Why Men Disappear

Since moving to New York, my friend C. has been tearing through a boy buffet. She’s been on scads of dates, sampling all kinds of guys: high-rolling investment bankers, too-cool hipsters, laid-back musicians. But when C. met someone I’ll call The Magician, she was ready to put down her fork.

The Magician seemed to be the perfect guy for her: charming, easy with a laugh and eager to match her sharp wit. They went out a solid seven times over three weeks. On the days when they didn’t see each other, The Magician would call, e-mail or text, telling C. how much he missed her and how much he was looking forward to their next date. Their romance, it appeared, was firing up faster than a North Korean nuke.

Then, The Magician pulled a stunt that, sadly, has claimed as its target almost everyone who has been in the dating world for any amount of time: The Disappearing Act. He first canceled plans to go out one evening to celebrate his birthday – and downgraded C. to an apartment visit instead. She was suspicious, but agreed to meet the following Friday for the rescheduled date. When she sent him a confirmation text the day before, his response was three words: “I can’t. Monday?”

Of course, after getting bumped twice, C. gave up trying. And — poof! — with that cryptic text message, The Magician vanished from her life. She hasn’t heard from him since.

Dating certainly has its downsides, but nearly none as devastating, or dumbfounding, as being a victim of The Disappearing Act. When we get to a certain level of knowing someone — or, rather, thinking we know someone — and they seem simply to fall off the face of the earth, the confusion and frustration is like a punch to the gut. Bliss turns into disbelief, and we turn into zombie-like creatures, drifting through our days wondering, “What the hell happened?”

Unlike a break-up, which ideally is accompanied with some sort of explanation, The Disappearing Act is infinitely more difficult to stomach simply because of its pervasive question mark. Even a weak-ass excuse — “I’m not ready to stop sleeping with my ex just yet” — is something to hang our hurt on. In the absence of any reasoning, however, we go to great lengths to try to conjure up possibilities about why our calls aren’t being returned: He had to go away unexpectedly on business. She was hit by a bus on the way to work. He must be gay.

But whatever out-of-this-world excuse we dream up, we can take solace in the down-to-earth reality of The Disappearing Act: It’s actually an act of cowardice. It’s the easy way out, the path of least resistance. Telling someone that you’re having second thoughts or aren’t ready to be as serious as they are can be tricky, so instead of bucking up and facing the task head on, spineless souls such as The Magician duck out and do nothing, offering no explanation, providing no insight, allowing no closure. Which, in my book, translates to having no balls.

In this day and age of myriad technological tethers, there is absolutely no excuse for not making a phone call or sending an e-mail, hell, even a text message, if you’re that much of a wuss, to someone you’ve been dating for several weeks or shared bodily fluids with. And therein lies the harshest sting of being a victim of The Disappearing Act: that flippant dismissal of your feelings, that someone can’t even bother to tell you “This isn’t working out for me.”

C. hit it on the head in an e-mail: “Men (excuse me, boys) are so afraid of being the ‘bad guy’ and facing what they think will be horrendous repercussions (she’ll cry, get angry, etc.) that they just &^%$#!@* disappear. They have no idea that THAT’s what’s so infuriating — the fact that we’re not even WORTH a break-up.”

It’s only fair to point out that women are just as capable of pulling The Disappearing Act as men. But it’s also fair to say that I’ve heard many more scenarios where the woman is on the receiving end and the guy slips away into the night like the Dickless Horseman, never to be seen or heard from again except as lore for dating horror stories.

However, no matter which gender is the guilty party, the most nagging question mark hanging over The Disappearing Act is the one we point at ourselves. Meeting even one Magician in your dating days — someone you let into your life and your heart who only ends up AWOL — shakes to the core the confidence you’ve built in your judgment of character. You can only hope that next time around you’ll have better luck, and unfortunately, there’s no magic formula involved in that.