Was I Ghosted by a Narcissist, or Does He Just Have ADHD?

In a society that puts profit before people, it’s hard not to feel broken-hearted. Landlords split friends, nuclear families isolate parents, bosses burn out workers. But fear not – Red Flags is here to tend to your troubled hearts. 

In Novara Media’s anti-capitalist anti-advice column, resident therapist Sophie K Rosa marries their ongoing training in psychoanalysis with ideas from their book, Radical Intimacy, to respond to your questions. Unlike other agony aunts, Sophie doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but they could help you unlock new ways of thinking. 

To submit a dilemma to Sophie, please fill out this form.

Dear Sophie,

I dated a guy for around 6 weeks over Christmas last year. We had been on each other’s radar for years through social media and because we live quite near to one another. We finally met in early December and started to date quite intensely.

Then, around mid January, he went totally silent on me out of the blue. We had even planned to go on holiday together, and since this “silent treatment” – or whatever it is – I’ve been pretty devastated and confused emotionally. It really has hit me hard, especially since I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety in the past.

Of course, I’ve suspected that he has quite narcissistic traits, and as a way to understand his actions I have been researching narcissistic behaviour a lot since he cut me out. I can’t help feeling, however, that he might also just have ADHD. Perhaps he felt this was something he needed to hide from me and so he withdrew emotionally? I know this sounds like I’m scrabbling for a more convenient diagnosis, but he mentioned that he thinks he ‘is very ADHD’ and lots of his behaviour suggests this.

My cognitive dissonance has been through the roof for weeks over this. I know narcissism and ADHD can have many overlapping traits, and I can’t help but feel there was more to our brief relationship than just love-bombing on his part.

As I say, I really feel like I’m struggling since effectively being ghosted. My instincts tell me he was genuinely interested and I want to reach out to him for at least some closure or to possibly reconnect.

The whole thing has left me in a bad place and any advice you could offer would be greatly appreciated.

– Diagnosis: Haunted

Dear Diagnosis: Haunted,

Sharing an intense connection with someone who subsequently vanishes without explanation can be such a painful and lonely experience. It can feel terribly unfair, too: How dare they treat us with such disregard, after all we shared? Do we not deserve some kind of communication, at least? This emotional purgatory has in recent years been aptly named ‘ghosting’. And the experience can indeed be as eerie and disturbing as the word suggests. 

I notice that psychological diagnoses and monikers hold a particular significance to you. In the space of your short letter, you have mentioned depression, anxiety, narcissism, ADHD, love-bombing and cognitive dissonance. “Of course, I’ve suspected that he has quite narcissistic traits,” you write. 

I wonder about this ‘of course’. It is quite natural to have theories about the causes of behaviour that has left you so hurt – but why do you think this conclusion presents itself as the obvious one? I can only speculate about the significance of narcissism for you, but I will say that I have noticed a proliferation of social media content on the subject lately – often by people diagnosing their exes.  

If narcissism is your ex’s bad diagnosis, it seems ADHD – a diagnosis that has spoken to an increasing number of people’s psychic experiences in recent times – is the one that lets him off the hook. I am of the opinion that diagnoses are, for the most part, as helpful (or not) as an individual finds them to be for understanding themselves. The same label will have a different meaning and function from one person to the next. From your letter, it seems that for you such categories are useful for understanding both yourself and your ex. I’d like to respect that, whilst also offering a different perspective, that holds such labels somewhat lightly. 

Diagnoses – and psychological monikers such as love-bombing, cognitive dissonance and even ghosting itself – are culturally contingent. Whilst comparable experiences, feelings and even neurobiological traits might span time, place and social context, our diagnostic categories speak to a particular cultural moment. This needn’t make the terms we have available any less meaningful, but it might change their meaning – which is to say, such terms are not necessarily ineluctable fact. As you have observed, for example, your ex’s behaviour seems, to your mind, to fit two diagnoses – and it likely fits many more. 

Today’s pop psychological schema can seem quite binary – for example, some diagnoses are ‘bad’, interpersonally-speaking, and others, as you put it, are more ‘convenient’. I question how generative this notion is for real, unique relationships – it might write people off entirely, or otherwise excuse people’s unkind behaviour altogether. Certainly, it is important to take an interest in why people might be the way they are in relationships – doing so can afford us more patience and empathy – but I think diagnoses alone often fall short. I can see why you might reach for them though, for some kind of explanation – especially in the absence of enough time to get to know this person more deeply. 

No matter what diagnoses or behaviour types you might identify in this person – or indeed in yourself – there is no doubt his ‘ghosting’ has caused you significant pain. I would imagine you feel like you were owed more care and consideration than he afforded you, in his sudden, inexplicable disappearance. Notwithstanding some serious misfortune on his end, it does sound like he acted unkindly, to say the least. 

Unkindly, why? I think it is a question of what we might owe each other, which seems to have become an especially fraught one in modern dating. Long gone are the days of strict, linear dating etiquette. And whilst this is in many ways a good thing – in that it can afford us more creativity and freedom in our relationships – it can also heighten the uncertainty already inherent to romantic and sexual relationships. Without established etiquette – especially around app-based dating – it is often up to us to determine and communicate how we expect to be treated. 

Then again, we may well – understandably – feel that some things are a given. Perhaps shared language attempts to build an emotional consensus: most people agree that ghosting an intimate connection – whether a hook-up, a friend or a longer-term lover – is hurtful behaviour. 

I empathise with your yearning to explicate what happened in a diagnostic way, and also wonder whether the time that has passed since you wrote your letter has opened up new possibilities for you. As psychoanalysis would have it, we can never truly understand each other, anyway. And, although pessimistic by some standards, I think this insight can be liberatory, too. We can attempt to live alongside others, certainly – but as close as we may feel to them, they are likely to remain, essentially, mysterious. With that in mind, the crucial question about others’ behaviour might be: can I live with this? And then, do I want to?