Your way of closing it determines their way of healing from it.
In an age when digital distance has made disappearing easier than speaking, psychologist Adela Mas has stepped forward to name what many quietly suffer: the wound left not by love's end, but by love's evasion. Her argument, circulating through social media, is as old as human dignity — that to have been close to someone is to owe them the truth of your departure. The way we leave, she insists, is not a private matter but an ethical one, shaping another person's capacity to heal long after the silence has settled.
- Ghosting — the act of vanishing without explanation — has become so normalized that a psychologist felt compelled to publicly condemn it as a form of emotional abandonment.
- Those left behind without closure are not simply hurt; they are suspended in ambiguity, unable to grieve what was never formally ended, their wounds kept open by unanswered questions.
- Mas refuses to grant exemptions based on relationship length — two weeks or ten years, the obligation to communicate an ending remains the same.
- The alternating pattern of contact and silence is identified as especially damaging, manufacturing insecurity and false hope in equal measure.
- Her prescription is deliberately simple: say it clearly, say it honestly, and understand that how you end things becomes the foundation upon which the other person must rebuild.
Psychologist Adela Mas has grown visibly impatient with the way people end relationships, and her frustration has found a receptive audience online. Her central grievance is ghosting — the quiet disappearance that leaves one person suspended in confusion while the other simply moves on. "What you cannot do is disappear or leave everything hanging in the air," she says, with the directness of someone who has witnessed the damage this causes firsthand.
For Mas, the length of a relationship offers no exemption from the responsibility to communicate. Whether two people were together for weeks or years, the obligation to offer a clear ending remains constant. What matters is not that the breakup will be painful — pain, she acknowledges, is unavoidable — but how that pain is delivered. The quality of the conversation, she argues, becomes the architecture of the other person's healing.
She is particularly critical of the pattern of intermittent contact: reaching out one day, disappearing the next. This, she explains, creates a specific kind of psychological injury — one that cannot close because the person left behind never receives a definitive ending. They are left waiting for a clarity that never arrives.
Her alternative asks nothing extraordinary of people — only honesty and intention. End it clearly. Explain it directly. Do not allow silence to become a substitute for courage. The ethical weight of having been close to someone, Mas insists, does not dissolve the moment you decide to leave. How you choose to go determines how the other person is able to move forward.
Adela Mas, a psychologist whose frustration has found an audience on social media, has had enough. She is tired of watching people end relationships the way children abandon toys—without explanation, without courage, without the basic decency of a conversation. Her complaint is simple and unsparing: most people have no idea how to break up with someone.
The practice she finds most contemptible is ghosting, the sudden vanishing act where one person simply stops responding, stops showing up, leaves the other person suspended in confusion and silence. "What you cannot do is disappear or leave everything hanging in the air, as if you have nothing to do with it," Mas says. The words carry the weight of someone who has spent her career watching the wreckage this creates.
Mas does not soften her stance based on how long two people have been together. Whether a relationship lasted two weeks, three months, or a decade, the responsibility remains the same. The duration does not excuse the evasion. What matters, she argues, is not whether the breakup will hurt—pain is inevitable in these moments—but how you communicate that ending. The quality of that conversation becomes the architecture of healing for both people involved.
The damage of ambiguity is real and specific. When someone alternates between contact and silence, reaching out one day and disappearing the next, they create a particular kind of psychological injury: doubt, insecurity, wounds that cannot close because the person left behind never receives an actual ending. They are left guessing, hoping, waiting for a clarity that never comes. Mas sees this pattern repeatedly, and it is what drives her to speak.
Her alternative is direct and unadorned. Tell the other person you are ending the relationship. Say it clearly. Explain it honestly. Do not hide behind ambiguity or hope they will simply understand. Do not let them construct their own narrative in the silence. The act of closing a relationship with intention and respect, she insists, shapes how the other person will be able to move forward. Your way of ending it determines their way of healing from it. That is the ethical weight of the decision to be with someone—and the ethical weight of deciding not to be anymore.
Citações Notáveis
What you cannot do is disappear or leave everything hanging in the air, as if you have nothing to do with it.— Adela Mas, psychologist
The most important thing is not avoiding pain—pain will be there anyway. The most important thing is how you communicate.— Adela Mas, psychologist
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why does she focus so much on ghosting specifically? Isn't a bad breakup a bad breakup?
Ghosting is different because it denies the other person even the basic fact of an ending. A difficult conversation is still a conversation. Ghosting is the refusal to have one at all.
But doesn't everyone know ghosting is wrong? Why does she need to say it?
Knowing something intellectually and actually doing it are different things. People ghost because it feels easier in the moment. She's saying: easier for whom, and at what cost?
She mentions that pain is inevitable. So what's the point of being respectful if it's going to hurt anyway?
Because pain and cruelty are not the same thing. You can end something with honesty and still cause pain. But you can also end it with silence and cause both pain and confusion. One leaves a person able to grieve and move. The other leaves them stuck.
Does the length of the relationship matter at all?
Not to her. She's saying that the act of ending—the moment of closure—is what matters. A two-week relationship deserves a real ending just as much as a ten-year one does.