50. The Audacity of Men

[00:00:00] This is The Ghost Podcast, and I am your host, creator, and producer of this podcast. I go by the name Rosemary on this podcast but as some of you may know from listening

[00:00:17] to my other episodes, that's actually not my real name. And at the time it seems like a good idea to use a pseudonym. I was talking about some really personal, hurtful things that had happened to me. And I've just stuck with it. And listeners, it's been a minute

[00:00:31] since we've done an episode. And there will be some really great new content coming your way. I do have an episode recording set up with Peter McGrath from the solo podcast, Excited to Share That and have been sure his thoughts on living a solo life relationship design

[00:00:47] also the topics I spoke about in the last episode, SaltBath. Today I'm doing a quick solo episode. I wanted to give you a couple of updates and some things that I'm going on with me. So first of all listeners, I have once again, Ben Ghosted. And you

[00:01:03] think I would know why now that I should know better, right? I've been doing this podcast for over two years. I have been ghosted several times and I just want you to know it

[00:01:16] can happen again. You can meet someone, you can promise you things who can promise they won't go to. Seems like a good person, they seem genuine and it still happens. And I wanted

[00:01:28] to share a little bit about my recent experience today. I also wanted to give you guys an update. I had set a couple of episodes that I had been reached out to by a woman who

[00:01:39] had dated the person that my first episode was about. I called him John in that episode, his real name is Sean. As some of you may know from listening to another episode, his

[00:01:50] ex who dated him more recently as well reached out to me. January, she had some information to share with me about him and about what had happened in that experience I had with him. And

[00:02:01] we were going to do a podcast episode together and then she unfortunately decided it just wasn't good for her mental health to talk about him and to keep thinking about him. But I did promise

[00:02:11] an update on that. She did give me permission to share a little bit of our story. So after I talk about my experience first, then I'm going to spill the tea on everything that happened with

[00:02:20] the original ghost or that this podcast was created about. Okay so where do I begin with this latest ghosting? As I've said on this podcast many times, my biggest lesson learned since starting this podcast is that people who ghost are inherently lacking basic communication skills,

[00:02:38] they definitely lack emotional maturity in sight. They don't have the ability to be sympathetic or empathetic to other people and how their actions make other people feel which makes them inherently selfish. They're really thinking about their own convenience, their own comfort level

[00:02:55] and they're not willing to step outside that to provide closure for explanations other people. At the end of the day, you don't want someone like that in your life. That's not someone that you can ever have a sustainable relationship with, but you can ever communicate well with

[00:03:10] because they just lack that capacity. And that's really sad for them. I do feel sorry for people who ghost, people who ghost to me, people who ghosts are there people, except in the case where

[00:03:21] we're talking about extreme narcissists which we have talked about on other podcasts and that's not the case here. It is something where I just feel happy that this person showed me who they are

[00:03:32] before I wasted any more time. And I do have empathy and sympathy for them because how sad is your life if this is how you treat people. So before I dive into the story of what

[00:03:45] happened, I just want to say that I have been in a place where I have been really happy with the state of my relationships and my relationships with others. I have multiple casual partners who are

[00:03:57] actually really great people. I feel really fortunate to have them in my life. I've been able to practice relationship design and really build relationships that are custom-made for things that I need from different people. And it's been great and I was really happy with that status and

[00:04:13] I sat aside with that. So the way that this ghosting happened, I had a work trip scheduled to Colorado. And I decided to go a little bit early over the weekend to go to to go to a national

[00:04:23] park about four hours south of Denver. So I had my bumble to travel mode a couple weeks ahead of time because I always do that. I meet some really interesting people. Some of my casual partners have

[00:04:35] come from that. I've made some friends from that. There's been some podcast guests on this podcast, some other podcast from that. So I find that that is to me the biggest benefit of the app. It's just

[00:04:44] this gives me this ability to meet so many more people than I would have met without the apps in place. So anyways, match with this guy, I'm bumble and turns out he is staying about two hours south of

[00:04:59] Denver on the way to where I was going to this national park. So we decided to meet for dinner and you know, my mind no expectations. I have to eat anyways. My as well have date. I always learned

[00:05:10] something interesting from people I mean on dates. I've rarely had a bad day. So we have dinner and then we end up spending almost the next two days together. So listeners, you all have this

[00:05:21] happened to you. You meet someone. It feels really great in person and you just go with the flow. So right from the beginning, I said to him, I am completely fine with this just being a fun

[00:05:33] weekend. I'll probably never see you again. I've done this before. I have relationships like this. I don't have any issue which is having a fun weekend with you and never talking again.

