Read in this article:
- Dating Terms
- Benching
- Breadcrumbing
- Demisexual
- Sapiosexual
- Ghosting
- Orbiting
- Love Bombing
- Cuffing Season
- One-Night Stand
- Booty Call
- Slide into the DM’s
- Curving
- Cushioning
- Pocketing
- Redpilled
- Online Dating Terms
- Zombieing
- Catfishing
- Stashing
- Thirst Trap
- Eggplant Water Emojis
- Baseball Terms for Dating
I am going to sound like an old person here, but the world has been rapidly changing over the past years. It is very hard to keep up with everything that is happening around us, and it’s even more difficult to understand some of these developments of the modern world. However, whether we understand them or not, whether we decide to make them a part of our lives or try to ignore them – it doesn’t really matter. It, however, would be quite sad to be left in the past, despite the fact that this is the best time in the history of the world, and it literally requires a few clicks to start learning something new about the world around you.
The developments of the modern world have affected all of the aspects of our lives, from your most logical ones, like technology and medicine, to politics and economics. But one aspect of our life that is often overlooked in the context of such a discussion is relationships, particularly romantic ones.
One of the major ways in which relationships have developed is that people have created their own terms to describe all sorts of different actions, situations, reactions etc. We are helped in this case by our dating partner bebemur, and online meetings according to all the rules. Today we will talk about just that, all of the latest dating trends you need to know to not get lost in a dating pool and the dating terms definitions.
IRL Dating Terms
Here are some of the latest and most popular dating terms 2021-2022 has to offer.
Benching
Most often, the prospect of a relationship with another person is clear after the first, maximum the second date. If there is a third one, then this is certainly a romance. The fourth one wouldn’t happen if both parties weren’t very interested in their relationship. However, there are situations when relationships get stuck in one phase.
This phenomenon, like everything else that happens today between people, has its own definition – it’s called benching. Unlike breadcrumbing, about which we will talk next, benching does not mean that a person is not at all interested in a relationship with you. It’s just that no development is involved in your relationships.
Breadcrumbing
This is an absolutely conscious line of conduct in order to lure the victim with periodic attention, flattery, and some intrigue, to then just suddenly disappear. This is a game for control and domination. For example, your partner sends you a series of flashing and promising messages to interest you and keep you on hold.
You get unexpected and inconsistent messages from a person that confuse you and even make you panic a little. They write to you every few days, but only on “their own terms” in order to amuse their ego and continue to hold you on a leash. You accept this behavior, which is why your self-esteem begins to suffer, thus, this is not something a person should tolerate in a relationship.
Demisexual
Sex only after the emergence of deep emotional attachment is a deviation from the norm, or at least most people perceive it to be this way. Discussions on this topic erupted several years ago after Meryl Williams’ “I Am Demisexual” article in the Washington Post. Demisexuality is the sexual orientation of a person who can become physically close with a partner only after they feel an emotional connection and a sense of deep trust. It takes from several weeks to several months or even years to achieve this connection.
Sapiosexual
Sapiosexual is one of the most popular dating terms of the last few years. Translated from Latin, “sapio” means “to be reasonable, rational,” and “sexy” is formed from the Latin word “sexus,” gender. Thus, “sapiosexual” can mean your attraction to a partner, whose sexuality is expressed in the ability to be smart and reasonable. That is, the object of the sexual attraction of a sapiosexual is the mind, the intellectual data of another person. Freud wrote that at the phallic stage of the psychosexual development of man, a “family romance” of a child with a parent of the opposite sex occurs. That is, a boy wants to marry his mother, and the girls fall in love with their fathers and subconsciously wish to replace their mothers in order to occupy their position in a family.
Ghosting
It is one of the most popular dating terms for 2021-2022. Ghosting is the practice of ending a relationship without any comments when a person simply stops responding to messages and disappears. This is a cruel way of breaking up, but quite a popular one, nonetheless. In a 2021 survey by YouGov, 11 percent of people admitted that they had ghosted someone in their lives, and 80 percent of respondents from the dating site Plenty of Fish said they had been ghosted themselves.
Orbiting
What is orbiting? If after getting acquainted with someone on Tinder and a couple of dates in real life, your partner stopped responding to your messages and doesn’t seem to be interested in dating you or in any other communication with you, but at the same time regularly looks through all your publications on social networks and even likes your posts, it means that you already know what orbiting is. Rotation in orbit is tedious and annoying, like the chewing gum of the same name, when it has already lost all of its taste, but you cannot get rid of it by inertia – that’s what orbiting is.
Love Bombing
According to Dale Archer, a psychiatrist and the author of the term “love bombing,” it includes shedding compliments, gifts and promises of a happy and cloudless life together, which can make you believe in love at first sight, even if you have always been pretty reasonable.
Cuffing Season
The period of the year (usually referring to winter), when people feel especially desperate and lonely, and they seek attention and want to get “cuffed” to another person in a serious relationship in order to battle this loneliness.
