You’ve done it, I have done it, chances are that your parents would have done it in their time too, except back then it was called “cutting cold turkey and marrying someone else” and nowadays it is called- ‘ghosting’.

A dating trend that was perhaps single-handedly responsible for the rise in demand for closure among millennials.

Up until now, ghosting came about as one of the most cruel ways to end a relationship where either of the two people dating would simply pretend to vanish off the face of the earth and abstain from keeping any contact whatsoever. No texts, no calls, no DMs, nothing. 

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Imagine being in a relationship with someone you have suddenly lost all interest in. Sounds a little too familiar? 

The butterflies have died, sparks ended and what once felt like something special now only feels like an obligation you carry around with yourself. 

You want things to end desperately but the pressure of having ‘the talk’ and upsetting the other person profoundly doesn’t make you want to pull the plug yet. In fact, it never will and so, you decide to sneak your way out of the relationship by pulling off what is being called a ‘slow fade’. 

A trend where one person decides to end the relationship, but doesn’t convey it to the other in so many words, as he does through actions.

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You see, while in ‘ghosting’, the sudden cut off is as harsh as it is ruthless, it would end up bringing both the parties to the same page, whether or not they liked it. No reading in between the lines, no room for interpretation, and most importantly - no leading on.

Whereas in the slow fade, a person makes use of underhand methods to drive their relationship to a 'seemingly' natural end, instead of when in reality, they were the one orchestrating it all along. They gaslight their partners into thinking everything is well and rosy, all the while they are slowly retracting themselves from the relationship, leaving their partners confused, full of uncertainty and emotionally insecure.

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The entire charade of the slow fade, of pretending to be with someone only to not really be with them, makes it a cowardly approach, one that is certainly not worth ruining someone’s peace of mind over. 

Which is why, no matter how hard that ‘we need to talk’ message is to send, or how anxious you are thinking about confronting your partner, it is better to rip the bandaid once and for all, than to keep running with a wound that you have no intention of letting heal.

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