Her grandmother had died — months earlier. “He came to my house one night banging on my door, and I pretended I wasn’t there,” Ms. Mollen said. “I didn’t know how else to extricate from relationships. It was me being young and not knowing how to disappoint.” She theorized that people who fade away do so out of a desperate need to be loved, even after a breakup. “If you disappear completely, you never have to deal with knowing someone is mad at you and being the bad guy,” she said.

Joe Stahl, 25, a shopper for Instacart, a grocery-delivery service, had been with his former boyfriend for nearly a year when a painful argument erupted between them. “I knew that there were things that I couldn’t fix about myself that were making him angry,” Mr. Stahl said. “I felt like I was powerless and ashamed that I couldn’t be this person I wanted to be for him, which is why I deserted.”

Mr. Stahl had already been contemplating a move from New York City to Boston, and the fight spurred him to finally leave. He cut off contact, blocking his former boyfriend on his phone and unfollowing him on social media.

The Unavoidable Question: Has Technology Made All This Worse?

Whether this behavior has become more predominant with the advent of technology is debatable, but perhaps now it stings more, since there are so many ways to see your beloved interacting with other people while ignoring you. The rise of apps like Tinder and Grindr, and the impression they give that there is always someone else — literally — around the corner, is certainly empowering to ghosts.

Anna Sale, 34, the host and managing editor of the WNYC podcast “Death, Sex & Money,” believes that social media enables the avoidance of difficult conversations. “As people have gotten less and less comfortable talking face to face about hard things, it’s become easier to move on, let time pass and forget to tell the person you’re breaking up with them,” she said.

Kate Eberstadt, 23, a multidisciplinary artist who admits to ghosting more times than she can count, can testify to this kind of avoidance. She recalled meeting a man while with a group of friends, exploring art galleries together and spending an entire night talking to him when he showed up at the bar where she worked. He later asked her out to dinner.