Prepare yourself for the apocalypse of your dating life. It’s summertime, meaning that ghosters are alive and well and most likely wearing shorts to compensate for their cold hearts.

With everyone in their summer garb, flirting and at ease, we take for granted the cruel winter months that we have just gotten over, and the ghosts that have left us without even so much as a nug of weed to forget them properly. So we inevitably open our hearts again.

Just be careful, with so much delightful summer fun and flings at your disposal, how are you going to deal if you get ghosted once again?

Summer is the time in which I used to invoke ‘“summer fling rules.” Which is to say that I gave myself absolutely zero rules as to how I should conduct myself or approach my crushes. That didn’t always work out. In fact, with my confidence in overdrive and my suntan almost fully formed, I wasn’t at all prepared for the ghosting I was to experience at what seemed to be such a carefree time. My “no rules” summer flings turned into ghosts by September, or at the very latest, October. Seems fitting, non?

Ghosting reared its ugly cultural head in 2011, when things really started going downhill for modern dating.

Imagine where you were in 2011 — streaming content on the relatively new Netflix via your iPad, trying to beat your crushes’ Angry Birds score, and not at all worried about the current president. It must have been so easy, until your crush stopped responding to any and all means of communication. And without so much as a goodbye.

The scariest part about ghosting is the lack of closure, the lack of reasoning, attached to it. We never get a chance to understand what we did wrong, or how we can make these interactions better for ourselves and potential partners in the future. So we keep wandering aimlessly with all our trauma, as we wait with bated breath, hoping that the next person we’re dating doesn’t conveniently disappear.

Before we get into very bleak territory, I’m here to say that there are ways to survive the ghosting scenario, and even grow from it. While we might not get those answers we think we need from our possibly-deceased crush, we can find better ways of protecting ourselves, and even develop ways of scouting more suitable (and respectful) partners in the future.

Before we get into how to survive ghosting, we first need to know what kind of ghoster we’re dealing with. When the levels of toxicity in your dating life reach dire levels of severity, you’re going to need to know more about what kind of ghoster you may draw in naturally and unknowingly. The better you can identify how this ghoster got in, the more capable you will be of staying all the way away from them later.

Not Exactly Casper, but Friendly

We’ll start with Not-Exactly-Casper (NEC) because these are the ghosters you need to seriously watch out for. These are the friendliest of the ghosts. They will probably try to woo you, will take you out on actual dates. They might even give you some *gasp* emotional support. But when the going gets tough — that’s right — the ghoster gets going. NEC is likely to dwindle rather than ghost altogether. Maybe their responses become further apart in time, they might become suspiciously busier than ever, and suddenly — radio silence. Before you call Missing Persons, it’s more likely that they just totally ghosted.

If you’ve ever encountered an NEC, you know that at most, they are non-confrontational. They might be perfectly capable of breaking up with you, but they might be too scared to. This is probably their own trauma. But before we give them too much of a pass, their fear doesn’t make ghosting a viable option. You’re still a human being.

If you think you might have an NEC on your hands, try to suss out how they generally deal with confrontation. If it looks like they avoid it at all costs, they might ghost when things get rough.

Who is This? Ghost

This ghost is one that will go with the “I literally don’t know you” approach. This looks like some light, or maybe even heavy gaslighting. Before they ghost, or if they see you in public later and can’t hide or leave in time, they will likely act like they don’t really know you. Yes, even if you’ve had sex before. They might give you the “Who is this?” text because they’ve already deleted your number.

This ghost is masquerading like they have amnesia, and you should be smart enough to know that that’s only semi-fun in soap operas. If this ghost tries to make you feel small, just know that they probably have a lot of trouble with empathy and self-esteem and you’re so much better off.

Run-of-the-Mill Haunting

A ghost that haunts is really pushing the worst case scenario. These ghosts will interact with you at their convenience, even after they full on ghost you. They might not directly contact you, but they will be watching your Insta story. They will be hitting you with the double tap. And they might even slide right into the DM. This ghost needs to feel attached. They need to be needed. They might not want you anymore, but they need the ego boost. Or worse, they’re keeping you as an option for later.

There’s little you can do about a ghost that kind of sticks around. For lack of better advice, you can be true to yourself and not take it too seriously. You can act like it doesn’t bother you. You can even be very clear that it does. Whatever the route you take, don’t question what the ghost could want. That’s for them to decide while they’re in limbo.

This summer, keep your flashlights and Ouija boards at the ready and your reads turned off. Ghosting season is upon us, but don’t let them get to you.