“The Art of Ghosting” is a guide to a lost form: the breakup text message. You may have sent one or received one. If you have, you know the feeling. The power of the breakup text is that it allows us to break up with someone we barely know, and probably will never see again — and say it in the least painful way possible. But how do you write one? What do you leave out?

Trying to answer these questions, I realized there was another question: Why had I never ghosted anyone?

I’ve broken up with hundreds of men. I didn’t know most of them well enough to ghost them. They were all real relationships, and they all ended in real pain.

But what if I had known just enough about them to ghost them? What if I had known where they lived and what their favorite foods were? What if, instead of feeling bad about breaking up with someone, I could feel good about it? By asking myself this question, I realized that ghosting is not a method for ending relationships so much as it’s an art for beginning them — for creating the conditions for an experience entirely removed from pain and disappointment. Ghosting isn’t just a way to break up with someone; it’s

Ghosters leave a trail of emotional wreckage, but unlike breakers, they’re not trying to hurt anyone. Ghosting is a passive and cowardly act, but it’s almost always an unintentional one. Breaking up, in contrast, is malicious.

Ghosting is what I call the process whereby one person ends a relationship by simply disappearing—no explanation, no goodbyes. It’s the most effective way to end a relationship there is because it’s so easy. You don’t have to break up face-to-face or tell the other person why you’re leaving, thereby risking an awkward conversation or an argument. All you have to do is pull the plug, figuratively if not literally.

Ghosting always feels bad for the ghostee—the person who’s being ghosted—because it leaves them hanging and wondering and worrying about what happened. The ghoster may feel relief at first, but that quickly gives way to remorse over how they handled things. And they may also feel some guilt—about how they handled things and also about moving on so quickly to someone else without any consideration for their ex. (If there was an “ex” at all.)

A Ghoster is the kind of person who will sleep with someone, and then disappear; or who will stop answering emails. A Breaker-up is the kind of person who will tell you they think a relationship isn’t working, and then do everything they can to make sure it doesn’t work.

Both are ways of breaking up with someone, but one is an active process, and the other passive.

If you’re a Ghoster, it’s easy to not take responsibility for your actions. You may even believe that you’re not really in control of what you do. Maybe you don’t realize that you’ve changed your mind about a relationship. Or maybe you just don’t care about your partner’s feelings.

The secret of being a good Ghoster is to have enough self-control so that when your partner confronts you about why you aren’t answering their messages, your responses are believable and consistent. This gives them the impression that it must be something going on with them, and not with your relationship.

Breakups that happen because one person stops talking to another are more honest relationships than those that happen because two people decide they should break up, but this honesty comes at a cost: each person reacts differently to being ghosted by someone they cared about

Ghosting is the act of breaking up with someone by never responding to their texts or calls, but not actually having the conversation. Ghosting is a cowardly act for people who are afraid to confront others face-to-face about their relationship status change.

Ghosting is not always as easy as it sounds. Sometimes people ghost because they’re too scared to admit that they’re over a person. Other times, it’s because they don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. But there are still other times when people ghost because they feel that ghosting will save them from a confrontation.

The objective of ghosting is to end the relationship without hurting anyone’s feelings and without looking bad in front of either party. Ghosting seems like the best option at first because it’s so much easier than having an actual conversation with your partner, ex-partner or potential partner.

I have had my fair share of heartbreaks, but I also have had my fair share of successful breakups where I never needed to employ the service of ghosting. The key to ending relationships is communicating effectively and honestly with your partner or ex-partner.

I have been a ghostwriter for five years. When people ask me what I do, I tell them that I write books, but they sometimes think I mean the kind you read. No, I say; the kind you don’t. This is because most of my clients are businesspeople, and they are less likely to be avid readers than avid doers.

The other kind are artists (painters, sculptors, musicians) who want to write an autobiography or memoir but don’t have time for the work required.

Ghostwriting is a service industry job like any other. Sometimes it’s fun and exciting; sometimes it’s boring or emotionally difficult. Like any other service industry job, it pays well if you can get the work, and poorly if you can’t.

Trying to figure out how much you’ll earn as a ghostwriter is complicated by the fact that there are two basic kinds: those that pay per word and those that pay a flat fee (which includes editing and design.) The former pays better if your client writes quickly and well; the latter pays better if your client writes slowly (or needs lots of editing.)

The average ghostwriter makes $30-40 per hour when ghosting a book written by someone else (flat fee)

What is art?

I don’t know. But I have an idea of what makes a good picture. The picture has to have something in it that you can’t quite figure out — a little detail that keeps your eye going back and forth, trying to figure it out.

My partner and I are going to have this baby. We’re both really excited about it. I can feel it kick sometimes, when we’re cuddling; it’s like a little flutter in my tummy, right under my ribs, and I want to just sit there and feel it all afternoon.

I also want to paint the nursery yellow. Yellow is my favourite colour. It’s warm, and bright, which makes me think of sunshine and happiness – which is appropriate, because that’s what I’m going for. So sunny and happy and warm! That’s how I imagine having this child will be: a little sunbeam coming into this dark world.

But my partner has veto power over paint colour – she has a super-keen sense of colour discrimination. She says yellow will make the baby look jaundiced or sickly, or at least give him a weird complexion. I keep imagining the baby with a kind of green tinge to its skin or something. It doesn’t seem like much of a problem to me – after all, babies don’t care what colour they’re painted – but she’s insistent that we paint the room something else instead.

My partner paints in oil; I use watercolour paper, usually white but