Dear Kenyan men: Ghosting is not normal, it’s ballistic

My friend got stood up this week, and boy, was it painful and reminiscent of my own suffering some time back! Not to turn this into something that is all about myself, but really, every time we hear a story about something happening to our friends, we either remember the last time it happened to us, or start praying fervently that it won’t ever happen to us.

I digress – my lovely friend had been talking to this guy for three months. They had met online, and built up a bit of a connection, and so, decided to meet up. On the day before the meet up, in his usual fashion, he texted her the sweet nothings he had been texting her this quarter…and then on the morning of, when she asked for details about where and when they were meeting up and what time she should be ready, he went MIA.

The same thing more or less happened to me, when it did. I had just come out of a relationship and I was trying to hit ‘the streets’ – and I had no experience with these lanes. So when someone slid into my DMs, I thought, oh, is this what we’re doing nowadays? I played along. I believe in equal opportunity, and I was trying to get back in the game, as they say. When he said we should meet up, I said, sure. I had been manifesting dating, right? Dates, rather. Just to feel things out, see what I was looking for. When I was already dressed and ready to go, he stopped picking up my calls. He also didn’t respond to my messages a half hour before the date.

It’s such a boring tale. It’s boring because it happens too often and because the formula is always the same: build something online, never take it offline, just like Kenyans On Twitter. Then come D-day, no one will show up be it in a protest or a date. Why then did the spineless boy go through the trouble of awakening your feelings with absolutely no intention of following through?

Is it that guys feel like every date is a commitment to a future relationship? Because obviously, it isn’t. Maybe I want a new friend. Maybe you want something very different from me, or not as intense as the word friendship would imply. Is it that you are scared to say that you changed your mind? Spoiler alert: it’s pretty clear that you changed your mind when you don’t show up. Just because you didn’t say it, doesn’t make the truth less true. You ran out of cash for the date? Si then you say?

Basic respect – which Nairobi Dating ™ is truly lacking, would kind of dictate that some form of less cowardly communication is required when a date is being made. If the rules of etiquette aren’t common, we need to make them common again. It’s frustrating, it’s annoying, it’s unnecessary, and it speaks more to how you’re never going to speak to this person again, and she will be telling all her circles because now she has your Instagram handle and once you’re on social media, anyone can track you down.

The next day, after I had spent the day cooling my heels and venting on Twitter, this guy called me with a weak excuse – again, boring. Something about how he had an errand to run out of town, and didn’t get back at the time he thought he did, and then his phone died, so he couldn’t call me…and so on, and so forth. He didn’t apologise for wasting my time, or explain why he didn’t call when he got back from out of town. He simply said, so when can we meet again? I said, I don’t think we’re meeting, and here’s why. He hung up, upset. His loss, really – no one likes a boundary, but everyone needs one.

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