Just when we thought that the world was making significant changes in the field of technology, we now are witnessing quite a shift in the dating side. No, we are not talking about the rise of dating apps or such things, instead, we are bringing your attention to the new Gen Z dating terminology that everyone needs to be aware of now.
It is 2023 and some of the terms we are about to mention in this guide here will surely be shocking for you and will leave you confused too. Let’s just dive in to keep up with the modern dating with Gen Z.
1. Cookie Jarring
In the simplest terms, keeping a standby person for a relationship is cookie jarring. For instance, if you are dating/seeing someone for some time, but for future ‘security’ you start seeing someone else too just so in case something goes wrong with one person, you will have the second one to fall back on. Get it?
2. Zombie-ing
It is more or less like ghosting where you’d disappear entirely. But for the cases where someone will disappear from your life for some time and then just come back like nothing happened, well that’s your zombie right there.
3. Love Bombing
Who doesn’t love to be loved? Love is all innocent until it turns into love bombing where the emotion is used entirely for manipulation. So at the beginning of the relationship, it is over-the-top love, but over time, after gaining the person’s trust, the affection is reduced. Now the one who got love bombed is entirely relying on how much potential their partner has since they did all the loveable things in the beginning.
4. Benching
When you are your partner’s plan B or plan C, in simple terms, you have been benched. It is when the person you are dating also dating other people. It doesn’t come easy.
5. Cuffing
Got any big holiday coming up and are you single? Then it is time to begin cuffing. This means being involved only for a fling with someone entirely during the time for any big occasion such as Valentine’s Day, Christmas, and as such. It helps you feel a little less lonely.
6. Gaslighting
Gaslighting has been a quite common concept that we often come across but fail to realize. Gen Z was smart enough to pick on it and label it. It is psychological manipulation. Where whenever you try to talk to your partner regarding something they may have done wrong, they will always find a way to pin it on you and make it your fault, making you the one to blame.
Several times people don’t realize this while doing it either. You can read more about this online, conduct thorough research, and can even get help online. You just need a steady internet service such as Cox Internet and you will be all good to go!
7. Orbiting
Do you have an ex who you can just spot on social media but you guys just don’t interact or respond at all but now and then they do make their presence known to you somehow? That’s orbiting.
8. Groundhogging
Some people never learn from their mistakes and follow the same paths that led them to failure before. When it comes to the contemporary world of cheating, this is called groundhogging. This is where you continue seeking the same romantic partners as the old ones that have broken your heart, while you expect it to go better this one time.
9. Cushioning
Just like cookie jarring, cushioning is like having a backup option for yourself that you can land on if something does not work out for your current relationship.
10. Phubbing
Have you ever happened to be on a date where the other person was on their phone the entire or most of the time? Now you have got a word for it. It’s called phubbing.
11. Roaching
As the word speaks for itself, we do not expect anything good from such a thing. It is when a person is dating someone, but is disrespectful enough to sleep around with people behind their backs. These douchebags never stop coming just like cockroaches.
12. Microcheating
There was a time when being even remotely involved with someone other than your partner was a crazy thought that was considered cheating. Even if it was emotional involvement. Gen Z has given us a new term for this. Microcheating. This means when you don’t cheat physically but you let lose the emotional and secrecy boundaries.
13. Haunting
Are you keeping a check on every picture or video post that your ex is making on their social media? Or do you think your ex is doing that to you? Well, that’s haunting for you.
14. Wokefishing
It is 2023 and you need to be woke and quite aware of the social issues happening around you. This has become kind of a bait for several people as well. They pretend to be woke while dating so they don’t seem outdated or because they know they are not accepted, so they woke fish others.
Over time they do let their masks off and slowly unveil what they truly are.
15. Textlationship
It is a relationship that only pans out the best when texting, but in real life, it is a big miss.
16. Pocketing/Stashing
Is your partner not announcing their relationship with you to the world? Not even to their families or friends. Well, we hate to break it to you but you are being pocketed or stashed.
17. Slow Fade/Soft Ghosting
When someone slowly starts making their distance from you by retracting their presence one by one, it is a slow fade or soft ghosting. No feelings are cleared and one day they are just gone and you do not really notice it either (or so they think).
Wrapping Up
And it’s a wrap for your guide 101 to Gen Z dating terms! They are quite interesting and in all honesty very peculiar. They surely do not miss out on any detail and are trying to recognize and break some toxic patterns.
What term do you know about? Or got any interesting dating stories to share? Let us know in the comments below.
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