[00:05:43] And he was actually the one who said, I wanted to see where this goes. Can we make this a relationship? I don't he I remember him specifically saying, I've never tried to start along this

[00:05:53] relationship before, but I don't want that to stop us. I don't want to be afraid to try and regret not trying. And so I agreed to give it a try and we had several specific conversations about how

[00:06:06] we communicate and how we would see each other again. And you know, I left that weekend with a really great feeling. So we spent about the next two weeks in pretty much constant communication

[00:06:18] and right from the beginning he had said he was going to come and visit me. We picked specific dates. We talked very specifically about what we were going to do. We had multiple conversations about it. We were mostly communicating or video messaging through Marco Polo, or texting.

[00:06:35] We had some phone calls and there was a little bit of like us nag with him coming out to see me with some logistics with the travel and he was still working on it. So then we had a phone call

[00:06:47] one night, phone call was over an hour and the phone call was really kind of digging in deep about what are you looking for in a partner? You know, what's important to you. We talked a lot about

[00:06:58] seeing each other again and how that would work. And on that call he had said something about maybe he wouldn't be able to come visit me on the dates that we had planned. And I have to say

[00:07:08] that felt pretty shitty because in my mind he loved me to believe that this was a pretty solid plan that we would see each other again and for him to kind of backtrack on that felt kind of shitty.

[00:07:18] And I want to say on that phone call, we also specifically talked about if this was still something we should try to do if it made sense to try to pursue this on distance. And we both

[00:07:28] specifically said we did want to pursue it. We did think it was worth it. And on that call, I did tell him if you feel like you don't want to do this anymore, I understand that.

[00:07:40] I want to, but if you don't want to understand and please let me know, I'll be okay. Don't you don't have to worry about telling me? And he said, oh yeah, I would tell you,

[00:07:52] he said I wear my heart, my sleeve, you'll definitely know I won't have an issue telling you, but at this point I do want to keep going. And another thing is he specifically said to me multiple

[00:08:01] times when we were together on that phone call. And then even afterwards, I will never go as to, I will let you know if I don't want to continue. And so after we had that phone call,

[00:08:12] we had a couple more messages that evening. And again, I had said something reiterating again if you don't want to continue. Let me know and he said yes, I will. And it goes to you.

[00:08:22] And we ended the evening, a little bit back and forth about his trip with me just kind of saying again that I was going to be understanding we had this these dates planned and I was just a little

[00:08:31] confused on why he was changing the plan and it felt a little bit like I was maybe trying to convince him to come see me. And listeners, I'm sure you can guess what happened next.

[00:08:40] I never heard from them again. He deleted all the tools we were using to communicate on followed me. An Instagram removed me from his followers in Instagram and ghosted me. So my thoughts and feelings of course it feels really shitty. It feels extra shitty when someone

[00:09:01] goes out of their way to tell you they won't ghost you and that if they want to not continue they will tell you. And then they do the exact opposite. That feels pretty shitty. It's really

[00:09:15] hard because you want to be authentic in genuine with someone and you want to feel like you can trust someone even if you've had so many bad past experiences and you your gut tells you you shouldn't

[00:09:27] trust people. I need to decide to go ahead and do it anyways and then they do the exact same thing. That's a shitty feeling we all know that. Were there red flags with this guy? 100% I mean,

[00:09:39] I got this in. So after our last phone call that this is not someone who has any ability to be introspective I will say his audacity in the way he thinks about himself in the world astounded me

[00:09:54] but it also didn't because it's very typical of every other man that's in their late 30s and older that I've ever spoken to which is why I make a point to generally date younger men.

