This is so cool; found myself highlighting the hell out of it. I’ve been really lucky in that only, like, one guy ever ghosted me after I slept with him. Possibly two. And even then, one of them replied to me within a few days. (The other took a little over two years.) In other words, I count myself fortunate that the men I’ve had casual sex with actually did treat me with a lot of decency. Also amusing is that some of my former casual partners even break MANY years of silence to reach out to me again and try to reconnect… and not always for sex: just to connect. To be honest, I like this; I like knowing that we’re adult enough to appreciate each other as human beings and not just genitals we connected with once upon a time.

As for me, I stand where you do on the fact that I pre-screen my partners for the sense that they have basic human decency and that I think they’re cool people. (Not that everybody needs to do this; I just find that I feel better about the encounter if I can feel good about the guy as a person.) And I believe in treating people with kindness — so I do that; I don’t ghost. If I change my mind about wanting to hook up again, I explain that gently, in an it’s-not-you-it’s-me sort of way (which has pretty much always truthfully been the case). I believe that that’s just the considerate, adult thing to do. But I’ve come to find that not everybody is socialized to feel comfortable with having those kinds of conversations, and it makes me sad that this is such a challenge for so many people. :-/

I’ve noticed that a lot of men seem to look at sex as a mystical game-changer, even if they’d rather not. They grow up hearing that women wait, women want marriage, etc., so somewhere inside their minds, I suspect that men are socialized to believe that access to a woman’s body is verifiable proof that she has already decided he is potentially Mr. Right. I also know that men are socialized away from intimacy with each other and that therefore, for many guys, the relationships they have with female partners are the only serious intimacy they have. So when you combine these factors together, you get some guys freaking out, feeling like things are too deep to handle… even if they are just casual to the woman.

Also, fwiw, it’s the easiest thing in the world to reject someone directly—rather than ghost—if you simply don’t give a shit. Just something to keep in mind. 😉