WASHINGTON – Have you ever dated someone and he suddenly disappears — the texts, phone calls and Facebook chats just stop?

Well, you’ve been ghosted.

Ghosting is a new dating term that refers to when someone breaks up with a significant other by vanishing.

“He or she just never calls, never texts or emails again,” says dating expert Andrea Syrtash.

Syrtash tells Yahoo’s “The Shine”that it’s “easy to disappear” because men and women dating in 2012 — who communicate via Facebook and a host of technologies that did not exist 20 years ago — don’t feel like they owe their once-love interest a phone call or any sort of face-to-face interaction.

She advises not to ghost because there is such a thing as dating karma.

“Word travels around so if you ghost it’s going to — excuse my pun here — but it’s going to haunt you,” she says.

WTOP’s Del Walters contributed to this report. Follow WTOP on Twitter.

(Copyright 2011 by WTOP. All Rights Reserved.)