Modern Dating Terms, Explained: From Benching to Situationships

Entry No. 032 · October 2026

By The IF Team

Modern dating terms are the shorthand people use for behaviours that phones and dating apps have made common. The ones you will meet most are ghosting (disappearing without a word), breadcrumbing (small flickers of attention with no plan behind them), benching (keeping someone in reserve), orbiting (going silent but still watching your stories) and the situationship (something romantic that nobody has named). Nearly all of them describe the same place: the in-between, where someone is neither fully in nor fully out. Below, each term is explained in plain English, grouped by the situation it names, with what to do if it is happening to you.

If you have ever looked up a word at midnight to find out whether what was happening to you had a name, you are not being dramatic, and you are far from alone. A name helps. It turns a vague, private unease — am I imagining this? — into a pattern other people recognise. But a name is a starting point, not a verdict, and the most useful thing any of these words can do is help you decide what you want next.

Most of these words exist because someone is not saying something plainly. IF, the dating app we built for everyone, single or in a relationship, works the other way: you say exactly how you feel, and if either of you is with someone, it waits in a sealed IF until you are both single.

Why modern dating has so many new words

Most of these terms describe an old behaviour made cheap. Keeping someone interested used to take phone calls and evenings out; now it takes a heart on a story. Disappearing used to mean avoiding someone at the pub; now it means not opening an app. When staying in touch costs almost nothing, it becomes easy to keep people half-in for a very long time.

Abundance plays a part too. In a 2020 set of experiments on online dating, the psychologists Tila Pronk and Jaap Denissen found that people shown a run of potential partners grew steadily more rejecting as they went, with the chance of saying yes falling by about 27% from the first option to the last. When there always seems to be someone else, keeping options open starts to feel sensible. Many of the words below name what that feels like from the other side.

Fading out: ghosting, zombieing and orbiting

The first family of terms is about endings that never quite arrive.

• Ghosting: ending things by disappearing. No reply, no goodbye, no explanation — one day the messages simply stop.
• The slow fade: ghosting in instalments. Replies grow shorter and further apart and plans grow vaguer, until the conversation dies of neglect rather than decision.
• Zombieing, or submarining: when someone who ghosted you resurfaces weeks or months later as if nothing happened, usually with “hey stranger” or a reply to one of your stories.

What is orbiting?

Orbiting is when someone stops talking to you but stays in your digital life. They no longer answer your messages, yet they watch every story, like the occasional photo and keep following you. They are close enough to be seen and far enough never to reply. It is sometimes called haunting, especially when the orbiter is an ex.

Orbiting is confusing because it looks like interest. More often it is habit, curiosity or a wish to keep a door ajar at no cost. You do not have to decode it. If the watching bothers you, you can mute, restrict or remove them without announcement. You owe nobody an audience, and blocking is always your call.

Kept on hold: breadcrumbing, benching and cushioning

These terms describe something harder to spot than a disappearance: someone who stays, but never quite arrives.

What is breadcrumbing?

Breadcrumbing is giving someone just enough attention to keep them interested, with no real intention of following through. The crumbs are small and irregular: a flirty message after a week of silence, a “we should get a drink soon” that never becomes a date, a like at 11pm that leads nowhere. Each one feels like a sign. Together they make a trail that goes round in circles.

It works because uncertainty is compelling. In one well-known experiment, participants who were not sure how much someone liked them were more attracted to that person than participants who were told they were liked a lot. The researchers’ explanation: not knowing kept them thinking about the person. Crumbs keep you guessing, and guessing keeps you hooked.

What to do: ask for one concrete thing. “I’d love to see you — are you free on Thursday?” Someone who is interested will find a time, even if it is a fortnight away. Someone who is breadcrumbing will stay warm and vague. Their answer is the answer.

What is benching?

Benching is keeping someone in reserve, like a substitute on the bench. The person doing it likes you enough to keep you available — regular messages, the odd date — but not enough to choose you, often because they are hoping someone better comes along. Where breadcrumbing describes the behaviour, benching describes your position: you are the back-up plan.

Researchers study it under a gentler name. They call these people back burners: someone you keep in touch with, and might want one day, without being committed to them. In a study of how people use texts and social media to keep back burners warm, people in committed relationships reported keeping about as many back burners as single people did. Wanting someone “one day” is common and human, partnered or not. What makes benching hurt is the vague trickle of attention, and that trickle says more about the other person’s hedging than about your worth. The honest version of a back burner is one plain sentence in an IF, which opens only if you are both single.

