Don’t end a relationship by ‘doing a phantom’

If you’ve never encountered the phantom, what happens is that one day you’re receiving texts and calls, and the next day the object of your affection disappears off the face of the Earth.

The other day I was consoling a friend as she tried to work out whether she’d been dumped or not.

That’s usually a pretty easy thing to decipher — someone tells you they’re not interested, you feign indifference while your internal organs are slowly covered in a light dust from your shattering heart and you both get on with your lives.

Unfortunately that’s not always the case because somewhere along the line someone decided an acceptable way to end a relationship was by “doing a phantom”.

This is often a more common occurrence in couples who are dating rather than those in a relationship, although there are some extra special douchebags who play this card even in longer couplings.

If you’ve never had the pleasure of being on the receiving end of this tactic, essentially what happens is that one day you’re receiving texts and having your calls answered, the next the object of your affection has, for all intents and purposes, disappeared off the face of the earth.

Unless you’ve died or been kidnapped how does anyone think this is an acceptable way to end a relationship, no matter how short?

In the midst of the emotional minefield that is the dating process, aren’t we all risking enough without the fear of standing there alone at the end wondering if we imagined the whole thing?

When someone says “I’d like to spend time with you and see where this goes”, they’re saying “Why don’t I open up my heart so you can walk around and see if you like it?”. With that comes responsibility. In any other area of life, if you rent something out and damage it, the credit card details you left with the owner mean they can at least claim some compensation for the inconvenience. In love the closest thing you get to compensation is “closure”, a pretty crappy consolation prize but even worse if you don’t get that thanks to someone heralding the end of the romance with deafening radio silence.

Since this usually happens in shorter relationships people argue if they’ve only seen someone a few times they don’t owe them anything. It depends what you define as “anything”. Do you owe them a ring? No. Do you owe them commitment? Potentially not. But do you owe them the decency to close the book on the encounter in a way that says “I respect you enough to end this properly?” Of course you do. If you don’t, you risk turning an otherwise confident, sane individual into a self-doubting mess and who wants to do that to another human being?

Dating is about trying a relationship on for size and there are always more that don’t fit than those that do but if you realise someone isn’t for you the only decent thing to do is tell them so they can draw a line under it and move on.

Even if the reason you don’t want to be with them is shallow or you don’t want to offend them with the truth, at least use the generic “not compatible” or “I don’t feel any chemistry” line. Just something, anything to show you aren’t completely ignoring the fact they opened themselves up to the potential of a relationship with you.

The end of every love story deserves a full stop, so grow some balls (you too, ladies) and have the decency to end things right.