When lovers go poof

About six months after breaking up with a long-term boyfriend, I met a guy who, for our purposes here, shall be referred to as “Merlin.” I fell pretty hard for Merlin, despite the fact that there were red flags from the get-go, not to mention that I may not have been ready to jump back into another relationship. Although we never had any sort of exclusivity talk, we had been dating pretty steadily for almost five months. The last time I saw Merlin was at his house one night when I went over to give him a birthday present. I said goodbye to him the next day, we kissed, and then, abracadabra, he vanished.

I tend to fall on the traditional side of dating mores, which is why I felt it was Merlin who should have reached out to me next, especially since I had given him what I thought was a very kind gift. But a month and a half later, after complete silence on both ends, I swallowed my pride and sent him an e-mail on a Friday afternoon. He responded that he was sorry, “owed” me a call, and would get in touch with me that weekend. He phoned the following Wednesday but didn’t leave a message.

Sure, I could have returned his call and unleashed my rage, but by that point the dying light in our romance had extinguished completely; his lack of enthusiasm for getting in touch with me this second time around was all the closure I needed to let Merlin go gently into that good night.

I have read about this phenomenon. It has been called “poofing,” as in you are dating someone for a while with whom you think things are going well, and then, poof, he or she disappears without explanation. Granted, I have had guys poof on me before, but never someone I had been dating for that long. It was jarring, hurtful.

Isn’t it ironic, though? In today’s world of the information superhighway and constant communication, it has become so easy to end a relationship without all the Sturm und Drang of breaking up over the phone or (gasp!) in person. Yet Merlin decided that no communication at all was the easiest route to take, leaving me to navigate the rocky road of rejection without any understanding. It would have taken him five minutes to, at the very least, send me an e-mail a few days after our last rendezvous, explaining that he just wasn’t that into me. I suppose I prolonged the drama by remaining tightlipped myself.

Of course, the cruelest irony of all regarding this poofing hullabaloo is that it’s an act entirely irreconcilable with the digital age: Disappearing has become nearly impossible in the 21st century. Merlin is still everywhere, haunting the periphery of my online life -- through Twitter posts, Facebook status updates, or photos of events he has been to ever since he pulled his disappearing act. He chose to vanish from my life without a word, yet he continues to communicate with the rest of the world with complete ease.

Several of my female friends have experienced similar poofing situations. It seems this behavior has only gotten worse, even though it’s gotten so much easier to let someone down by using technology as a shield.

This isn’t a male-only modus operandi, although I have concluded (based on my own completely unscientific research) that poofers tend to be male. Many of my girlfriends admitted to being on the receiving end of poofing, but most balked at the idea of committing the act. Still, I did speak with a couple of ladies who had poofed on men before -- one because she wanted to avoid a painful, drawn-out breakup, the other because of a lack of self-esteem and a propensity for self-sabotage.

But it is a truth universally acknowledged that men and women deal with emotions differently. Most women need some sort of closure; we prefer to talk things out. Men would rather avoid touchy-feely subjects altogether. They can, seemingly, turn off their feelings like a light switch (or perhaps they are just better at hiding their discontent), while a woman’s emotional world is more comparable to, say, a dimmer. This is why poofing is a particularly harsh experience for a woman.

I’ll never know why exactly Merlin decided to vanish, but I suppose in this instance matters of the heart are like acts of magic: Sometimes it is better to let the unknown remain unknowable.

Neely Steinberg is a freelance writer living in Boston. Send comments to coupling@globe.com.

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