[00:10:04] Younger men they got to go in on. They got it going on emotionally and they got to go in on in the bedroom. And group guys go to therapy, they're open about their emotions and they are all

[00:10:15] about pleasing their partner. So I would say red flags his astonishing audacity, his skepticism and not believing in anything is real that has to do with brain science or psychology or human

[00:10:28] behavior. This guy just clearly lacks any integrity. I mean he was all over the place just wishy why she you know when we were together he was the one who said he wanted to try to have a relationship

[00:10:40] and later later he kind of retracted that and was like well not really dateable right now and you know the whole thing with the trip where we had dates plan and then he backtrack and another

[00:10:50] big red flag was his attitude towards therapy. He was at the point of view that he is perfectly fine. He has nothing to work on. He has no issues and doesn't really think therapy is beneficial.

[00:11:05] Everyone listening please only date people who are open to therapy. No one is perfect. We all have things to work on and especially be aware of people who say that they don't and that they're

[00:11:17] fine the way they are because those people have no insight into their own issues. They're not willing to examine themselves in a closer lens. They're not going to be open to change or personal

[00:11:30] growth and I would say for me that's definitely a red flag in the future. As everyone will say you dodge a bullet this is obviously not a person who can contribute in any meaningful way to a real

[00:11:42] partnership or real connection with another person so anytime we get ghosted or we have an experience like this we always want to find the lesson learned and what could we have done differently what's it take away from this because that is the silver lining of these shitty situations

[00:11:58] is what can you take to make yourself a better person to be stronger, to move on, to grow as a person and I will have to say I did do some self refaction with this incident. I definitely

[00:12:12] rushed into things with him. I said earlier I should have known better. I was really excited. I did really like him. Being with him is amazing gave me that lemon spilling just over kind of

[00:12:27] overwhelming happiness when I was physically with him and I think that definitely led me to not do what I know I should have done which was slow it down and maybe just be myself a little bit more.

[00:12:41] I think my personality type is when I feel like I have something to do that's a job or a mission I wanted to it really well and so I can do casual relationships really well on very good at those but in

[00:12:54] this case because he said he wanted a serious relationship I was like okay that's my job is to make this a serious relationship that's going to work and I think I personally approached it from a little bit

[00:13:05] of a deeper place and I think it should have been. I think I got a little bit too deep too fast and really wanted to try to build a connection and grow something but you know when I can do that

[00:13:15] when I do that sometimes which I don't open up to people that often and that's another thing as I had told him like some of the things I was sharing with him and being vulnerable about with him

[00:13:24] I don't do that with everybody with actually an almost nobody I mean almost nobody sees that side of me and people who do know me another aspect of my life if they knew about like some

[00:13:34] of the things I shared with him they would be pretty shocked they would never see that side of me and so I feel like I really should have held back with talking about a lot of those things

[00:13:43] you know I guess in my mind I was thinking this is what we need to do to to build this and to get to know each other but it really wasn't the best portray of my portrayal myself and I

[00:13:52] think I should have waited to share a lot of those details so lesson learned is no matter how often I know that really the right way to do relationships because I have spent a lot of time listening to podcast

[00:14:05] reading books, meeting guests on this podcast and learning about how to do relationships right I threw all that advice out the window I just went with how I felt and it didn't work obviously

[00:14:17] not saying in any way that I deserve what happened it doesn't matter what I did unless I was a really shitty person which I wasn't I didn't deserve to be treated this way nobody

[00:14:27] does this is 100% on him his actions his decisions that reflect his portrayalices and bad behavior but I do want to take the lesson learned and have that self-reflection and there are some

[00:14:40] things that I think I definitely could have done better and only can hope is that I will learn that lesson for next time one of the things I always ask guests on this show is what would you say to

[00:14:51] the person who goes to you if you could say something to them and so I want to answer that question for myself in this scenario and I think honestly I would say nothing because you know what you did

[00:15:05] you know you did and you should be ashamed and I think you are maybe you don't want to think about it or you don't want to acknowledge it but unless you're a complete psychopath you feel that about what

[00:15:17] you did you know is wrong you know you promised me you wouldn't do that and you did it anyways and I don't think you're a psychopath you're not that special you're just a very typical man

[00:15:27] in his forties who has outside audacity to who you actually are and what you can actually do you're a liar you led me on you promised things you didn't deliver on and then you're a

[00:15:43] fucking coward you didn't have the fucking balls to just tell me that it will you didn't want to do it anymore and I gave you every chance I brought it up several times I said go ahead to tell me if you

