Trickle Ghosting got its name on a Reddit thread and describes the situation when you think everything is going great. Slowly but surely, you watch the person in question slowly and gently retreat. They’re progressively less and less available. They don’t text you back for days working slowly their way towards ghosting you. This is also known as the Slow Fade. It’s less aggressive than the other awful dating trends, it still hurts. This gif describes this behaviour well.

FLEXING

Showing off and bragging about “coolness” and wealth is called Flexing, and as you already know, it’s never a good look. Steer away from these types.

POCKETING

This is when your partner doesn’t want you around their family and other important people in their life. Which means they don’t see a future with you. They are obviously wasting your time. Unless you, too, are just in it for the thrill. Literally another term for stashing. When your love interest appears to be in no hurry to seriously commit.

CLOAKING

Cloaking is when your date stands you up, and then proceeds to block you on all communication platforms with no explanation whatsoever. You’ve been blocked.  What sleazy move.

COOKIE JARRING

When you discover your love interest has been dating someone else the whole time and you were the backup option.  If you notice that your date surfaces once in a while – you’re the cookie they keep around for when they want something a little different.

YOU-TURNING

Everyone has had a moment in a relationship or while simply seeing someone new when something unpleasant happens or you realize there’s a massive red flag, and you get the hell out of there real fast. That’s a You-Turn, just like the car maneuver. This is probably not a bad dating skill to have, really.

PAPER-CLIPPING

 

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Who remembers clippy? ? well he’s here to make sure you don’t forget him ?

A post shared by Samantha Rothenberg (@violetclair) on Jul 18, 2019 at 9:29am PDT

Remember the annoying Microsoft assistant “Clippy” that would pop up out of nowhere around your screen?

Brooklyn-based illustrator linked Clippy, the ‘not so helpful’ virtual assistant who would randomly pop up in older versions of Microsoft Office, to people who just won’t disappear after a breakup, with an animated paper clip saying things like “The truth is, I’m damaged, flaky and not particularly interested in you,” and “But I don’t want you to forget I exist.” That’s how the act of disappearing and then reappearing out of nowhere months later got its name.

GHOSTING

Oh, yeah ghosting. This cowardly move involves having the person you’ve been dating suddenly stop talking to you with no explanation whatsoever. No text, no call, nothing. Much like a magician’s disappearing act, poof. They’re gone. Assuming Ghosters disappear for the sole purpose of avoiding the “This isn’t working out” talk. This is pretty low, everyone needs closure and communicating that you don’t think this is a relationship for you is hard but a necessary part of dating.

HAUNTING

This is a creepy one. Haunting is when someone from your romantic past lingers in your digital present by occasionally watching your Instagram or Snapchat story, or sporadically liking your posts. They act like a ghost that keeps coming back to haunt you. So creepy and absolutely stupid.

BENCHING

This is when your romantic interest leads you on for a while but doesn’t really do much to take the relationship anywhere. However, they lead you on. They keep you on the bench until or unless you’re needed in desperate times. Almost like you’re second best and case something goes wrong with their main interest then you’re in.

BREAD-CRUMBING

Breadcrumbing is when someone shows you just enough interest to string you along by making you feel like they might be interested, and that’s it. A flirty text every now and then or a cute Snapchat, but it never leads anywhere. It’s pretty deceiving and dishonest to string someone on when they fully know nothing will come out of it.

STASHING

Have you ever dated someone where you saw them regularly, texted all the time, and had a great time together, but never met their friends or were otherwise never a visible part of their life?

That’s called Stashing. It’s when the person doesn’t introduce you to friends or family, doesn’t post pictures of you on social media. They keep you separate from their life in order to date other people as well? Or worse keep you and their spouse from finding out about one another. Not good, very deceitful.

ZOMBIE-ING

Basically, your love interest comes back from the dead to haunt you. They might blame something happening in their personal life or work to explain their absence.  They suddenly rise from the dead and texts you with a “Hey, how have you been??” like nothing’s wrong. We suggest deleting the texts and ignoring their calls immediately because someone who ghosted you once will probably do it again.

H/T Maxim