The tell is consistency without progress. Months pass, the contact stays pleasant, and nothing ever moves forward. If you want more, say so once, plainly, and watch what changes.

Two close relatives of benching:

• Cushioning: keeping a few people warm on the side while in a relationship, as a soft landing in case it ends. It is benching from inside a relationship. If you recognise yourself here, the feelings behind it are nothing to be ashamed of. The honest move is to stop the drip of attention, and if one feeling is real, you can say it once in an IF: no conversation can open on IF while either of you is in a relationship, so it stays sealed until you are both single, and there is nothing about it to hide.
• Pocketing, or stashing: being dated in secret. They keep you away from their friends, their family and their social media, and months in, you have met nobody who matters to them.

The undefined middle: situationships, the talking stage and soft launches

Some terms describe a stage rather than a behaviour: the stretch between meeting someone and knowing what you are to each other.

• Situationship: something romantic, often physical, that nobody has named. It has the habits of a relationship without the agreement. If you want to name it or leave it, how to get out of a situationship walks through both.
• The talking stage: the getting-to-know-you phase before dating properly — texts, calls, the odd meet-up, no label. It is useful for a few weeks. It becomes a holding pattern when months pass without plans.
• DTR: short for “define the relationship”, the conversation in which you agree what you are. It is the natural exit from both of the above.
• Exclusive: agreeing to see only each other. Many people treat it as a step before boyfriend, girlfriend or partner, so check that you both mean the same thing by it; when to delete the apps and have the exclusive talk covers that conversation.
• Cuffing season: the colder months, when people are said to pair up for winter and drift apart by spring. A winter romance can be as real as any other; the question is whether you both still want it when the weather turns.
• Soft launch: hinting at a new relationship on social media without showing the person — a hand across a table, two glasses of wine. A hard launch is the full announcement, face in the frame and name attached.

Attention that is not what it seems: love bombing to gaslighting

Not every term names a lack of attention. Some name too much of it, or attention built on something false.

• Love bombing: an overwhelming rush of affection very early — constant messages, lavish compliments, talk of forever by the second date. Sometimes it is simply excitement. Sometimes it is a way to create fast dependence. Notice what happens when you set a small boundary.
• Future faking: painting a vivid shared future — the holiday next summer, meeting their parents — with no intention of making any of it happen. The plans are the point.
• Catfishing: pretending to be someone else online, with borrowed photos and an invented life. A match who always has a reason not to meet is worth a second look. On IF, an optional selfie verification badge, photo moderation and Report and Block on every profile help, and our guide shows how to tell if you are being catfished.
• Kittenfishing: the milder cousin. The person is real, but the version on the profile is not quite — photos from ten years ago, a little height added.
• Gaslighting: a pattern of making you doubt your own memory, perception or judgement (“that never happened”, “you’re too sensitive”). It is not a dating quirk, and it is not yours to explain away.

Love bombing and gaslighting can be hard to see from the inside. If someone’s behaviour leaves you feeling small or unsure of your own mind, talk to someone you trust.

Feelings and their lines: limerence, micro-cheating and the ick

A few terms describe what is happening inside you rather than between you, and where a feeling starts to cross a line.

• Limerence: an involuntary, all-consuming longing for someone, fuelled by uncertainty about whether they feel the same. If it is crowding out your days, talking to someone can help, and we explain what limerence is and how it ends.
• Micro-cheating: small acts of secrecy that chip away at a couple’s trust without amounting to an affair — messages you would delete, small lies about where you were, flirting you would hide from your partner. A feeling for someone else is not micro-cheating; it is the hiding and the lying that do the damage. Having IF on your phone is not micro-cheating either, and neither is saying how you feel in an IF: it is sealed, not secret, and nothing can open between you while either of you is with someone. We map where an emotional affair begins.
• The ick: a sudden, often irrational turn-off triggered by something small — the way they run for a bus, a particular laugh. Sometimes it is information. Sometimes it is nerves in disguise.
• Delulu: short for delusional, used fondly about yourself when your hopes for a crush have run ahead of the evidence. Hope is not foolish, though: if they are taken, an IF turns that hope into one honest sentence, sealed, with no conversation possible until you are both single.

