply compassionate guy who's super insightful, but also just...
Absolutely bone dry wit and with a very deep apprehension of just how shitty and lazy people can be. And it's appropriate because what he emphasized at the end really matters here. For both dealing with a ghost and bewildered ex-bestie and everybody else who's been ghosted, which means everybody who's ever been a ghost themselves.
Saying nothing is worse than saying, I can't be your friend in this way that you need as much as you need. I can't be your lover. And for anybody who thinks they may have done that, which is pretty much everyone, that's part of the takeaway of this episode. It hurts when you do that. That's right. There are consequences to our actions, even when our actions are inaction.
So listen, Cheryl, before I ghost on you here for another week, let's do the credits. All right. Dear Sugar Radio is produced by WBUR in Boston. We're produced and edited by Anne-Marie Sievertson. We're recording at Talkback Sound and Visual in Portland, Oregon. Josh Millman is our engineer. Theme music is by the Portland band Wonderly. Vocals by Liz Weiss.
Please subscribe to Dear Sugar on iTunes or your favorite podcast app and follow us on Twitter and Instagram at DearsugarRadio and write to us at DearsugarRadio at gmail.com. We will never ghost those letters. We have a no ghosting policy. We have a no ghosting policy. We have an auto reply on our email.
That's the safest no ghosting policy. If you want to read it, honestly, that's reason enough to send dearshugarradio at gmail.com an email because we have a kind of, I would say, a rather verbose auto-reply that's worth a read. It's our anti-ghosting measure. ♪