Vol. 30, Issue 1, pp. 1-27, ISSN 2232-3716.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1110346
Research articl

“Ghosting emotions”: An open door for navigating intimacy in

contemporary Spain

Sandra Fernández-García

Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), sandrafg@fsof.uned.es

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8470-9361

Francisco Sánchez-Vall

Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), fsanchezval@uoc.edu

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6144-3962

Abstrac
Ghosting has mostly been associated with app-dating. However, our research ad-
dresses “ghosting” as a broader eld of face-to-face avoidance practices. The article
highlights the role of avoidance in emotional practices to maintain ongoing rela-
tionships. In the case of contemporary Spain, the structural uncertainty that per-
meates intimate relationships – related to neoliberalism’s emphasis on individual-
ism in the shaping of subjectivities – is reinforced by the tension in the coexistence
of romantic and con uent models of love, which translates into a lack of scripts
when it comes to dealing with intimacy. Drawing on the results of an ethnographic
research project based on interviews with adults in the city of Madrid, we examine
the ways in which social actors adapt their behavior to the context through what
we have called “ghosting emotions.” This analytical tool accounts for those indi-
vidual strategies, which, as a result of an exercise of emotional re exivity, limit re-
lationality by avoiding certain social practices in the shaping of intimacy. Thus, this
article shows the concrete processes through which actors develop patterns shap-
ing structural dimensions in contemporary intimacies when facing uncertainties.
To safeguard individuality within relationships, these practices function as a means
of enhancing a sense of control by leaving “an open door”

KEYWORDS: emotions, intimacy, love, ghosting, neoliberal emotional regime

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 Introduction
Given all the contemporary structural changes that have permeated the relational condi-
tions of the modern individual, the social processes of constructing intimacy have
ceased to be a safe haven for the production of authenticity associated with the self
(Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 1995). According to the theorists of so-called re exive moder-
nity (Beck et al., 1994), the process of detraditionalization, that is, the loss of “ontological
security” for our moral and emotional practices provided by tradition, has generated
high doses of uncertainty across all spheres of life. While these authors constitute a het-
erogeneous corpus, they share certain analytical categories when it comes to diagnosing
contemporary societies: instability, fragility, and uidity that lead to affective uncertain-
ty. According to the authors of risk theory, it has been proposed that the so-called rst
modernity and its emotional correlate, that is, romantic love, have been replaced by re-
exive modernity, with its corresponding affective-sexual model: the so-called “con u-
ent love” (Giddens, 1992) or “liquid love” (Bauman, 2003). By prioritizing the cognitive
component in individuals’ decision-making practices, this kind of love has been charac-
terized by relationships grounded in circumstantial encounters and ephemeral con u-
ence, thus amounting to a contingent love.

Nevertheless, throughout this paper, rather than assuming “romantic” and “con uent
love” as sequential models followed by agents, they are understood to be overlapping
ideals that inform social practices in the pursuit of intimacy. Love, as a structuring prac-
tice for social interactions, in which affective bonds are at stake (Rapport, 2017), does not
remain a static category. Thus, the signi cance of love, and thus of emotional life, has
changed both over time (for the context of Spain, see Delgado et al., 2016) and place (for
cross-cultural approaches to love, see Karandashev, 2019 and Pananakhonsab, 2016).
Hybrid ideals to enact contemporary intimacy shape an emotional regime that tran-
scends the mere substitution of one for the other. Although romantic love endures across
several areas of everyday life – especially through its cultural manifestations (Dong,
2023) – there are resistances, contestations, and processes of rupture that generate a
sense of a loss of control over both material and affective conditions. Within this hybrid
emotional regime, social actors must deal with uncertainty vis-à-vis the (re)construction
of intimate relationships by engaging in distinctive social dynamics shaped by the pre-
vailing neoliberal regime

At the intersection of diverse disciplines such as anthropology, psychology, and sociolo-

gy, the exploration of affectivity as a constitutive element, not only of the social order
but also of the different subjectivities beyond the merely cognitive, has populated recent

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 literature. Anthropologically informed studies on cultural variations and local responses
to what Laurent Berlant (2011) has termed “crisis-ordinariness” have shown how body,
emotion, and cognition are inextricably linked in shaping lived experiences. The affec-
tive prediction in the pursuit of happiness (Stafford, 2015); the normative signi cance of
aspirations for understanding motivations in decision-making (Baker, 2016); and the
constitution of lived experiences through people’s past events, present life, and future
imaginations and perceptions (Irving, 2018) speak of how social agents mobilize their
affective resources to cope with uncertainty by aligning everyday life with future expec-
tations. In this research strand, various authors have examined how individuals embody
narratives to navigate challenging social environments in their daily lives. For instance,
Annemarie Samuels (2016) explores the body’s role in narrative experiences of disasters,
serving as a relational hub to reconstruct the social world by incorporating past events,
current daily life, and potential futures. As demonstrated by the author, the intertwining
of narrative and experience goes beyond mere attributions of meaning, encompassing
the body. Similarly, Tine Gammeltoft (2016) delves into the embodied narratives of Viet-
namese women, who endure suffering through “silence” as an adaptation to forms of
domination that surpass their perceived capacity for change

Through aspirations, possible futures, affective predictions or embodied narratives, so-

cial agents form a set of individual strategies for the pursuit of happiness, economic
prosperity, autonomy, or security when facing the collective and relational dimensions
associated with affective ideals. Within the scope of these studies, the mobilization of
individual strategies by agents to enact the role of individualism in the realization of
their life projects emerges as a research avenue in its own right, where the current study
aims to contribute.

This exploratory research study addresses the signi cance of emotional life regarding
de nitions and subjective assessments of love in contemporary Spain by examining how
social agents weave an individual-level safety net, which provides a sense of control to
face structural uncertainties inherent in the established bonds.

