Ghosting & the language of love

Olivia Petter

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In 2015, Charlize Theron told the world she had broken up with Sean Penn by ignoring his calls and text messages before their relationship gradually fizzled out. The New York Times told readers that Theron’s behaviour was known as “ghosting”, meaning to disappear as if you were a ghost. The ultimate silent treatment.

The term had been around since 2006 but only in deep corners of the internet. Given Theron’s celebrity profile, the term was then propelled from online forums into mainstream discussion. So much so that it was added to Collins English Dictionary the same year. But far from being a flash in the pan, it was to mark the beginning of a new linguistic era for love. Historically “courtship” was the term used to refer to the formal process of a couple getting to know each other. But as society evolved, relationships moved with it. An influx of working women into big cities at the turn of the twentieth century saw courtship morph into “dating”, a word coined, according to Moira Weigel’s Labour of Love: The Invention of Dating (2016), by a Chicago-based columnist, George Ade, in 1896 to describe his girlfriend starting to see other men. Unlike its predecessor the term “dating” was more casual and non-committal: perfect for a modernising urban society. Today, dating has again been forced to adapt to the world of technology, which, just as chapters before it, has brought about a seismic shift in both the practice, and the lexicon of lust.

Terms like “cookie-jarring” (dating someone as a back-up), “pocketing” (when your partner doesn’t want you around their friends and family) and “fleabagging” (dating people who are wrong for you) are now all considered legitimate trends. Some are not quite as niche, like “orbiting” (liking someone’s social media posts without speaking to them), “cuffing” (being with someone just for winter) and “curving” (taking a long time to reply to messages) have earned a place in common parlance, particularly among the youth.

Like in 1896, these words often originate in the media: whether on TV shows like Love Island, in the press, or more organically on social media a place where people can share terms that may previously have been confined to their region, friendship group or even relationship. It is easy to poke fun, or dismiss them as PR jargon but they could serve a valuable psychological purpose, says Dr Daria Kuss, a psychology professor at Nottingham Trent University.  “Online dating has exponentially increased the possibilities to meet different people across hundreds of platforms and apps, leaving users overwhelmed with choice,” Kuss says. “Labelling dating trends comes from people wanting to understand these new experiences, feel validated in their experiences, and being able to share them, which can be cathartic.”

Labelling dating trends can be problematic. When you give something a pithy moniker, it normalises it, making it seem less insidious and incidentally vindicating it. Take “breadcrumbing”, for example: a dating trend where someone sends flirtatious, but non-committal, messages and likes someone’s social media posts with no intention of actually pursuing them. “Using labels helps people justify their own bad behaviour,” says Dr Max Blumberg, an evolutionary psychologist. “Because if you say ‘I stopped contacting this person and I’m never going to give them a reason for it’, it sounds nasty. But if you say ‘I ghosted someone,’ it sounds less cruel.” — The Independent