I know a person who was in a relationship that lasted long enough to travel together but marry or merge families – it had lots of promise until suddenly, one of the partners disappeared and the other found themselves ‘ghosted’.

No attempt to reestablish contact worked – the aggrieved party never knowing why it happened, why so suddenly and what was wrong with them (if anything really was).

Gili Freedman, an assistant professor of psychology at St. Mary’s College in Maryland quoted recently in The New York Times said even ghosters are filled with the same guilt.

The good news — time heals all and humans are “particularly resilient to ghosting”.

In a study, people who were ghosted in the previous 12 months had the same levels of loneliness, helplessness and life satisfaction than those who had not been ghosted.

So, the abandoned person wasn’t the only thing that disappeared, so did the side effects.