[00:15:54] don't want to do this it's long distance it's understandable and you're too much of a coward to do it you chose not to so I don't think I need to say that I think that you know that and

[00:16:07] women don't want men like you women don't want men anymore who don't want to go to therapy who don't want to work on themselves who don't want to admit that they have room for growth or

[00:16:19] change they're not open to that that's a dinosaur good luck with that did you hurt me yes I will say what you did was hurtful especially bleeding me on and lying to me and of course ghosting

[00:16:34] me that hurts nobody can say that doesn't hurt which says a lot more about you in fact it says everything about you and it doesn't reflect anything on me I didn't deserve that and you know that

[00:16:47] I just wanted to share my experience and let you know that this does still happen to me happens to all of us but what I really learned my lesson from with this is my experience in when

[00:17:00] I was ghosted back when I started this podcast and to the sixth experience now is how much I've changed how much I've grown I don't feel bad about myself I was genuine and authentic I put my real

[00:17:13] self into it I made an effort I trusted what he said and I went with that and that was my intention and he didn't and he lied and one of the things I learned is that a lot of men not all men but a

[00:17:26] lot of men will say whatever is convenient to them in the moment so they say things that they don't mean in the moment all the time and maybe they really do believe them in the moment but they say it because

[00:17:39] it's easy to do and they don't give forth thought into what the impact of this actually means and if they're going to follow through and as soon as it's later on or there's distance it's like

[00:17:51] it's not convenient anymore and they just completely backtrack and I don't know if men just lack integrity if so many men just can't follow through and what they said if their words just never match

[00:18:05] their actions but this is something I've definitely observed over and over again and like I said it's hard because I know this I've learned this lesson many times and I still fell for it.

[00:18:15] I started this podcast over two years ago so I could share my story about when I was ghosted and the purpose of this podcast has been to share other people's stories so we can have a conversation

[00:18:25] about this happening it's so normalized it happens all the time and it can trigger real her in real trauma and I hope I sharing my story I can encourage more people to speak out and so many

[00:18:38] who listen to this podcast have reached out to me letting me know that hearing these stories has helped you several of you have shared your own stories so I'm happy to have this platform to be able

[00:18:48] to talk about these things moving on let's talk about how ghosts always come back so the person that goes to me originally when I started this podcast I never expected I would hear

[00:19:01] anything about this person again it has been several years I'd moved on but they always come back some way or another and in this case this person did come back to me by way of an ex of his

[00:19:13] someone who also dated him so I'm going to tell you a little bit about that so I was contacted back in March of this year which is 2023 by a woman on Instagram on my podcast account so this is the

[00:19:27] message she's at me hi I just listened to your podcast about quote john I dated him for three months and just wanted to reach out because I too felt like I was the crazy one I also think I have

[00:19:37] an answer as to why he goes to do if you were open to talking I'd be up for that but also okay if you don't want to open that old wound so after that her and I we sent multiple different

[00:19:48] voice messages to each other on Instagram we actually spoke in the phone for a little bit as well her and I also met up in person and as I mentioned at the beginning of this episode she originally

[00:19:59] was going to come on this podcast with me and talk about her experience she decided not to do that for her own mental health but she did send me an email with a lot of information about her

[00:20:09] experience so she'd give me a permission to share that so the just of what she told me that happened before I dive into her story a little bit is that at the time that he and I were dating he was in a

[00:20:21] long term monogamous relationship and he was cheating on her with multiple women including myself and several other women and actually there was a couple of their women that this person who contact me I'll call her Jay she had been in touch with all these other women as well

[00:20:42] and one of them was actually going to join the podcast as well so it wasn't just me turns out this kind was a pretty horrible terrible person maybe one of the worst people I've ever met and so that

[00:20:52] was kind of his thing as he was cheating with his partner who had no idea and he was doing a multiple women and he was doing the same thing he did to me love bombing them and it goes to all of them

[00:21:04] so as far as her story she shared with me she had just graduated from a PTSD recovery program from her ex before she started dating Sean and he was aware of all this past trauma she actually

[00:21:19] had a relationship with a man who lied about his identity so pretty extreme experience that she had where she was really deceived and had a lot of issues getting over that and really had a lot of

[00:21:31] trust issues so when she met Sean he did exactly the same thing to her that he did to me no surprise this is what this guy does where he loved bomb her intensely future faking

