PERSONAL & RELATIONSHIPS
Did You Hear About Orbiting?
It’s like ghosting, but worse
Ever heard of it? I didn’t — until a few months ago. I read an article in a German online newspaper. It was 100 percent my story. [1]
Let me explain “Orbiting” to you. Not only in the context of dating, but also in the context of friendships.
First of all, we need to clarify “ghosting”.
What is ghosting?
I guess most of you heard about it or even experienced it.
Oxford Languages defines the term “ghosting” in the context of relationships as “the practice of ending a personal relationship with someone by suddenly and without explanation withdrawing from all communication.” [2]
This is not only an issue when it comes to dating, but also with friendships, as in my case. In fact, it was never a real friendship.
Just like in relationships, if you hurt your partner, don’t take him seriously, or accept that your behavior makes the other person feel bad, then you don’t have real feelings.
These people are not friends or do not love their partners. This is egoism and egocentricity, but neither friendship nor love. If it is genuine and honest, then one does everything not to hurt the other.
It may be easier to just cut off contact with someone without explanation.
But it can be stressful for the other person. If you have supposedly understood each other well and are then dumped without explanation, it gnaws at your self-confidence and you doubt your perception.
I think people who ghost others are plain rude and cowards! What do you think?
So, what is Orbiting?
The Manual writes that people will rarely ghost you in the digital world these days (meaning they will cut off contact completely), but rather circle around you.
That’s where the name is coming from: they circle around you like a satellite orbiting around a planet. [3]
They will continue to follow you on social media.
They just watch you, without wanting to get in contact. For example, they watch your Instagram stories, and click on your profiles often, but never try to get in contact.
My former best friend does that right now.
She watches all my Facebook and Instagram stories and visits my business profiles every few days. She marks Facebook events as “interested” whenever I do. She lives 2 hours away, so she won’t be there for sure — she never visited me at home.
Sometimes she even hits the “like” button, but she never answered me, left me on ‘read’, no matter if I had reached out via Messenger, or called her.
I called her once and wrote one message to ask what was going on. I never heard from her again.
I didn’t block her on social media, because I use my profiles for business purposes and they are public. After a while, I didn’t care anymore.
I only deleted her number from my mobile phone, so she won’t see my WhatsApp status.
It started a few years ago when she slow-faded me after we were best friends for a few years — that’s at least what I thought and what she said.
We never argued about anything, so I still don’t get it. I’ll write about that experience in one of my next articles.
Have you been ghosted or orbited by someone you were dating or by a friend?
Join with my link to get full access to all stories on Medium!About Me — Iris B. Stehn ▪ Twitter ▪ FacebookSources:
[2]: https://languages.oup.com/google-dictionary-en/ via google search for the term “ghosting”
[3]: The Manual: https://www.themanual.com/culture/modern-relationship-terms-explained/
