Do you know the difference between talking stage, soft launch and exclusive?
If these words are confusing, you are not alone.
English classes don't teach this vocabulary and textbooks don't explain it, but these words are everywhere in modern dating and today you're going to learn what they mean.
Welcome back to the Learn English Podcast, the podcast teaching English in context so you can learn naturally.
It is almost Valentine's Day.
So to celebrate the day of love, we are going to focus on modern dating vocabulary.
These are words and phrases that you usually do not see in English textbooks, but these are words that you will hear in conversation and see on social media.
These are real life terms that people use when they're talking about dating and relationships.
So if you're ready to learn these modern dating terms, then follow along, because we're about to begin.
Now let's start with these dating terms.
Our first term is a slide into someone's DMs.
A DM is a direct message.
These are messages that are not public on social media, but a private message between two or more people.
So this is a phrase that you use when someone sends you a direct message on social media.
It's not just any type of direct message.
To slide into someone's DMs means that you send someone a message because you're interested in them romantically.
For example, you might hear the sentence, she slid into his DMs after seeing his photo.
That means that maybe she sent him a flirty emoji or a message saying that she wanted to date him.
That would be an example of sliding into someone's DMs.
When you slide into someone's dms, it's also because you're thirsty.
In normal english, thirsty means that you need something to drink, like water, but in dating english it means that you're trying too hard to get attention or to get into a romantic relationship with someone.
This is usually a negative term and a way of making fun of someone for their actions.
For example, let's say that there is someone who is posting a lot of gym selfies.
They're working out and they're taking pictures of themselves working out.
And they're doing that because they know those pictures get a lot of compliments on social media.
That would be being thirsty, trying to get attention from people with all of these gym selfies.
You might have heard a song by the rapper Megan Thee Stallion.
She has a lyric in her song Girls in the Hood where she talks about not being thirsty.
This is also related to the term thirst trap.
A thirst trap is the photo that you actually post on social media to get that attention, and this is a very common term you will see on social media, maybe not as negative as being thirsty, but when someone posts a very obvious, attractive photo of themselves, you can definitely call that photo a thirst trap.
All those thirst trap photos might get you interested in someone.
Interested in means that you would like to maybe go on a date with someone, maybe start some type of romantic relationship with them.
For example, maybe one of your friends comes up to you and says that they have a coworker who is interested in you.
That means that their coworker maybe would be interested in starting a romantic relationship with you, going on a date with you.
If you are also interested in the person who is interested in you, you might move on to the talking phase.
The talking stage occurs at the beginning of a romantic relationship or possible romantic relationship.
The key thing here is that you are not dating.
You have not gone on a date with this person.
You are not boyfriend and girlfriend, but maybe you will be.
You're interested in each other.
You want to get to know each other more.
This means that you are talking to the person maybe on the phone.
But of course, with modern technology, you might also just be messaging them.
This stage can be fun because it's exciting to maybe start dating someone new, to learn more about this new person, also become a little frustrating if it lasts too long.
You will hear this talking stage when people are discussing where they are with someone.
Sometimes people use it as a way to complain.
Maybe they want to go on a date with someone, but they feel like they're stuck in the talking stage, that they can't get past that talking stage.
I know when i was in high school i had a friend who was always talking to this particular guy.
They talked all the time.
They messaged each other all the time, but they never actually went on a date and they never became boyfriend and girlfriend.
They just spent years talking to each other and liking each other, but never moving to be more than that.
And that's when it can get frustrating.
That's when people can complain that they're stuck in the talking stage.
Another term that you might hear that's very similar to this is situationship.
Situationship is a portmanteau.
I mentioned portmanteaus when I did my recession vocabulary episode.
A portmanteau is when you take two words, you combine them, and you make a new word.
So situationship is the combination of situation and relationship.
Situationship.
A situationship is when you are more than friends with someone, but you are not actually boyfriend and girlfriend.
So you don't have a defined relationship.
You wouldn't call that person your boyfriend or your girlfriend.
You might spend all of your time with them.
You might act like you are boyfriend and girlfriend.
You might be romantically or physically, emotionally involved with this person, but you don't have the official title of boyfriend or girlfriend.
So there's no real clarity into what your relationship is.
And this usually happens when People are a little bit afraid.
They might not know what the other person wants, or they might be afraid that what they want is not what the other person wants.
For that reason, this is usually a difficult situation to be in.
And so when you hear this term, it's usually in a negative context.
Usually people do not want to be in a situationship.
When people first start dating, there is that new dating phase.
And one of the terms that you might hear is blind date.
A blind date is a date that you go on when you do not know the other person and you have not met them before.
Blind dates are usually a little bit scary, a little bit nerve wracking.
They can be fun.
Maybe they'll go well and you'll want a second date, or maybe they'll go very badly and you never want to see that person again.
This type of date might happen because someone set you up.
Set you up means that someone arranged it.
For example, this was in the news recently with a story about the singer Taylor Swift and her fiancé Travis Kelsey.
The stories talked about how her mother set them up when they went on their first date.
