Love Lives - #6 Ghosting, how to flirt and when flirting turns into sexual harassment

Episode Date: October 26, 2017

Few people think they're adept at flirting, but what makes a good flirt? This week on Millennial Love we share our flirting fails and discuss when flirty fun becomes sexual harassment. We also chat ab...out a very millennial dating phenomenon (and problem): ghosting. Is it ever OK? Listen now as we delve into the murky waters of dating etiquetteSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/millenniallove. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Twas the season of chaos and all through the house, not one person was stressing. Holla differently this year with DoorDash. Don't want to holla do the most? Holla don't. More festive, less frantic. Get deals for every occasion with DoorDash. Hello and welcome to Millennial Love, the love, sex, dating and relationships podcast from the Independence Lifestyle team. I'm Rachel Hosey, our Acting Assistant Lifestyle Editor. I'm Olivia Petter, Lifestyle Writer. So Olivia, how has your week been? Have you had any good dating stories? So my week was pretty good. I had a pseudo date last night.
Starting point is 00:00:44 I'm sorry, I'm sorry, a pseudo date? Is this like a pseudo grain, like quinoa? You could call it that. It's the quinoa of dates. Basically, I bumped into a guy that I used to date at uni at a party a few weeks ago. And he asked if I wanted to grab a drink. Not that keen, kind of like a been there, done that kind of a vibe. So I was like um maybe do you want to just come to the theatre with me because I've already got a spare ticket because I always buy two tickets to the theatre you know as the single gal that I am hoping that
Starting point is 00:01:15 someone will just be free sure anyway I'm gonna interject though you know it's the most tragic thing ever last year when um skate at Somerset house tickets went on sale me and my also single flat mate together we bought four tickets we were like this gives us a couple of months to like you know by the time it's actually there we'll have like boys to go skating with we went skating with our girlfriends anyway go on i mean it kind of sets a target it's like by then i will have a boy to take to this event we had a great time yeah I'm sure it was still fun anyway it was great fun and you know it means that you go for like a drink before but then you spend the rest of the time watching a play so you don't actually like it feels like
Starting point is 00:01:55 a date and he thinks it's a date and you haven't had to be like I like you but I don't want to date you but then hopefully you just go your separate ways and it feels all pretty cash sly yeah I like it like out unless he listens to this podcast yeah I know that's why we just must never name names but also if you ask someone mentioned it's very obvious but anyway so that's why it was a pseudo date yeah pseudo date I like him I like him what about you well I cancelled a date. Although it was sort of a mutual cancelling situation. But you never know if you're the one who says,
Starting point is 00:02:32 oh, sorry, I can't actually make it anymore. And then they then go, oh, yeah, you know, actually, me too. You never know if they're actually really saving face and they were actually crying themselves to sleep at night. But they're never going to be like, oh, no, really? That's so sad. I was really looking forward to it. I'd already planned my outfit. I know. And if they did, you'd to sleep at night. But they're never going to be like, oh, no, really? That's so sad. I was really looking forward to it. I'd already planned my outfit.
Starting point is 00:02:47 I know. And if they did, you'd be like, okay. Well, quite. I mean, I think we're going to reschedule, but this will be day three. So, you know, quite serious. Day three is the crucial, you know, that's when things start happening. I mean, I don't abide by that
Starting point is 00:03:05 date three rule situation I find please there will be no canoodling well I mean who can really say but
Starting point is 00:03:12 that was this week I'm also just as a little aside we are so excited about Riverdale coming back it's so good well I mean
Starting point is 00:03:20 we're on what episode three now I think there have only been two right there have only been two yeah I think episode three will be like tomorrow or Thursday this week maybe by the time this podcast
Starting point is 00:03:28 is out episode three will be out oh it's so good I know I'm like in love with Jughead because I like slightly weird ones you're more Archie I was more Archie but I think I've migrated over to the soul of Jughead tortured the tortured one he's so weird and divine. He's great. Anyway, aside from our dating escapades, or lack thereof, and TV crushes, well the first topic we want to talk about today is flirting. It seems so simple and yet it's so not because some people are smooth and it seems really easy for them. Some people are very awkward. Olivia, do you think you're a good flirt? Absolutely not.
