Obsessed with... ghosting
Once a year, I attempt to date a man. Here's this year's attempt (plus writing updates).
Each year, something encourages me to get back on the dating apps. Most people are familiar with the depressing cycle of the dating apps — you join, swipe, chat, sometimes meet, and are mostly unimpressed by the whole process. Yet, you hear couples affirm they met on Tinder or Bumble or Feeld or Hinge or whatever new better app there is, and so you think, well it must work for some people, why not me? It’s enough to keep the hope alive. Maybe you just haven’t met the right one yet. Maybe they’re just a few more swipes away!
My annual attempt to date a man
Normally, I don’t share information about my love life. Mostly because people will realise how much of my own experiences are in my books, but also because they’re real people who I once cared about quite considerably.
After matching with a guy on a dating app earlier this year, there was two months of ‘talking’; a handful of dates, a few instances of telling my friends ‘I kinda like this guy!’ — then suddenly he was gone. Disappeared. Dead.
Much like the characters in Dolly Alderton’s novel, Ghosts, I thought, ‘he’s busy’, then, ‘maybe something happened’, until a full week passed with nothing… and I realised I’d been ghosted.
Of course, my first instinct was to justify his poor behaviour with my own insecurities. I thought, ‘what did I do for him to ghost me?’ Did I come on too strong? Maybe he didn’t like how I always talked about tennis? Maybe he thought I was boring?’
None of those reasons are true. One cannot talk about tennis too much.
No, he ghosted because of the reasons people ghost each other: an inability to communicate in difficult situations, and an avoidance personality. It was a hard conversation he didn’t want to have — and so he didn’t.
Almost everyone I know has been ghosted. These issues are rife in modern dating. Yet ghosting and the miscommunication that comes with it, is so rarely explored in romance fiction — mostly because it is incredibly hard to pull off, and perhaps unsurprisingly, almost universally hated by readers.
‘I hate the miscommunication trope!’
The miscommunication trope can cover a miscommunication, misunderstanding, or sabotage of communication. A classic example is in Romeo & Juliet — Juliet takes the liquid that will put her to sleep, but the friar fails to deliver the message to Romeo and he believes she’s dead, and takes his own life.
Real life is, of course, often not as dire. People misunderstand tone in text messages. People don’t say what they mean, or choose their words poorly. Our expectations and assumptions about people fill in the gaps as we rush to make sense of confusion, and when it involves a person we like — or deeply love — the stakes are high.
But despite poor communication being a leading cause of conflict in a relationship, it struggles to translate onto the page.
My god will you just TALK to each other?!
Critics of the miscommunication trope point out they dislike when all the conflict in the book can be resolved if only the two characters would have a simple conversation.
They far prefer it if there are other factors keeping the love interests apart — and miscommunication amplifies the angst between them.
They also hate when the main characters have overcome other hurdles to get to the point where they see each other as romantic interests only for that trust to fall away for ‘superficial reasons’. Think: ‘seriously, you’re going to throw away all the trust we build up as doubles partners at a tennis grand slam title just because you thought you overhead me say I still love my ex?’ kind of way.
Regardless, my recent ghosting has inspired a new novel I’m working on, which I suppose is making lemonade out of lemons.
Writing
Writing a newsletter about ghosting seemed fitting because, since November, I have very much ghosted you. I’m hoping to make my writing here a more regular occurrence. Speaking of writing…
In March, I delivered another sports romance manuscript to a publisher which I’d promised for over a year; I’m very excited to [hopefully] say more about it in the future.
I’m also working on the next book in the tennis series [please do not get too excited]. It’s still early days. I’m reading a lot about tennis match-fixing [purely for research for a fictional novel, I promise].
In July, I received a grant from ArtsACT [a government arts department] to work on a new manuscript over the next nine months about two long-time best friends who run a [harmless] scam but end up playing themselves.
I did talk with friends about whether a harmless scam can be a romance plot line, because scams do hurt people very badly [identity theft is not a joke, Jim!] but since the scam is almost victimless, the consensus is that it’s okay.
Come say hi — events I’ll be attending…
In August, I’m going to the Romance Writers Australia conference in Adelaide, South Australia.
I’m also thrilled to appear on a panel called Stories that don’t play by the rules at the Northern Beaches Readers Festival in Avalon, New South Wales in late September. The incredible Clare Fletcher & Justin Smith will also be on the panel. The festival has a great line-up and tickets are available here.
That’s all for now. Speak soon!