Nothing particularly insightful, but… It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that this phenom is becoming more common…
Like, I’ve had some really bad stuff happen this week, because I let the wrong person into my life (again), but beyond that… Even just “going out into the world” can be so fucking hostile, it’s really no surprise people retreat like that…
“Social dysfunction” isn’t as obvious where I am as it might be elsewhere. Certainly, you don’t really see it, but have a conversation with the wrong person, or even just sit and observe long enough, and it becomes readily apparent that we’ve become a wider society of petty hostility and just general… Unpleasantness.
Places like NYC, Sydney and arguably Tokyo were always like this, but it’s largely “leaked” far beyond that now. Everyone feels like they’re out to get each other, or at each other’s throats, and that if you don’t play along with the odd beliefs of the person you are talking to? They might just decide to do something really nasty…
A 95-year old with dementia was tasered to death in a nursing home in Sydney a week ago (“She was carrying a knife!”). Just yesterday, a huge fire engulfed a massive historic building in Sydney, and no one put it out, until it was a raging inferno enough to destroy the entire thing (the circumstances of all that are very weird)…
Then there has been escalating brawls and attacks on police in several QLD cities this week.
It all feels… Increasingly hostile. And this is in Australia… “Commie shithole” aside, some of these things are quite unheard of…
So… Filtering this down into “ordinary interactions”, where people have become so hypersensitive and hostile about every disagreement, every little thing… It’s no wonder, honestly, that some young men have decided “Fuck this, why the fuck should I even bother anymore?”
I know I feel that way about “friendship” at this point, so for me, that’s pretty damn understandable…
Just my 10c.
One of the things I had to learn the hard way, especially when helping people, is: don't do anything you would feel bad about if no one thanked you.
If you help someone, and they ghost you, you should have the attitude of "whatever, this person isn't worth my time", not "why was I not good enough". If it's the latter, you likely overcommitted, which seems likely, to judge by your story. Emotionally supporting women is onerous work, and is why the field of psychotherapy even exists.
You feel "used" because you performed the equivalent emotional labour of giving her free handjobs. Unless you enjoyed doing it, you just exhausted yourself for nothing.
I admit it did feel like I was walking on eggshells with this girl, on multiple occasions. Particularly in the lead up to last night...
I should have just slowly beat my own retreat, maybe.
But then, ghosting isn't fun, for anyone.
I dunno. Shit situation, we both made mistakes. Then she exploded it all.
All I can really do now is move on, and do better next time.
Oh, I "enjoyed" talking to her, for a while. I wasn't just helping for the sake of it, or indeed because she asked (also because I couldn't avoid her for the last three weeks, so not helping would have just made it awkward)...
I was helping because she genuinely seemed like decent company, at least initially, and we had good chats, if you will.
There were some red flags, I suppose, but even up until yesterday morning, it was all totally fine.
And then... I started to realise things were off. By yesterday afternoon it was "exercise caution", and I was quite prepared to say "Ok, well this has been good, I'll see you round", but then she messaged me, and I made normal conversation (as normal as I could, as I explained above).
But somehow that last conversation was enough for her decide to just completely ghost me and block me out, everywhere, out of nowhere...
I very much doubt it was that convo that did it, though. I think she had already decided beforehand, and just decided to "be extra weird" to see how I would respond, and then pulled the plug, but what do I know...
Dunno. It all went very hard and fast. Most of the "outreach" ("Find me on this social media!", etc) was done by her, but most of the conversational effort was by me. Regardless, it really shouldn't have blown up quite this fast.
Nothing on my end suggested that things would go this way, but then again, I guess most guys feel that way, when blindsided (mostly) like this...