Starting point is 00:04:14 I wish I could say that I was, but I think previous experience would prove that I am not. I once, at a party when I was about 14, I really fancied this guy. He was a friend of a friend and we were talking and he was looking for a lighter for his cigarette. So I had one. Smoking at 14. Yeah, I know. I was so badass. So you know how you used to lighters, you can change them so that the flame comes up really high.
Starting point is 00:04:35 I mean, no, because I don't smoke. Okay. Don't give me that judgy look. Neither do I. So anyway, this one was turned all the way up. So I was like, oh, I'll light your cigarette for you. You know, trying to be all sexy. Nice. So I leaned leaned in lit the lighter not only did i burn my nose i fras and his frazzled some of my hair
Starting point is 00:04:54 so that the whole party then smelt of burnt hair then had to spend the rest of the night because it was quite early on with a bag of frozen peas on my right side of my face because i was burnt oh with a bag of frozen peas on my right side of my face because I was burnt. Oh, poor 14-year-old you. And what could be more attractive than a girl with a bag of peas on her face? What happened to the guy? What do you think happened to the guy? I thought this might be like a rom-com and you would find it really endearing and look after you.
Starting point is 00:05:19 And no. That would have been such a better ending to the story. But no, that's not quite how it went. Have your skills developed in the past almost 10 years um well let's see i think both of us still single maybe not well well well do you know what's so funny i am definitely not someone who feels like oh flirting is just so easy um and i definitely for a long time was absolutely awful at it. And I still don't think I'm good at it. However, a few months ago, I went out for drinks and dancing with a friend who was newly single. And I obviously have been single for longer. And she was saying to me, she was like, you're so good with the guys.
Starting point is 00:06:00 How are you doing this? They're all trying to dance to you. They're all trying to talk to you. What are you doing? And I was like, what? Are they? And I was like, what? Are they? And I was like, oh. The thing is, I don't know if that was down to flirting
Starting point is 00:06:10 or I was probably just wearing a dress or something. Did you notice it? I mean, a little bit. Like, there were some guys twirling me, which, you know, I like a twirl. It's not an innuendo. But is that them flirting with you or you flirting with them?
Starting point is 00:06:22 True. True. I don't know. I do think there are some signs though I have like certain things where I'm like that was the guy flirting yeah you know good flirting you mean yeah one of my things that I always think guys do is um okay they usually do this if they work out and they've got like nice arm muscles they like put their bend their arms and rest them behind their head and like lean back when they're sitting down so they're showing off their biceps
Starting point is 00:06:48 and I feel like they always do that when they want to be like hey look at my guns I mean personally I've only seen that in like teen high school films I'm not sure I've ever seen that with the wrong guys I think I think a really good one is eye contact I think you can tell a lot from eye contact that's like scientific studies have said that and I definitely remember when I was reading like teen girl magazines they were like if you want to flirt with someone hold eye contact yeah now we are like really holding eye contact and it's a bit unnerving also I think you have to think about the different motivations for flirting there was a study in 2004 a US one that identified like six different motivations for
Starting point is 00:07:26 flirting what how can there be so many I know well I mean obviously not all of them are necessarily for romantic relationships so some of them were self-serving like to make you feel better about yourself and to give you a confidence boost one of them was just for fun like you're treating it kind of like a sport or a game one of them was just out of curiosity to see how someone would react one was for sex obviously and one was kind of instrumental like just to get something from the other person that's interesting yeah that's really interesting the interesting thing was it really differed between the genders so apparently the most not surprising the most common one for men type of, the most common reason for them to flirt was for sex.