Thus, far from hindering or obstructing rational processes, emotions – as a constitutive

aspect of experience – are an inherent part of our actions and decisions (Lutz, 1988; Ros-
aldo, 1980; Scheper-Hughes, 1985). Based upon this perspective, the work of Mary
Holmes enables us to transcend the relational/emotional dichotomy in addressing a key
feature of the modern individual: re exivity (Archer, 2012). Holmes suggests under-
standing re exivity “as an emotional, embodied and cognitive process in which social
actors have feelings about and try to understand and alter their lives in relation to their

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 social and natural environment and to others” (Holmes, 2010, p. 140). This emotional re-
exivity will enable us to understand how agents mobilize their resources in the face of
uncertainty processes beyond the rational/emotional dichotomy. According to this ap-
proach, emotions emerge as a result of the relationship with others, with objects, and in
speci c environments. As Holmes points out:

[…] through this process people attempt to nd ways through the world and a
place in it. They hope that within that place they might be able to exercise some
control and to be the kind of person that they want to be, within the roles avail-
able to them. These re exive processes involve relational struggles (Holmes,
2010, p. 143).

In this vein, our approach takes emotions as a cultural practice, whereby “emotional
management” refers not to internal states but rather to the mobilization of an affective
repertoire consisting of spaces, objects, and others (Scheer, 2012, p. 209). These practices
can be learned as bodies’ capacities for acting and interacting, which involve important
implications for gradual social changes (Ahmed, 2004a; Scheer, 2012). To understand the
concrete ways wherein individual practices function as a structuring element of relation-
ships, we propose the term “ghosting emotions.” This concept refers to those practices
of emotional avoidance which, as a result of a process of emotional re exivity, aim to
sustain existing intimate relationships in a context wherein both romantic and con uent
love ideals overlap, as is the case of contemporary Spain. To support our argument, the
article is structured as follows. After introducing the methodology, we brie y address
the role of individualism in the neoliberal emotional regime as a key element in shaping
the subjectivities that permeate intimate relationships. As we will see in the following
section, the subjective constructions of the agents are linked to the affective deregulation
produced by the coexistence of the models of romantic love and con uent love. This
generates new relational patterns wherein the notions of individual independence and
self-suf ciency play a central role. In the last section, we address one of these patterns.
As a result of an exercise of emotional re exivity, social actors try to adapt their behavior
to the deregulated context through what we have called “ghosting emotions.” In other
words, they implement social practices that involve avoidance of certain relational as-
pects, which unlike practices of non-choice (Illouz, 2019), serve to maintain ongoing re-
lationships in environments characterized by high doses of uncertainty.

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 Methodolog
The profound changes operated in Spanish society – in terms of openness to same-sex
unions, divorce, adoption, and non-discrimination against LGTBIQ+ people – have
combined with the entry into international ows of goods and people. All these factors
have meant a move from National-Catholic marriage (with no possibility of divorce) to a
landscape of great sexual, familial, and religious variability in just a few decades. The
rapidity of these changes shapes a context in which very different ways of establishing
and thinking about affective-sexual relationships coexist. Our research study is centered
on in-depth interviews with 14 individuals. The eldwork was complemented by infor-
mal conversations with six of them and some of their partners, as well as informal visits
to their homes. It thus presents a eldwork mainly underpinned by conversational
methods due to the (intimate) condition of the practices taken as objects, as well as the
complexity this entails for classical forms of ethnographic research (López, 2010). The
age group of those interviewed is 33 to 65 years old, recognizing that affective-sexual
changes are not limited to the younger demographic, this being the most studied popu-
lation in terms of technologies and affectivities (Bandelli & Gandini, 2022; Choi et al.,
2018; Dalessandro, 2018; Denby & van Hooff, 2023). We have explored diverse emerging
practices in intimate relationships, including both long-term and short-term arrange-
ments: from heterosexual monogamy to chemsex1 encounters.

Despite the common aspects (urban, educated), diversity has been sought in aspects
such as sexual orientation, gender identity, religious beliefs, and socio-economic status.
This is signi cant because research suggests that those factors are relevant in affective
relationships. Thus, this analysis should be seen as a starting point for further research
on different groups, including rst- and second-generation migrants.

While we were initially focused on studying contemporary affective-sexual models, as

our eldwork progressed, a multitude of issues transcending the initial categories of
sexuality, monogamy, and conjugality began to emerge. Factors related to the active
questioning of love and care, the construction of subjectivities, and the identi cation of
the very relationships wherein the agents were immersed became crucial aspects in our
exploration of these relational tendencies. Consequently, these novel categories were in-
corporated into our theoretical framework – following re exivity – (Hammersley &
Atkinson, 1983) during the year-long eldwork conducted amidst the backdrop of a
pandemic.

1 The term “chemsex” refers to group sex encounters between gay and bisexual men based on the use of recre-
ational drugs such as GHB/GBL, crystallized methamphetamine and/or mephedrone.

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 Our eldwork commenced with prospective informal discussions within groups of
friends and acquaintances, complemented by theoretical readings, which led to the de-
velopment of new analytical categories. As we proceeded to conduct interviews, we no-
ticed that, given the personal and intimate nature of these interactions, the information
we gathered varied as per the level of trust established between the interviewee and the
interviewer. This observation related to the emotional implication of the ethnographer in
eldwork, although not novel (Behar, 1996; Markowitz & Ashkenazi, 1999; Okeley,
1992), was particularly salient in our case. Additionally, the presumed relationship be-
tween the observing subject and the observed object, which forms the basis of traditional
ethnographic research, quickly dissolved during our initial conversations (Clifford,
1986), resulting in a radical empiricism (Jackson, 1989). As has been well-studied, in the
face of empiricist conceptions, the ethnographer’s position in the eld in uences the
data they produce (Davies & Spencer, 2010). Notably, the information obtained was re-
markably less forthcoming from individuals who were less familiar compared to friends
or complete strangers. A similar challenge arose when the researcher attempted to main-
tain a detached and non-sexualized stance during the interviews. Consequently, inter-
views were conducted with both friends and strangers, whose connections were estab-
lished using the snowball method.