Dating slang you will see on profiles

Some slang lives mostly in bios and group chats, and you will meet it before anyone has said hello.

• LTR, STR and FWB: a long-term relationship, a short-term one, and friends with benefits, meaning friends who sleep together without dating. Whatever the letters, someone is telling you what they want, and it is worth taking them at their word.
• Red flag, green flag, beige flag: a warning sign, a good sign, and a quirk that is neither — just a little dull or oddly specific.
• Rizz: charm, especially a talent for flirting. It comes from charisma.
• Hardballing: saying exactly what you want from the start — a relationship, children, nothing serious — so that nobody wastes anybody’s time. On IF, the Looking for field on your profile answers the big question before the first message, and on paid plans you can split your preferences into Needs and Wants, so what matters most to you shapes who you see first.
• Intentional dating: dating on purpose — knowing what you want, saying it early and giving your attention to a few people rather than many. Our guide covers how to date intentionally, and whether slow dating works.

Name the pattern, then decide

Every term above describes a gap: between what someone says and what they do, or between what you have and what you want. The word helps you see the gap, but it is not a diagnosis of the other person, who may simply be unsure, overwhelmed or bad at endings.

1. Name the pattern, not the person. “This feels like breadcrumbing” is a useful thought. “You’re a breadcrumber” is an accusation that ends the conversation.
2. Ask once, plainly. One clear question — “What are we doing?” — gets you further than a month of analysing messages.
3. Believe the behaviour. If the words say yes and the actions say not really, trust the actions.
4. Say your own feelings plainly, too: clarity is the one part of the in-between you control. If one of you is with someone, an IF lets you say it now, however long the timing takes.
5. Know what you want before you ask. The in-between is easier to leave when you know what you are looking for.
6. Leave on your own terms. You do not need anyone’s permission to step out of something that is not giving you what you need.

Where IF fits

IF is the dating app we built around the plain sentence most of these terms avoid: you should be able to say how you feel, whatever the timing.

Two single people use it like any dating app: an accepted Like opens a chat. Status is single or in a relationship, self-declared — there is no “it’s complicated” — and IF is for both: whichever you are, you can say what you feel. When either of you is taken, no match or chat can open, but you can send an IF: a private, sealed message of up to 250 characters that opens only once you are both single, unless they choose to delete it first. How an IF works covers the details.

An IF is the opposite of a breadcrumb: not a trail of small signals that goes round in circles, but one clear sentence that asks nothing of them today. Telling someone face to face has its risks, especially when either of you is with someone. You are potentially better off sending an IF, so that if the timing ever lines up, you are already there to show them how long you have felt this way. They may be told an IF is waiting, but never who sent it or what it says until it opens, though people can sometimes guess from context. Your first IF is free.

It takes a little emotional bravery, and that is rather the point: say it once, get on with your life while it waits, and maybe it leads you to where you were meant to be all along.

Questions people ask

What is the difference between breadcrumbing and benching?

Breadcrumbing is the behaviour: small, irregular bits of attention that never lead anywhere. Benching is the position: being kept in reserve while someone looks for a better option. They often travel together, because crumbs are how people keep someone on the bench.

Is orbiting the same as ghosting?

No. A ghost disappears completely. An orbiter stops talking to you but keeps watching — viewing your stories, liking the odd post. Orbiting often follows a ghosting, which is part of why it feels so confusing.

Is it breadcrumbing, or are they just busy?

Busy people who are interested make specific plans, even if the date is weeks away. Breadcrumbing stays vague. If you ask for a concrete time and get warmth without a date, more than once, you have your answer.

Is a situationship the same as the talking stage?

Not quite. The talking stage comes before dating and is meant to be short. A situationship usually comes after: you are already seeing each other, sometimes for months, but nobody has said what it is. Both end the same way — with a conversation.

What does it mean to shoot your shot?

It means telling someone you like them, knowing it might not land. It is brave, and you can do it face to face, but opening up like that has its risks, especially if either of you is with someone. A sealed IF says it just as plainly and opens only once you are both single, so if the timing ever lines up, you are there to show them how much you have always liked them.

Whatever the word for where you are now, say what you feel once, plainly: no crumbs, no guessing. Right person, wrong time? Wait for them on IF.