Starting point is 00:08:07 And for women, the most common was relational. So to get some sort of emotional connection out of it, which is so bloody stereotypical. Yeah, it really is. And obviously that's not the case for every person. No,
Starting point is 00:08:17 of course not. But that's what they found. Well, they say that, you know, the main things are when someone's flirting whether it's conscious or not it is that eye contact it's mirroring someone's body language so if they like sit forward in their chair you sit forward in their chair smiling a lot you know a little bit of
Starting point is 00:08:36 like touching their arm and and all this but the thing is I think me and a lot of my friends have sort of found ourselves in slightly difficult situations where actually like I'm a really smiley person I just smile a lot and sometimes I think being friendly can be misconstrued as flirting totally I think it's really difficult to sometimes identify between the two some things that I've noticed I think that I would say is probably flirting is when someone takes more of an interest in you if you see what I mean like they ask questions that are a bit more interesting rather than like what's your commute like what did you have for lunch it's kind of like what do you think about this or what do you think about that like they really show an interest in what you think and how your mind works yeah actually just being interested
Starting point is 00:09:19 in you as a person probably shows interest I mean as in it shows they're interested in you but and that can mean they fancy you but I don't know if that's necessarily flirting no I think it has to be combined with a variety of other factors so I think with maybe eye contact and with I think also what I've noticed is when people say your name yeah do you know what I mean like if someone says oh great not just like oh Rachel can you get me that sandwich but it's like yeah do you know what I mean like if someone says oh great not just like oh Rachel can you get me that sandwich but it's like what do you think about that Rachel like they didn't have to say your name at the end of that sentence yeah you know what I mean but I'm also now just thinking I'm pretty sure I say people's names a lot like more more than most people you don't say
Starting point is 00:09:58 my name very often I feel like I do well if you're, Olivia. If you're trying to get someone's attention, then you obviously do. But I think, yeah, I think it's just about environment as well. I think good flirting comes down to, to be honest with you, not these silly things like, oh, touching their arm or whatever. It's just knowing what to say, saying something that's witty and playful and having a good comeback and, you know, feeding off each other. The thing is as well, like, you know, pick a part is we'll try and sell like a one-size-fits-all approach but it's just not like that because what what works for one person won't work for another and like yeah
Starting point is 00:10:34 it can just be awkward if you're really hitting on someone and they're just not feeling it and when someone persists it's so awkward oh my god when i was in thailand once um a few years ago and i was walking with this guy and he he said oh so i was reading the other day about how um girls really like it when you pull their hair what and i was like oh really that sounds interesting he's like yeah they find it really sexy no i was like huh okay anyway he then pulls my hair what we're just walking down the street and he just grabs my ponytail and yanks it back and then kind of looks me was like did you like that I was like oh my god you're so strange that is so weird and he clearly thought that he was trying to being a flirt or I don't know it's yeah the lack of picking up of signals I do find though
Starting point is 00:11:21 that um a lot of guys like if you a lot of my girlfriends say this you know if you fancy a boy and you're like trying to flirt you're trying to drop all the signs you know like sugar babe saying that song push the button you know yeah she's been dropping so many hints and he's just not getting it like some boys are clueless though they really are I mean I'm sure some girls are too but I do think that often you have to make quite clear if you like someone. But you know what you should always do, which I have now learned, is also make sure they're not gay. Because I did have a situation once where I fancied this guy
Starting point is 00:11:59 and I was like starting the flirting. And then I made the courageous decision to Instagram stalk him and saw many pictures of him with his boyfriend which was you know soul-destroying yeah but you know at least I found out before I embarrassed myself yeah it's also it's very difficult though to just tell someone straight up that you fancy them oh terrifying no one does that. No, absolutely not. For a reason. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. I'm Jessie Kirkshank, and on my podcast, Phone a Friend,
Starting point is 00:12:41 I break down the biggest stories in pop culture. But when I have questions, I get to phone a friend. I phone my old friend, Dan Levy. You will not die hosting the Hills after show. I get thirsty for the hot wiggle. I didn't even know a thirsty man until there was all these headlines. And I get schooled by a tween. Facebook is like a no. That's what my grandma's on.