Subjectivities in the Neoliberal Emotional Regim

The economic and emotional domains, rather than existing as autonomous spheres, in-
tersect in the co-production of intimacy ideals grounded in modern individualism
through the mechanisms of rationality and choice (Illouz, 2007). Emotions not only
shape distinct worldviews but also manifest as unique modes of performing social ac-
tions and interactions, which extend beyond the individual to encompass institutions
and shared values. As Sam Binkley (2018) underscores, one’s self-directed focus and the
social conventions implicit in our emotional experiences remain embedded within social
structures that necessitate a high degree of individual risk and uncertainty.

Therefore, emotions should not only be exclusively located within individuals but also
embodied within cultural practices through objects and symbolic systems of meaning
shaped by unequal power relations (Abu-Lughod & Lutz, 1990). As Sara Ahmed notes,
emotions, rather than being mere psychological dispositions, “work to bind subjects,
[whether individual or collective] together. Indeed, […], the non-residence of emotions
is what makes them ‘binding’” (Ahmed, 2004b, p. 119). This emphasis on the relational
dimension encourages the examination of emotions within processes of social interac-

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 tion, wherein economic structures and the production and circulation of subjectivities
converge (Ahmed, 2004b; Scheer, 2012).

As in any other emotional normativity, the one imposed by neoliberalism constitutes a

speci c “emotional regime” encompassing a speci c set of norms, rituals, and institu-
tional practices governing the expression and cultivation of emotions (Moreno, 2005;
Reddy, 2001). This concept allows us to comprehend not only how a society shapes emo-
tions through speci c norms, beliefs, labels, and available knowledge but also, and sig-
ni cantly for our argument, to examine the performative nature by which certain emo-
tions are constrained or relegated to the background (Wettergren & Jansson, 2013). In
our research study, we conceive of an emotional regime not as an abstract system but as
a collection of normative arrangements arising from interactions among individuals, ar-
tifacts, and concrete environments. Consequently, the neoliberal emotional regime, with
its inherent contradictions and paradoxes, molds individuals into subjects deeply in-
grained in a social world codi ed in market terms, such as competitiveness, success,
risk, and opportunities. From this perspective, emotions are regarded as resources that
can be harnessed both to enhance productivity and achieve self-realization. As Isidoro
Moreno (2005) contends, this market logic, in its normative and pervasive dimension,
has evolved into a “sancti ed cultural logic.” These cultural performance logics have led
to an unprecedented intensi cation of emotional life at the individual level. The pursuit
of “complete self-realization” becomes an attainable goal within speci c normative
frameworks (Illouz, 2008). In our daily lives, we engage in various life projects wherein
the emotional realm assumes a central role: “ nding love,” “establishing relationships,”
“forming families,” “realizing professional aspirations,” “ensuring economic stability,”
“maintaining emotional balance,” “cultivating feelings of attractiveness,” and more.
However, the notion of the autonomous individual is challenged – experientially – when
individuals fail to attain these goals and are relegated to the non-normative, the patho-
logical, or the marginalized, bearing the associated affective burden.

Instances of failure in the logic of choice and effective risk management lead individuals
to the realm of dependency and subjectivity precariousness. For instance, consider the
case of Marta, a 40-year-old art and design teacher who recently exited a relationship
that remains unresolved. In her conversation, Marta recurrently interconnects emotional,
labor, and economic facets as intricately intertwined elements in the pursuit of her life
expectations, rendering them analytically inseparable.

I’ve always lived a bit precariously, but for some time now […], it’s something
that has started to weigh heavily on me. […] I’ve changed jobs and relationships

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 so many times that I don’t know if I would be happy with a job as a civil servant
(Marta).

Marta describes her experiences as fragmentary and volatile, constantly changing over
time. For her, labor and emotional deregulation have become co-constitutive elements of
her everyday experience. The construction of her subjectivity in an insecure environ-
ment leads her to signify dependency as something negative associated with necessity.

In the end, you are dependent. With all this talk that we have been sold about
women … in the end, you are dependent on everybody. And in the last few
months, I’ve had to depend on my ex-boyfriend to leave my things in his storage
room, on a friend to look after my cat, on a friend of mine to live in her house, on
my sister to lend me money and on my father to give me a guarantee. In other
words, I’m completely dependent despite having a job (Marta).

The individualization of experiences has resulted in a reductionism of the relational

character of emotions. “Dependency” is not considered to be an effect of the constitution
of a care support network but as the failed cause of not achieving individual indepen-
dence according to the neoliberal imaginary. Thus, dependency – as a negative concept –
is constructed based on the neoliberal ideal of self-suf ciency and not on the basis of
vulnerability and relationality that is constitutive of the human being (Butler, 2016).
Marta’s subjectivity is shaped as “in lack.”

Even when economic security is assured, the emotional neoliberal regime promotes a
constant emotional work to ful ll the postulates of the idea of independence. Jaime, a
36-year-old heterosexual man in a stable heterosexual cohabiting relationship with a
daughter and in a high-ranking position with a substantial salary in the private sector,
tells us about his family relations:

We appreciate each other but with distance […] I’m more detached and cold; I’ve
never liked dependence, I left home because I didn’t want to depend on my
mother and become a man, and I consider being a man, being independent and
not depending on anyone for nothing (Jaime).