Now, if you know that person ahead of time let's say you've been in the talking stage with them, or if you've been on a dating app and you've seen their pictures and you've seen their profile and you've kind of messaged them, that would not be a blind date.
However, sometimes when you are on those dating apps, when you go to meet someone in person, you might find out that they are not who they said they were, And a term for that is catfish.
Catfish is when someone misrepresents who they are or what they look like.
For example, maybe you are on a dating app.
You see this very attractive person.
And then when you show up for the date, they look 20 kilos heavier and 20 years older.
That would be an example of catfishing.
They misrepresented what they looked like so that you would go on a date with them.
Even worse is when someone uses a fake photograph or fake identity.
Usually, this is someone who is trying to scam someone who's trying to get money from you by pretending to be someone else.
This happened to one of my co-workers a few years ago.
She thought she was messaging someone on a dating app who lived an hour away from us, and it ended up being someone from a completely different country who was really just trying to get money.
So usually when you say that someone is catfishing or that you were catfished, that is not a good thing.
There's also been a number of examples in pop culture.
There have been celebrities who've been involved in catfishing, and there was even a documentary and a TV show, both of which were named Catfish.
If you get past those first initial dates, if you are dating someone, One of the ways that you can say that is to say that you are seeing someone.
So if someone says that they are seeing someone, that means that they are dating somebody and that they aren't looking for another romantic relationship because they are involved with a particular person.
This is usually a term that you use at the beginning of a relationship.
It's also a term that you can hear in TV shows and movies and songs.
For example, here is a lyric from a Gloria Estefan song.
Being someone is a way of saying that you are dating someone without using the terms boyfriend or girlfriend.
Something that's similar is no labels.
No labels is when you are dating someone, when you are seeing someone, but you don't officially call them your boyfriend or girlfriend.
You might hear someone say that they are going no labels right now.
They just aren't using that official boyfriend girlfriend term.
And people usually pair this with the phrase wanting to have fun.
So if someone says, oh, I just want to have fun right now.
And people usually say this when they are dating multiple people, at a time when they are involved with multiple people that no labels and just wanting to have fun is really an indication that they do not want an official relationship.
They want to keep things very, very casual.
It can be fun for people.
Maybe people just want to have fun.
They want to go date people.
But it can also be a little bit uneasy or a little bit uncomfortable, just like that situationship.
If one person wants to be boyfriend and girlfriend, And the other person doesn't.
That can create some conflict.
That can be a little bit confusing.
And that can be a difficult situation to be in.
There was a movie a number of years ago called 500 Days of Summer, starring Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
And this movie shows that situation where two people are in this no labels relationship and the conflict that can occur because of it.
Like I said, that just having fun usually gives the connotation that the person wants to date multiple people.
Another term for that is open relationship.
An open relationship is when the people in the relationship agree that they can date other people.
So you know ahead of time that this is the situation between you and the person you're in a relationship with.
Some people like that.
Some people don't.
If you do not want to be in an open relationship, you would want an exclusive relationship.
Exclusive means that you are only dating one person.
You are not dating anybody else and they are not dating anybody else.
When you get into an exclusive relationship, that means that you are getting serious.
Getting serious means that you are wanting to get into an official relationship, an exclusive relationship.
You are looking for a boyfriend or a girlfriend.
That means that the relationship is getting deeper and it is no longer casual or just for fun.
It is a more serious, official relationship.
So if you are casually dating somebody, if you are in a relationship that has no labels and the person asks you, are we going to get more serious or do you want to get serious?
They're asking if you're ready to take the next step, if you're ready to be in a more committed relationship.
When you decide to get serious with someone, you can also soft launch your relationship.
Soft launch means that you are not officially using the term boyfriend or girlfriend in social media, but you are hinting that you are dating somebody online.
So, for example, maybe you post a photo of you and this other person sharing some drinks or maybe holding hands, but you don't call the person your boyfriend.
You don't call the person your girlfriend.
You just have this hint that you're in a relationship with someone.
So you will see that online people will say that they are soft launching their relationship.
And you especially see this with celebrities.
For example, the pop star Katy Perry recently split with the actor Orlando Bloom.
And then, a little while after she broke up with Orlando Bloom, there were pictures of her with the former prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau.
They were not calling each other boyfriend or girlfriend.
They were saying that they were still just friends, but it's seemed like they were dating.
It seemed like they were a couple.
Now, when you actually decide to call someone your boyfriend or girlfriend on social media, that is called a hard launch.
A hard launch is when you do make it official on a social media that you are in a relationship.
You post photos of yourself with this other person.
You call them your boyfriend or your girlfriend.
And now everyone knows that you are dating.
Again, you see this with celebrities.
Like I said, Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau had a soft launch to the relationship.
But then a few weeks later, they had a hard launch where they posted pictures of themselves and they made it official that they were a couple.
I hope you enjoyed this episode and I hope you are now better able to understand these modern vocabulary terms.
Like I said, these were not textbook English vocabulary words, but they are words that native speakers use.
You'll see them on social media.
You'll hear them in TV shows and movies.
So these words will really help you with your fluency, because you'll be better able to understand a native speaker when they use these terms around you.
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