Starting point is 00:13:04 Thank God Phone a Friend with Jesse Crookshank is not available on Facebook. It's out now wherever you get your podcasts. Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com Anyway, so the second topic we're going to discuss today is very linked to flirting and that it's really about when does flirting become sexual harassment and this is something that a lot of people have been talking about recently because of you know it's all started with Harvey Weinstein and there have been a lot more allegations recently that have come out about people in the public eye and otherwise about sexual harassment. And it does throw up this question of what's flirting and what's
Starting point is 00:13:51 harassment. Actually, last week, there were a lot of people talking in the media about a very prominent political journalist who it turned out he'd been sexually harassing a lot of women and no one had known about it. Well, you know, all these women had kept it to themselves largely. It was sort of spoken about, but it was kind of a secret. And one woman came out publicly and named him. And then there was just this tidal wave of women who said, oh, my gosh, he did that to me, too. He'd been messaging me, he'd been harassing me, he groped me, he forced himself upon me. And I was actually one of the women who
Starting point is 00:14:33 was messaged by him. I never met up with him. And I never, that's what's made me really think about it. Because I sort of found him, you know, a bit, he was pestering me a little. And he was being flirty. But I never, I never was too worried about it before this all happened, because I never thought it was really harassment. Do you think looking back on it now, knowing that he kind of forced himself on other women, would you say that it was harassment now in retrospect? I don't think it's really difficult. I don it was harassment now in retrospect I don't think it's really difficult I don't think it was harass I don't think it was harassment at that level because it was just you know trying to get me to go for a drink but then when I said like no I'm
Starting point is 00:15:16 busy or you know no I don't want to or something it wasn't it was he didn't carry on pestering and he was you know complimenting me on my looks whatever whenever I would post a picture of myself so I think it wasn't it wasn't I didn't feel like I was really engaging with him in the flirting back but now I now I know now I know like what he was like with other women who did meet up with him and then there was a whole different level as the fact that he turns out he had a wife and children which no one knew about but I think this all this is a really interesting debate about when is flirting just fun flirting and when is it sexual harassment and I think it often comes down to whether that flirting is wanted and reciprocated and if it isn't the flirter needs to stop because that's when it becomes harassment. Totally
Starting point is 00:16:01 persistence it's it when it's unwelcome and unwanted. That is by law the definition of sexual harassment. And obviously you could argue that, you know, the person who is flirting slash harassing doesn't know whether it's unwanted or, you know, is making you feel uncomfortable. But you'd like to think that they should quite quickly get the impression of, OK, this person's playing back. This person flirting back this person is enjoying this or they're trying to shut it down and it's then when you persist that it's harassment yeah and I think also comes down to environment a lot of the time so you know if it's in an office for example and someone is making inappropriate jokes talking about their sex lives asking you about your sex life,
Starting point is 00:16:46 like that's just completely inappropriate and that would be deemed a sexual harassment. Whereas if that person was in a bar and you were drinking with them and you were on a date, you know, it would be kind of crude, but it wouldn't necessarily be sexual harassment. Completely. And I think the fact that this guy was messaging people on Twitter
Starting point is 00:17:05 although Twitter isn't like you know explicitly a professional platform or a it's not it's not kind of targeted at one thing but you know it's not a dating app and it's not it's neither a dating app nor is it something like LinkedIn yeah it's not like I'd like actively swiped right on him no but equally this is a man who was a journalist, was using Twitter a lot to kind of build his professional profile. Therefore, I do think it's inappropriate that he was using that to message women,
Starting point is 00:17:36 because it's kind of like he's capitalizing on that public profile that he's built, that professional profile, and using it to try and flirt or harass women and a lot of the women i spoke to like my friends who are also young female journalists who said that he'd done the same to them said that basically they just thought wow this guy's super influential he's a really big deal he'd be a good person to know good person to have as a contact good you know he you know i'd be able to learn from him etc etc and that again is kind of like the weinstein thing is that it's someone who's
Starting point is 00:18:08 more powerful yeah and i mean yeah it's obviously it's not on the same level at all but no but then it becomes really difficult because then giles corinne a journalist for the times i read that yeah he wrote an article saying well now i'm never to put kisses at the end of my emails to women because I don't want them to misinterpret my kindness and my pleasantness as sexual harassment. And I just think that is a real shame that that kind of way of thinking is now going to be perpetuated by men because it's like now everyone's so terrified as their actions being misinterpreted.