While Marta represents the subjective construction of failure in achieving independence,

Jaime represents the subjective construction of male success. However, both share a de-
nial of certain relational aspects – deemed as a weakness of character – by emphasizing
individual autonomy. The pursuit of the idea of the autonomous individual requires
constant emotional work to understand personal authenticity. The individual – as a self-
realized being independent of social institutions (Dumont, 1986) – assumes an active

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role by becoming responsible for assessing their own emotions and acting accordingly.
The grant of authority to individual feelings became a powerful agent of social change
in the establishment of “emotional individualism,” that is, “an individualism in which
emotions are valued and cultivated for the ways in which they give expression to an in-
dividual’s singularity” (Illouz, 2017, p. 20). This emotional individualism marks the new
cultural order of modernity, understood as a historical way of dealing with emotions
and the body itself (Fernández, 2023; Scheer, 2012; Scheper-Hughes & Locke, 1987). The
construction of the individual, according to the neoliberal emotional regime, weighs
down the establishment and maintenance of intimate relationships. The intensi cation
of market logic has permeated the emotional dimension of intimate relationships
(Hochschild, 2003; Illouz, 2017), thus generating new exible spaces of intimacy rooted
in the foundational notions of individuality, namely, choice, freedom, and autonomy.

The grammars of freedom (Illouz, 2019) shape Martín’s desire into a matter of individual
choice, wherein the tension between normativity and expectations generates emotional
and cognitive uncertainty in organizing his intimate relationships.

Relationships reach a point in which the need of throw yourself in is not a neces-
sity but a choice […] I think that behind it, there’s a kind of projection that has to
do not with what you like but what you are supposed to do, or what you’re sup-
posed to desire […] You make movies in your head knowing that there’s a good
chance they won’t be like that in reality (Martín).

The active and permanent (re)construction of intimacy through emotional work works
not only for the maintenance of long-lasting duration relationships but even for the
maintenance of sporadic encounters wherein the sexual dimension is at the core. Jaime
performs an instrumentalization of relations for the future satisfaction of his own inter-
ests and desires:

I had three or four friends with whom I used to meet, and many times I had to
meet them to fuck unwillingly to keep the possibility available for when I felt
like it (Jaime).

For Armando, a 37-year-old gay man, the transgression of the normative in the mainte-
nance of intimate relationships lies in “the naturalization of behavior.” Establishing lines
of escape from prescribed scripts means, for him, emphasizing free choice and personal
autonomy.

I’m not following the normative process; I mean keeping things for later…for ex-
ample, listening to yourself, getting rid of all this bullshit of “should I write to

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 him or not?” Well, if you feel like it, write to him, and don’t give a shit what the
other person thinks (Armando).

As we have seen through these last three excerpts, choice, freedom, and autonomy be-
come modes of driving subjectivity according to the neoliberal emotional regime, which,
in turn, enact distinctive individual practices in shaping “love.” In the absence of an ex-
plicit decalogue to provide a single meaning for intimacy, the current forms of navigat-
ing it remain multiple. As a result, “love” acquires a diffuse character in the shaping of
intimate relations by encompassing both partner relationships and chemsex sessions.

Because for me, taking care of a person you don’t know at all in a session […] is
also love for the other person. […]. Love is with my friends, with my short or
long relationships, or it can be a session (Armando).

As the normative regime at stake shapes not only different conceptions of “love” but
also drives certain social practices accordingly (Medina, 2014; Gammeltoft, 2021), an ap-
proach to the socio-cultural dimensions of love based on the meaningful practices of so-
cial actors is of great relevance.

In the case of contemporary Spain, as we will see below, the overlap between the sur-
vival of the narrative of the romantic love model and the implementation of new prac-
tices of con uent love has become a key aspect in understanding the strategies at play
when agents conduct their intimate practices.

Transiting through Models of Lov

The coexistence of both romantic and con uent love models has been the hallmark of
Spanish society in recent years (Roche, 2020). This overlap cannot be understood with-
out considering the social changes that have occurred in recent decades, wherein a “sex-
ual transition” is occurring within intimate relationships (Ayuso, 2015). This transition is
mainly characterized by secularization, contrasting with the Catholic cultural tradition,
transformations in family structures, the eroticization of everyday life, a greater accep-
tance of non-normative gender identities, and the role of sexuality as a form of commu-
nication (Ayuso & García, 2014). According to sociologist Juan Roche (2021), the differ-
ing conceptions of time in these love models, lifelong love that transcends time and
timeless love centered on the present moment, explain the processes of institutionaliza-
tion of both models in Spanish society. While some qualitative studies have found a
stronger emphasis on the ideals of con uent love in interviewee narratives (Núñez et al.,
2014), it can be argued that, in the Spanish context, romantic love prevails as the hege-

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 monic model, not only in explanatory terms but also in terms of expectations, whether
in online or of ine interactions (Gallego-Granero & Fernández-Piedra, 2023).

The ideal of romantic love has permeated our social fabric through numerous cultural
manifestations. From romantic literature to contemporary television series, romantic
love has become the dominant ideology for the institutionalization of heteronormative
emotions (Esteban, 2011; Herrera, 2010). The production and dissemination of stereo-
types associated with romantic love myths have facilitated their commodi cation to
serve capitalist commercial interests (Illouz, 2009). Today, romantic love continues to
serve various social functions, including the search for partnership models, cohabitation,
or dependency, while also shaping subjectivities related to both love and its absence,
serving as an essential element in the formation of social bonds.

Martín, a 35-year-old heterosexual man, shows a romantic conception of love rooted in

the 18th-century idea of passions as something overwhelming. This leads him to recon-
sider that what he feels for his partner in a stable three-year relationship is not that un-
bridled feeling, which, from his point of view, is opposed to what it means “to be at
ease.”

Watching TV with her wasn’t so fantastic; it was sitting down, having dinner,
having a laugh criticizing someone on TV, doing funny word games […], sleep-
ing cool, it was that, it was like a super cool everyday life […] I hope that love
has a kind of…pomposity or tension that this didn’t have. This was super cool
just because it didn’t have any of that, because it was a space of security, of relax-
ation and affection, and I relate love more to the other, perhaps with passion and
impetus, when this was the opposite, it was super cool (Martín).