[00:21:43] within a few weeks he was telling her that he wanted to move in with her he was going to buy her car he was buying her gifts and he wanted to marry her

[00:21:53] and a lot of this was setting off her alarms but she put them aside so if you've ever been loved bombed as I have and as she has and some of you listeners may have been it's so overwhelming

[00:22:03] and it's intended to make you feel so good that you do it disregard a lot of these internal alarms and red flags so they dated about a month and a half and when she came over to his house

[00:22:14] one day he was just getting off a phone call with a coworker who had told him he was on Facebook group are we dating the same guy Chicago and they talked about it and what it could be

[00:22:27] and that is when he told her about my podcast because he thought I was the one who posted it which I didn't I'm actually not in Facebook so it wasn't me who posted it with someone else

[00:22:37] so he asked her this woman Jay to join the group and see what was said about him and she was also a little bit worried about that so she did join and she saw this other

[00:22:48] woman's comments about her experience with him this is the other woman who's going to come on the podcast and then multiple other women so she had reached out to so other women let's call her A

[00:22:58] little confusing there's a lot of women this guy talked with the research out to her before she circle back to him to get more information about her experience and basically she this

[00:23:09] very similar experience to me so after this this had happened she had shared with me that they were actually at a brunch with multiple friends and they were talking about this about him being in the

[00:23:20] Facebook group and he said a lot of really shitty things about these women so he specifically said some things about me personally that we're really intimate details I shared with him that I would

[00:23:33] never want people to know and he just used them and tried to make them a really negative thing and told all these people this and then he said multiple other things about this other woman

[00:23:43] I'm not going to share them because I'm not going to repeat his lies in bullshit and you know victimize these women anymore including myself but you know just really horrible things that he said

[00:23:55] and reassensably blaming the women and he did mention my podcast but he never said what was about he never said he goes to me he basically portrayed it as me just being like angry and trying to get

[00:24:08] back at him or being obsessed with him or something so then after they were driving home from this branch he had his outburst where he pulled over and he started hitting the student well in screaming and going fuck fuck fuck and just like completely just lost his shit

[00:24:23] to the point where she was like actually afraid for her friendship and so she said for her this was kind of the beginning of like the rose glasses falling off and starting to understand

[00:24:31] what he was really like and becoming more suspicious of him she also told me that she was at a family event and his aunt his parents sort of seized but his aunt had pulled her aside when he was in the

[00:24:43] bathroom and she actually warned her about him and she was she said you know he's you need to be really careful around him he's not a great person so she's trying to see all these signs about him and then

[00:24:56] she decided to look through some of his things because he'd asked her to move in with him and she found this shrine of his previous girlfriend the one that he was cheating on along with

[00:25:06] paperwork for STD status that he never disclosed and so she broke up with them and then of course he stalked her afterwards he was trying to guilt her per telling her how much he she hurt him

[00:25:20] and that she ruined his life and all this stuff to try to guilt her into coming back to him once she had ended things with him she actually reached out to the girlfriend that was the long-term

[00:25:30] girlfriend and let her know about the Facebook group and about all these other women that he had cheated on her with and that woman did not believe her she even sent a picture of the STD paperwork and she

[00:25:44] claimed that she made it up so you know kind of a sad story for her that she still had trust and faith in this guy who traded her so poorly but that's the TN that I wanted to circle back on that everyone

[00:25:59] know the story it is interesting how things come back you know I don't ever think about that experience it was a long time ago it led to something really good it led to the creation of this podcast

[00:26:09] and this podcast has opened me to so many different experiences and great friends and people that I've met and great guests that I've had and things that I've learned so it was a positive outcome in

[00:26:18] the long run and I never expected to really know what happened or to have anything come back and you know two years later to have this woman come back in my life and tell me what happened it was

[00:26:28] it was a surprise you know I guess it is good to know and have that closure I was okay without it but that's the story on that and listeners I am looking for more content if you would like to

[00:26:39] share a ghost story like to get feedback on this episode you can find me on the ghostpodcastories.com you can find me on Instagram at the ghostpodcast stories on TikTok at the ghost podcast and you can also send me an email at the ghostpodcast stories at gmail.com

[00:26:55] as always thank you for listening