Starting point is 00:18:42 But that's just exactly the kind of culture that we should be avoiding. Yeah, I agree. It's just, I remember, you know, we've all had experiences like this, I'm sure. But I remember very distinctly, this was actually when I was living in Brussels. And I remember this, it was actually quite a scary experience. I was literally at a food market trying to buy, I can't remember what I was buying, some food. And the stallholder was just flirting with me so much, but just wouldn't take no for an answer. And so when I, he would, you know, he asked me if I was around here.
Starting point is 00:19:17 He asked, you know, from around here, he asked me, you know, if I had a boyfriend. And this was where I did the classic thing which I hate doing because I don't think women should have to do this no actually before he asked me
Starting point is 00:19:30 if I had a boyfriend he asked me if I was married did he? and I said no and then he said do you have a boyfriend and I said yes back home in England
Starting point is 00:19:41 I always lie in those situations but you feel awful because I hate the fact that the guy will only respect your decision of no if you say that another man has claimed you, which is just so not on. Why can't you just accept that women say no? But this guy carried on this flirting,
Starting point is 00:19:56 was trying to be playful, but he kept being like, oh, are you on Facebook? I lied. No. What's your number? And I was like, I don't have a phone that works here. And he was like, what's your email address? number and I was like I I don't have a phone that
Starting point is 00:20:05 works here and he was like what's your email address and I was like I'm only meant to use it for work and you know it was just outrageous I it made me feel really uncomfortable and scared but and like I think he thought he was flirting but it just made me feel really scared it's weird that in that kind of situation you can feel so petrified and kind of it's obviously so unwanted from your perspective but from their perspective it could like you said they could think that they're flirting with you and that they've got a chance I remember when I was about 16 I was sat on a park bench on my own I was reading I was waiting to meet a friend and this guy came and sat next to me and was like hey beautiful what are you reading and that happens when like
Starting point is 00:20:46 I've heard a lot of my friends who will be reading books alone in a park or on a tube people see it as an invitation to come and be like hey what are you reading that's happened to me before actually a lady oh it's horrible anyway I was petrified I didn't know what to do I was literally on my own in this park small park in the middle of the suburbs in London so I just started speaking Spanish and pretended that I couldn't speak English and I was like oh lo siento no hablo inglés adios and just got up and ran away and he was like he was actually so stupid before I ran away he was like oh you French and I was like adios and just waved and literally scuttled off that's so funny yeah it would have been a bit
Starting point is 00:21:25 would have been a bit backfired if he'd started speaking spanish yeah can you imagine yeah that was a risk i was willing to take but that would have been so bad so i actually read an article um from a that quoted a dating expert sort of that was about this um line between flirting and sexual harassment and this was james priest who is brilliant and he'd said that um the trick is to make your flirting playful not sexual it's either which I think is really important especially before you you know if you're still if you're trying to work out if that person's interested in you like this is the initial flirting I think once you know once you have me like a bit further down the line and you can tell that this person fancies you too, and they don't feel like you're harassing them, I think that's when you can make it a bit more sexual. But I think
Starting point is 00:22:11 at the start it needs to be, you know, lighthearted to test the water so that no one feels like you're being harassed. I mean, it's not, sexual harassment isn't illegal, but the dictionary defines sexual harassment, the Oxford English D the dictionary defines sexual harassment the oxford english dictionary as unwanted sexual advances and obscene remarks so i think you have to think there about the sexual and obscene thing and um the equality act 2010 says it's an unwanted conduct of sexual nature which violates a person's dignity or creates an intimidating hostile degrading or offensive environment and like those descriptions there are so far from describing flirting so far from describing flirting it's and you know like you said if someone were to make those kind of sexual comments or
Starting point is 00:22:57 obscene remarks in the first stages of you know dating it would be deemed as sexual harassment but whereas if you said if it's you know if someone makes sort of slightly sexual remarks further down the line once you've been seeing someone for a few weeks it is seen as more playful because you kind of have you've both established that you have you are kind of getting to a more sexual intimate relationship with that person it's difficult because you know you don't know people and you don't know how people are going to react like yeah there are plenty of us who will just you know have a lol about like a sexual innuendo like ha ha that's so funny like that wasn't flirting that wasn't harassment that wasn't anything and there are other people who think that oh that's really inappropriate I feel
Starting point is 00:23:39 uncomfortable and but you know that the same thing goes with anything like that I think it's important to use your intuition and use your instinct and you can normally sense when a person is vaguely into you or not and I think in those instances you have to apply your instinct and just think okay this person clearly isn't interested in me I'm not gonna bother speaking to them anymore or vice versa speaking of not being interested topic three of today is ghosting and okay I feel like everyone knows what ghosting is but actually I think that's not true I think this is probably just the world me and my friends live in because it occurs quite regularly in our lives ghosting is one of these new dating terms that I mean there are so many of them. It feels like every day, every week, someone's coined a new term for some supposedly new
Starting point is 00:24:30 dating practice. But ghosting, I think, is a real legitimate thing. It has stuck. Ghosting is essentially where at some point during the courting process, it could be very early on, you may have just matched on Bumble or Tinder, or it could be, you know, after months of dating. It's where you just disappear. A person just disappears. They stop replying to all messages and they have ghosted you. They have essentially died and turned into a ghost because they no longer exist. But the question is, is this acceptable? And if so, when? What do you think?
