It’s a bit of a weird question, I know, but I (24F) keep ghosting people and I am not sure how to stop myself from doing it.
In my day to day life I am a pretty busy person. I go to work which keeps me away from home for a few days at a time (and has shifts until 11pm), I volunteer in the community, I do coursework, and if I’m not doing this, I’m often sleeping or engaging in some sort of escapism because I am tired. I have a feeling that some of it is that.
However, I also just struggle with people in general. I feel like a lot of people are too needy and want me to talk to them every single day when I really just don’t want to. I like my space as much as I like trying to build a connection. Which I really do want a connection, because I’d love to find love and solid friendships. But I also don’t want my life to revolve around it. I have trauma-based attachment issues, Alexithymia, and Autism which are probably contributing to this. Therapy hasn’t helped before people suggest that.
The problem I have is that even if I like someone, I don’t want to talk to them a lot of the time. I can have a crush on you and still find you too annoying or draining to want to talk. Or I can like you at first as a friend and little things will niggle at me until one short conversation kills me off and I feel like disappearing for months. Or a nice conversation will just not spark anything in me so I’ll forget you exist (even if I enjoy talking) and by the time you message me again to try to get my attention, I already don’t want to message you any more and find further attempts to communicate annoying.
When it goes on for prolonged periods I do ask people not to spam message me and clearly communicate that it makes me want to avoid them when they do that. E.g. I recently told a friend (once a crush but he annoys me now) 20M about this and he continued to do it, so I repeated myself and he has continued to do so, so now I am avoiding him. A lot of people still don’t respect that and I ghost until they give up.
Other people are respectful but I still don’t come back for months, when I finally remember they exist. I apologise to everyone I ghost if they call me out for it, and I do try to pull it together and talk again if they express that they still want to try and set out their own needs, but it is so difficult and I don’t know how to stop it.
I was even considering just making a bloody schedule where I put in like at least hour of social interaction a day to force me to talk to people, or something, but I don’t know. That would make it feel like a chore. Maybe someone here will have been the same and would have some advice, because I do want to be better but I am so stuck on how.
TL;DR: I keep ghosting people and want to work on it, but also genuinely can’t bring myself to want to talk to people.