In a re exive exercise, Martín brings into play the assumptions about emotions associat-
ed with romantic love, considering the latter as a love that requires high doses of de-
mand. Lacking control over such situations, Martín considers love as something nega-
tive that affects his mental health:

Love is fucking shit because it’s very tiring […] when I’m in love, when I feel that
desire, that tension, that whatever, I’m chewing on it all the time and it’s not a
healthy situation, it doesn’t make me feel good (Martín).

However, although the “myths of romantic love” (Ferrer et al., 2010) are highly accepted
among the Spanish population, regardless of gender or age (Ferrer et al., 2008), several
assumptions are challenged and contested. Thus, while the myths of “the better half,”
“eternal passion,” or “marriage” are generally assumed, “the couple myth” is not

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 among the most prevalent (Ferrer et al., 2010). One interviewee challenged the need to
nd a partner, thus corroborating that the couple myth is not at the center of seeking or
engaging in intimate relationships:

I have learned that it is not better to have a partner than to be single […] I have
taken away all that obsessive desire to have a partner (Armando).

However, criticisms of romantic love are not merely aspects of individual behavior.
Rather, they arise from collective spaces that are critical of romantic notions of love in
order to try to modify certain normative bonding practices. Armando tells us about the
Grupo de Vinculación Afectiva2 (GVA), a peer support group in Madrid aimed at people in
search of how to (un)bond by sharing personal experiences and discussing them collec-
tively. Through both online and of ine meeting groups, GVA’s members challenge con-
crete and contextual personal experiences. In Armando’s words, the GVA is a space in
which to learn:

[…] to bond and unbond in a different way, to challenge romantic love as well, to
see what kind of relationships we have and how the construction of romantic
love that we have had throughout our lives affects us […] I have been very
hooked on chemsex, and I am leaving it (…) this is what the Group of Affective
Bounding is helping me with (Armando).

In this scenario of deregulation wherein the options of each relational process must be
shaped each time, we see that acceptances and rejections of the model of romantic love
are simultaneously con ated. Emotional intensity is now rejected as a desirable at-
tribute, linked to the idea of need, of being in need, but it is maintained as a feature of
what love is.

“Ghosting Emotions”: An Open Doo

Deep down, you know that at any moment, you could be on your own. I leave
an open door, just in case I have to run away … it’s an emergency exit […] like
wearing a life jacket all the time. What an image! Isn’t it? Living our whole life
with a parachute on (Sara, 46 years old, female).

Current relationships do not have clear boundaries and norms in their constitution and
development. As we have seen above, the structural character of uncertainty is inextri-
cably linked to the establishment of relationships in any form. Such a condition has been

2 Group of Affective Bonding.

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 referred to by Eva Illouz (2019) as a lack of stable references when it comes to managing
– that is, de ning, evaluating, performing, or concluding – the bonds that are being pro-
duced. The traditional metaphor of the contract fails to explain contemporary affective-
sexual relationships that are governed by “a generalized, chronic and structural uncer-
tainty” (Illouz, 2019, p. 9). Both economic and emotional aspects form a single move-
ment, strongly marked by capitalist commodi cation and the neoliberal imaginary. In
the absence of behavioral referents and the ambiguity of encounters, such deregulation
leads to a certain improvisation and, thus, to the possibility of ending a relationship at
any of its stages, according to the moral imperative of emotional individualism. In this
vein, and within the so-called “negative relations” (Illouz, 2019), the practices of non-
choice – that is, the exercise of freely withdrawing from relationships – constitute the
dominant practice when it comes to ending a relationship. The most paradigmatic ex-
ample of such practices is “ghosting.” According to one of the actors interviewed, ghost-
ing is:

When you are with someone when you are in a relationship, you are meeting
someone, and suddenly he disappears, ghost. They disappear completely, he
stops answering you and do not give you […] they don’t know how to manage
their emotions and they don’t know how to sort things out and then they prefer
to leave (Marcos, 38 years old, male).

Ghosting, widely researched in the eld of communication studies and often linked to
dating apps (Halversen et al., 2022; Narr & Luong, 2022; Šiša, 2022; Timmermans et al.,
2021) is a practice whereby a person unilaterally ceases all communication and contact
with another person, voluntarily and abruptly, without apparent justi cation (LeFebvre,
2017; Pancani et al., 2021). In this sense, the withdrawal of consent becomes a principle
justifying the action to oneself. What was originally a consent to another,3 a negotiation
or agreement in the constitution of the bond, functions now as a self-justifying principle
when it comes to giving it an end. Such a principle requires – despite appearances – a
re exive process of deliberation. It is often the case that because they are not communi-
cated, these reasons are often attributed to impulsive or spontaneous behavior on the
part of the ghosting person – thus generating the eternal reason/emotion dichotomy.
However, the practice of ghosting requires a decision-making process of non-choice
wherein emotional individualism takes on a central role in both its emotional and cogni-
tive dimensions.

3 In this respect, we must remember with Illouz that such consent or agreement is based on unequal positions of
power, varying according to gender.

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 Interviewee: There was a woman I met through Tinder, she was a manager […]
she put me in a dilemma because I was going to the Berlinale and she said to me:
‘Hey, do you want to come?’ […] imagine being taken to the festivals […] few
things more amazing can happen to you in life and there was a moment when I
said … in my decision of whether to continue with her or not, I am evaluating
this …

Interviewer: And what did you do?

Interviewee: I ghosted her because I didn’t want to have a closed relationship

with her and she didn’t value anything else […] but I could have said “No” after
going once […] my buddy Bea told me: ‘You’re stupid, come on! Someone give
me the tickets and…’ (Martín).