Starting point is 00:25:07 So I think in the instances that we were just talking about with sexual harassment and when someone is flirting with someone that clearly isn't interested, it is okay to no longer engage with that person. It is okay to stop replying to their messages and ignore them and let them know that you are not interested. If that person keeps persisting and not doesn't get the idea then you block them you do everything in your power to stop them from being able to contact you but I think that is a clear example when it is perfectly
Starting point is 00:25:35 okay to go to someone I think it's so funny because people do think about it in really different ways my personal opinion is that if you're just like chatting on a dating app and like, okay, maybe you kind of change your mind or they say something that you're a bit like, Oh, don't really like that about you.
Starting point is 00:25:51 Or maybe they like use an apostrophe wrong, God forbid. Or, you know, you look back at their pictures and then you're actually like, Oh, what does this a drunk swipe? And you know,
Starting point is 00:26:03 there's just something. And then you decide that actually now then I think you know I think ghosting when you're still on the dating app stages is fine what I don't think is fine is ghosting after you've met up in person I personally think even if it's just after one date you owe someone that you know it's politeness it's courtesy of if you don't want to go out again tell them that I don't I think that's fair because I think otherwise the person who's being ghosted doesn't really get any closure and it's just sort of a bit like uh what's happening I agree but it's so I think it's so rare for someone to actually have the guts to send a message or a phone call or say in person
Starting point is 00:26:46 even better I'm just not that into you as the film goes and I think that we should just be friends it's so it takes a lot of guts to be able to do that so I can see why people ghost people but equally from the other perspective if I was you know if I was interested in someone and they weren't it wasn't reciprocal they weren't interested in me I'd almost rather they ghosted me than said to me really well I don't like if they say to you I'm really I'm not interested in you I you know you're this you're that you're to this like that's horrible I'd rather just be ghosted that's the thing I think a lot of people think it's kinder to ghost. However, I feel like I would just like someone,
Starting point is 00:27:29 just let me down kindly, make up some excuse, be like, actually, I'm really sorry. I'm just really busy with work right now. Or like, I actually realized I'm not quite over my ex, blah, blah, blah. Just like, you know, do something like that. Do like, do it's not me, it's you. I mean, no, the other way around.
Starting point is 00:27:43 It's not me, it's you. It's not you. What is it way around it's not me it's you it's not you what is it it's not you it's me you know the classic lines I just sort of want to know where I stand though it's so I know but I still just kind of I just I really hate ghosting it's real lack of manners I think I think to be honest with you like I'm sure there are times where I've been ghosted early on and literally just not noticed because you're when you're talking to multiple people on a dating app I think I often just don't notice if someone stops applying because you're not that into anyone yeah I wouldn't even necessarily call that ghosting I just think that's common dating at practice like because everyone's speaking to so many people at one time to not reply to someone after a few messages I don't think that really counts as ghosting I think it's if you've had a couple of conversations separate times maybe you've met up maybe you
Starting point is 00:28:31 haven't but then you just suddenly cut off all communication I actually um did a little social experiment a while ago when I decided to contact all the guys who'd ghosted me. And I tried different approaches. Some of them I just went for like a, hi, how are you? Like completely out of the blue, like not having spoken to these guys for months. And most of those just didn't reply.
