“Hiii! So I was thinking about where I’m at right now and instead of leading you on or anything like that, I wanted to let you know I’d prefer to just be friends at the moment. Think you’re awesome and hope we can keep in touch!”

I call this text maturity. Trusting my gut (okay, really just trusting my therapist who said this text was okay to send). After going on a few dates with this person, the spark was not there. The spark where I can show my silly side dancing to Usher walking down the street. The spark where voice early stage voice notes became a regular occurrence to build the auditory chemistry necessary for modern romance. And of course, the spark, where I constantly thought about <insert emoji sex>.

Once those were there, I knew a text like this needed to get sent but how/when/what to say was debated vicariously in the neurotic corners of my mind. Sending this text is not easy at all. If this person was in our thread she would have seen the three dots signaling typing only to disappear multiple times throughout that day. Then, finally, I looked at the wall, looked at myself in the mirror, and exclaimed “dude, this is not it. Not for you” and then boom, fired off the text only to hop in the shower to return to not a response (her response would come 24 hours later, and it was such positive vibes I actually hope and anticipate a friendship coming out of this). That feeling of sending that text, making the decision, and moving on all of the sudden silenced a lot of the “what if’s” circulating in my mind. 

• What if she was the one?
• What if I never meet someone again?
• What if dancing to Usher walking down the street is deterring romantic interest instead of helping the cause?

I had come a long way from my ghosting days of the past (okay, maybe mostly just getting ghosted so I explored the topic from all sides of the dinner table). Thinking about whether to send a text like that is normal & acceptable, but trusting my gut has always helped me most. Sure, it’s always taking a shot into the unknown when you reject one interested party  for the idealistic vision of picking up the stray scarf of your Italian crush on vacation in NYC on Christmas Eve, reminiscent of Lucia in White Lotus, and then boldly, excitingly living happily ever after.  This shot into the unknown is scary, but we must keep marching on no matter your age or desperation because settling is not an option (because picking your life partner is just about the most important time-sharing decision you can possibly make as evidenced by these charts here on how we spend our time on Earth).

The anti-ghosting phenomenon is something we’ve always explored here on UpDating in real-time. Whether it was Kethryn’s dramatic breakup mid-stage with Matt or <insert another viral halftime, one important element of the halftime report & reveal halfway through the show is to not let someone get off the hook with why they are not interested in that person. Of course, naturally, it’s the guys who assume the girls are all into him but we’ve had a few other twists & turns along the way.  Even a quick iMessage search of “ghosted me,” brings up dozens of conversations with friends, past daters, and former flings showing how prevalent all of this is.

Just the other day on a casting call with someone interested in our Atlanta show, she spent a full week with this dude in Georgia, met his family, shared passionate stuff only to return back to Atlanta to crickets. Literally crickets.

We’re going to keep exploring some of these themes here in our new digest, you may even hear from some of our contestants directly, Brandon’s takes on what he loves most about our show, and of course keep ya’ll up to date about all upcoming shows & happenings in the UpDating universe.