While ghosting, as a practice of so-called “negative relationships” (Illouz, 2019), has a

conclusive meaning when it comes to ending a relationship, our focus lies on social
practices aimed at maintaining ongoing relationships. We consider ghosting practices to
be just the tip of the iceberg, within a broader category of practices of avoidance that
pervade modern relationships. In essence, we propose that what is commonly referred
to as ghosting is merely an extreme manifestation of a larger category of (dis)affective
practices we term as “ghosting emotions.” As Arlie Hochschild (2003) has argued, “one
important strategy of emotion management is to develop the ability to limit emotional
connections, as this strategy allows us to adapt to survival in a destabilizing culture of
capitalism” (p. 125). Therefore, we introduce the concept of ghosting emotions as an an-
alytical tool to describe emotional management practices, wherein certain forms of emo-
tional attachment are restricted or suppressed to sustain intimate relationships that bal-
ance attachment and independence.

In the eld of medical psychology, which views emotions as internal states expressed in
response to external stimuli, behavioral inhibition refers to emotional avoidance behav-
iors that individuals exhibit in unfamiliar social situations. “Deceptive inhibition” is the
deliberate suppression of an emotional response by an individual under emotional
stress, resulting in a “false” emotional display while regulating emotional experiences
(Traue et al., 2016). In contrast, our approach conceives emotions not as internal states
but as culturally contextual practices that mobilize values and interests (Ahmed, 2008;
Scheer, 2012). Therefore, various forms of “ghosting emotions” arise from processes of
emotional re exivity, wherein individuals attempt to align their expectations with the
deregulated context described above. This emotional re exivity fosters a sense of control
by adjusting available resources and expectations. In this adaptive process, concepts of

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emotional intensity, love, and independence are critically examined and rede ned by
social actors as they seek ways to cultivate and express their emotions while transiting
intimacy without compromising individual authenticity.

In summary, while ghosting is paradoxically characterized by the absence of physical

presence – and all it implies – ghosting emotions represent the praxeological outcome of
individual emotional re exivity. This emotional labor, in which social actors consciously
foreground or background speci c emotional expressions, occurs within various organi-
zational practices. For instance, Åsa Wettergren (2019) proposed an emotive-cognitive
model of rationality to understand the emotional labor carried out by of cers at the De-
partment of Asylum Assessments within the Swedish Migration Board. Wettergren
found that adapting formal legal provisions to the individual circumstances of asylum
seekers presents challenges that extend beyond the emotional norms of bureaucratic sys-
tems. Using the analytical concept of framing, she underscored the contextual limitations
that guide of cers’ emotional labor as a conscious effort to align with or deviate from
the emotional norms prevailing in their work environment. In her words:

[…] even when emotions are silenced because they are perceived as unprofes-
sional, the very performance of this professional script requires emotion work in
order to silence emotions (Wettergren, 2019, p. 36).

This frame demarcates the emotive-cognitive processes of “feeling” and “thinking” ac-
cording to behavioral expectations. In the same way that the emotive-cognitive-judicial
frame works as a script that constrains professional behavior, leading to a process of ha-
bituation that begins in law school (Wettergren & Bergman, 2016), the frame for the es-
tablishment of intimate relationships is also characterized by the coexistence of the ro-
mantic and con uent love models. Expectations and behavioral scripts are in ux as we
write these lines. Habituation to the ideals of romantic love and the emergence of the
scripts of con uent love generate new practices of (re)constructing intimacy through
emotional backgrounding. In the absence of training in love as a univocal referent, an
emotional uncertainty emerges, thereby resulting in a distinctive way of transiting the
intimate. The result is the conscious inhibition of certain emotional practices, which re-
sults in a limitation of the relational character of intimacy, according to the notions of the
neoliberal regime. Thus, ghosting emotions emerge as a response to both the “feeling”
and the “thinking” on love, as we will see below through the following three cases.

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Emotional Intensity: “I Don’t Know if We’re Going to Talk Tomorrow, So Don’t Both-
er Me! OK?

Emotional intensity can be perceived through several different manifestations: a gift that
exceeds response expectation; jealousy; showing “too much interest” or showing it “too
soon”. So, the idea of “being an intense person” emerges as problematic, deriving from
practices of emotional self-protection in response to the feeling of being manipulated.
Thus, there is a tendency to deal with the phenomena associated with emotional intensi-
ty through social avoidance practices. In the case of Armando, ghosting emotions appear
as a response to the emotional intensity of his last partner. In his case, jealousy became
the experience that drove him to avoid bonding in future relationships, according to
lessons learned in the past.

By leaving him, I know that I will never have a relationship with someone who is
jealous because, after three and a half years, I know how to identify it. Indeed, I
remember that very soon after I left him, I hooked up with a guy […] and I was
talking to him on WhatsApp, and he said, ‘What are you doing?’, and I told him
I was with a friend, and he said ‘With a friend or with a “friend-friend”?’, and I
said: ‘Look, this comment you just made just now made me very uncomfortable,
so I’m going to block you’. It´s like nipping it in the bud (Armando).

The regulatory framework set a tricky balance between not showing interest and show-
ing too much in a sort of new normativity that has yet to be de ned.

My friend Jota already warned me, he is an intensito4, you know that […] so I was
with him the other day, we were having a drink and, at one point, he said to me:
‘Well, if you want tomorrow you can overnight at my house’ […] and I started to
get overwhelmed (Armando).

However, these manifestations of emotional intensity are associated with values that are
opposed to those of independence and individual autonomy.

Now I’m super relaxed […] I used to be a bit of an intense person and the one
who suffered, who was ghosted all the time … and now I’m letting myself go
and not projecting at all (Armando).

In his avoidance of emotional intensity, Armando expresses the need to refuse commit-
ment. He suppresses planning with his affective-sexual partners. Faced with the uncer-

4 Intensito is a vernacular term used to scorn someone. As a kind of insult, it carries a derogatory meaning related
to the idea of being an emotionally very intense person. In fact, in Spanish, it is a noun comprising an adjective.

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tainty of not knowing how he will feel in the future and the fear of being forced into an
unwanted situation, he avoids any form of planning that comes from the outside:

For example, yesterday I was making a video call with him [his current partner],
and he said to me at the end: ‘Well, we’ll talk tomorrow,’ and I don’t know if
we’re going to talk tomorrow, so don’t bother me! ok? (Armando).