Starting point is 00:28:57 And I was like, rude. I saw the blue. They double ghosted you. Some of them, actually, I felt like there was like a really long list. I'm talking like a handful um maybe like six or seven I don't know um and I think some did get back to me which is really nice and some were really like OMG hi Rachel nice to hear from you and um and then I they were sort
Starting point is 00:29:19 of like what's up so then I was kind of like so I was just wondering why you ghosted me you actually asked them yeah let's see one of them was like what's ghosting and I was like oh god case in point like don't you read my articles clearly not hopefully not hopefully doesn't listen to podcast either um and so this guy was just like um oh well you know you just kind of seemed really busy and it seemed like we were never gonna meet up and I was like oh okay fair enough one of them we actually sort of oh first he was like really pissed off so I was kind of asking from a sort of like a and he was like oh my god you just got back in touch because what you're gonna try and get an article out of this or something and I was like damn it he saw right through you no no maybe podcast um and then that's sort of actually the conversation carried on going for like quite a few days and I was like omg is this going to be the start of a blossoming
Starting point is 00:30:15 relationship then I think it goes to me again no way oh once a ghoster always a ghoster my um my friend actually um the other day got a text from a guy that she had ghosted kind of subconsciously. I don't think she realized she was doing it. And we were at this event and she suddenly her face just dropped. And I was like, what's wrong? She just showed me this text that she got from this guy who she had stopped messaging. She wasn't interested. And it was like, I know it's not Halloween yet, but are you ghosting me?
Starting point is 00:30:43 That's quite funny. I quite like that. Well, it's quite funny, but we couldn't work out his motivations for it. We were like, okay, is he A, pissed off and addressing the situation quite pragmatically? Or is he B, trying to be a little bit funny and just being like, hey, why don't you talk to me? Let's talk. I'm so funny. Look, look how funny I am.
Starting point is 00:31:01 Did she reply? I actually don't know. I don't think she did. Oh, alas, alas, alas. Yeah. It's quite a difficult thing to reply to. What would you say? Yeah, sorry, I just wasn't feeling it.
Starting point is 00:31:12 Yeah, you can't, if she actually was, you can't be like, yes. Yeah, but also if, you know, it's so obvious if she's like, oh, sorry, I've been really bad with my phone and I've been really busy with work it's so obvious so it doesn't really isn't anything she can say there's no good situation no I just think it's absolutely outrageous when people actually do like date for months then just go someone instead of like yeah I think for months that's awful I think rather than I think if you've been dating someone
Starting point is 00:31:40 properly if your boyfriend and girlfriend whatever that that means, but if you are official, and then you just stop all communication with them. What is that? That's horrific, that's just cruel, and that's selfish. So cruel. I'm like, apparently I'm quite good at breakup messages though. Are you?
Starting point is 00:31:55 Yeah, I've been told this is like a forte of mine. Not that I've like done loads. Breakup messages though, that's quite brutal. No, no, no, but here's the thing, because I'm never at the stage yet where it like, this isn't like the, you've been out on like on like three dates type thing okay uh this is where this is where like I'm this is where I always get to and then I send a break but apparently apparently they're very good I've been told so I have enough experience of it whereas
Starting point is 00:32:23 I think you know once you've been dating for longer it does you have to do it in person and that's horrible but I rarely get that and that's also hard another topic for another day exactly another topic another day and look at that we're out of time this has been so fun Olivia have you had fun I've had so much fun it's just like us gossiping we hope you have had as much fun listening as we have had chatting. If you'd like to give us any thoughts or feedback, please do drop us an email at millennial.love at independent.co.uk or you can tweet us. My Twitter is at Rachel underscore Hosey.
Starting point is 00:32:58 Mine is at Olivia Petter 1. And we would love you to rate and subscribe and tell all your friends. And we hope you'll tune in again next week bye say. Holla differently this year with DoorDash. Don't want to holla do the most? Holla don't. More festive, less frantic. Get deals for every occasion with DoorDash.

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