The cold weather, gray streets only makes it worse for those who are single, when there is no one to give them warmth and a sense of love that are needed so much during this period of the year. Thus, it has been statistically proven that single people are more likely to start searching for partners from November to February.
One-Night Stand
This term refers to the act of hooking up with another person with the intent to arrange one-night sex, nothing more. There is neither implication of serious relationships nor desire of seeing each other ever again.
It is not always intentional at first, and sometimes one partner is left hanging, feeling like there should have been something more to it. Nonetheless, nowadays, there are apps for one-night stands, for example, Pure, which is available for both iOS and Android.
Booty Call
This term refers to the situation in which one person calls another person late at night with an offer to have sex.
Slide into the DM’s
This term refers to the situation in which one person, perhaps after a conversation in a group chat or when one of the two has posted something on a social network, contacts the other person via private messages, usually with the intent of continuing their conversation there and making their relationship more intimate.
Curving
Curving is somewhere in between ghosting and full-on rejecting a person. It’s when it takes someone a week or three to answer your text message, and when they do, it’s usually something predictable, like, “Sorry, I’ve been really busy for the past few weeks, my mother is very sick.” Which doesn’t imply the fact that they have been actually busy with something, they have been just ignoring you for the purpose of ignoring you.
Cushioning
Cushioning refers to the situation in which a person has a few other potential partners besides the one in question. In this case, this is done in order to soften the blow of potential breakup, which allows a person to not be left alone.
Pocketing
Pocketing is when your development of a relationship seems to drag on for way too long. Let’s say, you’ve been dating for a long time, for example, two years, but you still haven’t met your partner’s friends as well as still haven’t met their parents, and there have been no hints of proper development of relationships in the future. Also, it’s not just about delaying, a relationship in which pocketing is involved is fairly unhealthy, a pocket-er will contact their victim only when they are in need of them because of a desire to hang out or have sex.
Redpilled
This term has a lot of meaning outside of the world of dating, and in short, it is when someone becomes more tolerant to right-wing ideas. The term redpill can also refer to when someone opens their eyes to the secrets of something, which refers to the Matrix, where Neo, after taking the red pill, finds out the truth about the world around him.
The same goes for the dating scene, where, in most cases, the term redpilled refers to someone (mostly men) who took the anti-feminist stance on dating.
Online Dating Terms
Now for some online dating terms and what they really mean, starting with…
Zombieing
Zombieing is one of the new modern dating terms, or rather well forgotten old trends in modern relationships. This is when one of the partners comes in contact with another after a long period of silence or full-on ignoring. And, most likely, with full confidence that their ex-love just sat there all this time and waited for them. In fairness, it should be said that this phenomenon has been known to be a thing for a long time. It’s just with the development of social networks it has become a lot easier to find someone that you may have parted ways with in the past.
Catfishing
Catfishing is a form of cyberbullying in which cyberbullies, in order to deceive a person, recreate their victim’s profiles on social networks based on stolen photos and other personal data. It is important to pay attention not to specific types of cyberbullying but to the phenomenon as a whole.
Most often, offenders will try to hide who they really are. They will use the information that a person has already posted on their social networks to create fake personalities. Sometimes they will confine themselves to a photo of a person and use a made-up name, but sometimes they can use all the available information. It is often difficult to understand why the abuser is catfishing in the first place, but in any case, it is important to understand that this form of cyberbullying can seriously harm a person’s reputation.
Stashing
Stashing implies relationships in which one partner hides another one from their friends and relatives for various reasons. This situation can occur even when people have been dating for a long time. It is quite logical that this trend is quite popular among users of social networks because it only requires a few simple clicks for people to do so.
Thirst Trap
This term refers to the act of posting a sexual photo or video on a social network in order to attract publicity and attention as well as to get people to express their attraction. Thirst-trapping is mostly done for the sake of one’s own ego.
Eggplant Water Emojis
Here’s one of the latest dating slang terms. While it is unlikely that these two terms will get used together in any other context, but in the sexual contest, it refers to the bodily fluids involved in sex. The eggplant emoji refers to the male penis. I suppose it is quite easy to guess what they mean when used together.
Baseball Terms for Dating
Yeah, there are such terms for dating… don’t ask me why they exist, I am just as mind-boggled as you are.
- First base. This is the general start of the intercourse, it is commonly referred to kissing.
- Second base. The next stage of the intercourse, when one (or both) of the partners start touching each other’s erogenous zones.
- Third base. The final stage before the penetration (if it is involved), this term refers to full-on stimulation of erogenous zones.
- Scoring. The act of penetrative intercourse.
- Strikeout. This term refers to someone failing at one of the above stages of intercourse.
- Pitching. Anal sexual intercourse performed by a man.
- Catching. Anal sexual intercourse received by a man.
- Switch hitter. Someone who plays for both teams, a bisexual person.
- Playing for the other team. This term refers to someone who is either lesbian or gay.