This form of avoidance of commitment at any level prevents him from falling into emo-
tional intensity as a kind of unwanted bonding. Thus, this form of ghosting emotion
constitutes an avoidance of planning practices, which allows Armando to maintain a
sense of control over his decision-making choices at a completely individual level. Ar-
mando’s past affective-sexual experience affects his current decision-making through
the notions of dependency and need that he brings into play in his avoidance practices.
After a three-year relationship with a controlling partner, Armando reconstructs his no-
tion of love by limiting his relationality through the avoidance of emotional intensity –
associated with practices of control. Under individual safety parameters, Armando does
not promise and does not commit.

Love: “I Could Say ‘I Love You’ with No Problem […] but …”

During the pandemic, we talked a lot with Martín – whose notion of love we have men-
tioned earlier – about his affective-sexual relationships. At the time, he had just ended a
long-term relationship and had been involved for some time in sexual relationships of
varying but no ephemeral duration, without any romantic affective involvement on his
part. As an exercise in re exivity, Martín realized that sometimes, this sort of engage-
ment involves bonds that go beyond the strictly sexual. Under COVID circumstances,
Martín felt that Ana developed a dependency on him that he found highly demanding.

I was working in a sort of: let’s get to know each other, let’s have a good time
[…] and as it is not easy to be on the same plane as the other person. In the end,
the other person generates some kind of dependency or desire for a project, and I
have two options: to say, “Excuse me, you have got me wrong, and I’m not going
that way,” or to hold on, to put up with it. So, what I normally do is put up with
these things […] now with the quarantine, many people I used to see when I
wanted to, I have had to see them more, and this has caused some problems. I’ve
had to see Ana. I saw her once or twice a week, and when COVID started, it be-
came a burden for me (Martín).

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 When his relationships take a course that is close to a habituation to romantic love,
Martín desists from certain emotional behaviors that could create problems in his rela-
tionships.

I mean, I could say “I love you” with no problem because I loved her without a
doubt, but I understand that it means different things to different people. What is
happening to me is that, as there are certain words with very strong connotations
for certain people [...], I’m very careful about saying them so as not to generate
the mess I then generate (Martín).

Martín articulates his idea of romantic love through the maintenance of affective bonds
via a speci c form of ghosting emotion: not saying “I love you.” This avoidance should
not be limited to a speech act, since it transcends the merely linguistic (Reddy, 1997). In
line with Monique Scheer (2012), the practical uses of emotions must take into consider-
ation the place of the body. In the same way that naming an emotion implies a direct re-
lation to a bodily practice, avoiding a linguistic expression entails a bodily disposition
dependent on the socio-cultural context. Martín does not say “I love you,” not only be-
cause of the implications of the term but also because his habituation to love is linked to
a negative component – “love is fucking shit” – that he has embodied through past ex-
periences. The values attached to the idea of romantic love lead Martín not to say “I love
you” as a practice of materializing individual authenticity at the expense of maintaining
an existing relationship. Thus, Martín opts for uncertainty when it comes to intimacy, as
he associates love with a lack of control and as the opposite of “a space of security” – as
we have seen above. Not saying “I love you” emerges as an avoidance practice that pro-
vides him with a sense of control over his relationships. This ambivalence produces, in
practice, a permanent exercise of reconstructing the boundaries between the different
types of love in play. As a result, Martín transits uncertainty when it comes to combining
his feelings and his expectations for the future.

Independence: “I’m Not Going to Share It […] It’s My House […] My Responsibility”

The case of Jaime, whose construction of subjectivity in independence we have already

seen, also speaks of another practice of avoiding certain bonds through the prioritization
of individual material safety. He refers to the avoidance of generating a bond with his
partner through shared property:

I decide to buy the house alone. I tell her that I want to buy a house thinking
about the future […] but that it is not something I want to accompany me, nor

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 that it will be a burden for her and that is why I’m going to take over it. And that
it will be a house that we can both enjoy but that I will always be the owner, that
I’m not going to share it […] it’s my house, I buy it, I pay for it, and it is my re-
sponsibility (Jaime).

When asked about his relationship with his partner, Jaime refers to love and the emer-
gence of cohabitation practices as something progressive:

Interviewer: How could you de ne your relationship with your current partner?

Jaime: Uh, good, it’s a relationship … it’s warm, it’s fun and…it’s good.

Interviewer: Does the word “love” come up for you, or is it something else?

Jaime: Yes, indeed, I call it love. It’s not falling in love, it’s love, falling in love is
explosive and eeting […] it came up.

Interviewer: Did ‘falling in love’ come to your mind?

Jaime: It arose; it wasn’t explosive […] more progressive. We consider the … [co-
habitation], we talk, and we have interests and so on, we don’t actively look for
it, and she gets pregnant practically at the same time.

In contemporary Spain, cohabitation has emerged as a signi cant practice within the
family formation practice (Domínguez-Folgueras & Castro-Martín, 2013). Jaime sets out
a prescription for limiting the love bond via a distinctive way of cohabitation in order to
continue the relationship. In this case, the requirement of romantic love’s ideals of shar-
ing lovers’ lives in a substantial way is re-signi ed to exclude material security. The
process of individualization of the loving experience implies that the biography of the
human being must be detached from traditional securities in order to be based on the
decision of each individual (Coontz, 2005; Illouz, 2017; Roca, 2008). Jaime unilaterally
sets a distinctive relational arrangement as a prerequisite for the establishment of
boundaries during the relationship.

This shaping of love through materiality speaks of how cultural materialism and emo-
tions work in the changing praxis of bond formation (Malinowska & Gratzke, 2018). The
practice of not sharing material things provides Jaime with a sense of control to develop
his ideas of both emotional and economic independence in dealing with his life expecta-
tions. Non-sharing of the property implies not only non-sharing of responsibility and
risk but also non-sharing of the nancial stability that often comes with it. Despite main-
taining long-term affective, sexual, residential, and family ties with his partner, he
avoids establishing a common bond through material ties, thus safeguarding individual

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 economic independence. This provides Jaime with a space no one else shares and, there-
fore, a space of non-dependence on others. His sense of independence is embedded in
his relational arrangements through this ghosting emotion that is a form of non-bonding
practice. In other words, by means of the mobilization of his material resources – by
avoiding sharing properties – Jaime tries to assert his social role as an “independent
man.”

Conclusions
The practice of emotions in the eld of negative relations has been well-rehearsed, espe-
cially by focusing on non-choice practices as a means of ending relationships (Illouz,
2019). Many current scholars have also addressed the affective strategies that social ac-
tors implement to lead a livable life in adverse social contexts (Gammeltolft, 2016;
Samuels, 2016; Stafford, 2015). At the intersection of both of these lines of research (i.e.,
non-choice practices within intimate relationships and the maintenance of life projects),
this article focuses on non-bonding practices when it comes to maintaining intimate rela-
tionships through emotional limitation. Our study highlights the role of avoidance in
emotional practices to sustain existing relationships. Thus, this article has addressed a
distinctive category of practices whereby social actors transit the modalities of intimacy
in contemporary Spain. Drawing upon a practice approach to emotions, we have pro-
posed the analytical tool of “ghosting emotions” to account for those individual strate-
gies that limit relationality by avoiding certain practices in the making of intimacy.

Throughout the text, we have exposed how the global context of deregulation is com-
bined, in the Spanish case, with a complex overlapping between the patterns of romantic
and con uent love. This results in a lack of clear scripts, which is re ected in a constant
need for emotional re exivity on the part of social agents. The practices that (re)con g-
ure each affective relationship are the product of that emotional re exivity so as to adapt
their behavior to the insecure context. Thus, emotion, far from being a discrete entity
preceding social interaction, is rather the result of it, emerging as a key relational and
constitutive aspect of intimacy.

Within the neoliberal paradigm, this relational aspect is formalized through a produc-
tivist perspective of the individual. Consequently, the concept of individual autonomy,
as opposed to dependency, intersects with an axiology embedded in the cultural ethos,
manifesting through available social roles and emotional norms. Consequently, the pro-
cesses of subjectivity become problematic while considering their interplay in the forma-
tion of intimacy. It is precisely within this tension that we discern a pattern of non-bond-

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ing practices, wherein one member consciously chooses to limit the depth of their inti-
mate relationships to preserve them without compromising individual authenticity. This
authenticity does not pertain to a genuine self but rather re ects the pursuit of personal
accomplishments through an exercise of control. Consequently, avoiding emotional in-
tensity, refraining from expressions such as “I love you,” or not sharing property within
a relationship become individual practices of relational constraint, aligning with the
principles of emotional individualism. However, these individual practices, extending
beyond their pragmatic nature, evolve into a social phenomenon with various manifes-
tations. Collectively, they contribute to the establishment of a constitutive pattern in af-
fective and sexual relationships within the contemporary emotional neoliberal frame-
work. Through this psycho-socio-material mobilization, individuals heighten their sense
of control over their relationships, maintaining “an open door” as a contingency plan in
case individual or collective endeavors falter. By employing emotional distancing tech-
niques, social actors construct a personal safety net to transit structural uncertainties.

Finally, the results of this research study aim to contribute to further studies on non-
bonding practices, not only from a gender perspective but rather from a wider intersec-
tional one (Collins, 2019). We also consider that taking this article as a starting point, this
study opens up possibilities to explore the role of collective action in the cultural dy-
namics of shaping intimacy. Given the contemporary technocultural landscape wherein
information and communication technologies not only marketize relationships through
dating apps but also bolster structural uncertainty (Bandelli & Gandini, 2022), whether
these practices of relational limitation function to expand, contest, or constrain the
boundaries of the neoliberal emotional regime, remains to be seen. We also believe that
“ghosting emotions” could be a useful tool to address other domains – beyond intimacy
– such as kinship or labor, among others, when it comes to exploring the emotional prac-
tices of avoidance as “an open door” to navigate relationality in the broad sense.

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 Povzete
Fenomen “ghostinga” je večinoma povezan z zmenki prek aplikacij. Pričujoča
raziskava ga obravnava širše, kot področje praks izogibanja neposrednim stikom.
Pri tem poudarja vlogo izogibanja v čustvenih praksah za ohranitev trajnosti
odnosa. Na primeru sodobne Španije članek pojasni, kako strukturna negotovost
(povezana z neoliberalnim in individualnim oblikovanjem subjektivitet) prežema
intimne odnose in krepi napetosti znotraj romantičnih in kon uentnih modelov
ljubezni ter se prevaja v pomanjkanje scenarijev pri soočanju z intimnostjo. Na
podlagi raziskave med odraslimi prebivalci Madrida raziskujemo, kako se
družbeni akterji prilagajajo kontekstu skozi tako imenovana "ghosting čustva”.
Analiza identi cira individualne strategije, ki s pomočjo čustvene re eksivnosti
omejujejo odnosnost, ko omogočajo izogibanje določenim družbenim praksam pri
vzpostavljanju intimnosti. Raziskava obravnava konkretne procese, prek katerih
akterji v soočanju z negotovostmi razvijajo vzorce, ki oblikujejo strukturne
razsežnosti sodobnih intimnosti. Prakse “ghostinga” ščitijo individualnost znotraj
razmerij tako, da krepijo občutek nadzora z ohranjanjem "odprtih vrat” v razmerju

KLJUČNE BESEDE: emocije, intimnost, ljubezen, ghosting, neoliberalni emo-

cionalni režim.

CORRESPONDENCE: Sandra Fernández-García, Department of Social and Cultural An-

thropology, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Senda del Rey 7, Desp.
1.08, 28040, Madrid, Spain. E-mail: sandrafg@fsof.uned.es

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