Modern Dating Terms, Decoded — Vol. 2: Micro-Cheating, Future-Faking, Zombieing & More
Dating slang did not stop multiplying after our first field guide — if anything it sped up. So here is volume two: six more terms worth knowing, decoded with the same lens. Some of these name newer behaviors, some just put a word to an old one, but the value is the same. Once a fuzzy feeling has a name, it is far easier to recognize the pattern and decide how you actually want to respond to it.
Micro-Cheating
Small breaches of a relationship's trust that stop short of a full affair.
Micro-cheating is the gray-zone stuff: a secret flirty texting thread, keeping the dating apps installed “just to look,” a too-close confidant your partner does not know about. No line gets dramatically crossed — but a series of small, hidden ones does. The reliable test is secrecy: if you would not want your partner to see it, or you would feel betrayed if they did the same, it counts.
The intentional response: the antidote is a shared definition, not a rulebook. Early on, talk openly about what each of you considers crossing a line. Most micro-cheating thrives in the unspoken; naming your expectations together removes the gray zone before it becomes a problem.
Future-Faking
Vividly promising a shared future with no intention of delivering it.
Future-faking is when someone paints the trips, the moving in together, the “when we have kids” — in detail, and early — to keep you emotionally invested now, while their actions never move an inch toward any of it. Sometimes it is deliberate manipulation; sometimes it is someone in love with the idea who cannot follow through. Either way, the words and the behavior do not match.
The intentional response: weigh promises by the actions attached to them, not the vividness of the picture. Real future-planning comes with small concrete steps; future-faking stays permanently in the someday tense. Watch what gets done, not just described, and give it time before you reorganize your life around a vision.
Delusionship
A relationship that exists mostly in one person's imagination.
A delusionship (cousin of the internet's “delulu”) is when you have built an entire connection — the narrative, the chemistry, the future — out of very little actual reciprocation. A few good conversations get spun into a relationship that the other person does not know they are in. It is rarely about being foolish; it is about hope filling in for evidence.
The intentional response: do an honest audit of what is real. List what the other person has actually said and done — not what you have inferred or hoped. If the connection only holds up with your imagination doing the heavy lifting, that is worth knowing gently and early, before more feeling gets invested in a one-sided story.
Roaching
Hiding that you're still seeing other people — then defending it on a technicality.
Roaching is when someone conceals that they are dating others, and, when found out, falls back on “but we never said we were exclusive.” The name comes from the grim idea that where you spot one, there are usually many. The issue is not non-exclusivity itself — it is the concealment, and the technicality used to dodge an honest conversation.
The intentional response: have the exclusivity talk sooner than feels comfortable. You do not need a label on date two, but you are allowed to ask “are we seeing other people right now?” whenever you want to know. Roaching only works in the silence before that question gets asked.
Zombieing
When someone who ghosted you rises from the dead like nothing happened.
You were ghosted — abrupt silence, no explanation — and then, months later, a breezy “heyy, you crossed my mind” appears as if no disappearance ever occurred. That is zombieing: a ghost reanimating without so much as acknowledging the vanishing act, usually when their other options have thinned out.
The intentional response: you are allowed to want an acknowledgment before a re-entry. A simple “I'd be open to reconnecting, but you disappeared on me — what happened?” restores the accountability ghosting skipped. How they answer that — ownership versus deflection — tells you almost everything about whether round two is worth it.
Kittenfishing
A mild version of catfishing — a real person, misleadingly packaged.
Kittenfishing is not a fake identity; it is a flattering distortion of a real one. Heavily filtered or years-old photos, a couple of added inches of height, a job title inflated a notch, hobbies that are more aspiration than reality. The person is genuine — just not quite as advertised — and the gap usually surfaces the moment you meet.
The intentional response: on your own profile, accurate beats impressive — the goal is to be recognized in person, not to win the swipe and lose the date. On theirs, a quick video call before meeting closes most of the gap, and platforms with identity verification make outright misrepresentation much harder to pull off.
Why the Vocabulary Keeps Growing
Volume two exists for the same reason volume one did: modern dating runs on options and ambiguity, and that combination keeps generating new flavors of half-in behavior. Apps make it easy to keep many low-effort connections simmering, to present a curated self, and to disappear and reappear without consequence. The slang multiplies because the behaviors do. Naming them is not about cataloguing villains — most of this is thoughtless rather than malicious — it is about giving yourself the words to notice a pattern instead of quietly absorbing it.
The Same Throughline: Clarity Beats Decoding
If there is one lesson under both volumes of this glossary, it is that you can become an expert at decoding other people's mixed signals — or you can spend that same energy seeking and offering clarity, and make most of the decoding unnecessary. Nearly every term here lives in the gap between what someone does and what they have actually said out loud. Ask the direct question, state what you want, and read actions over hints, and these patterns lose most of their power to confuse you.
That is the whole idea behind dating with intention: not memorizing an ever-growing dictionary of evasions, but refusing to live in the ambiguity that breeds them. The terms help you spot the pattern. Clarity is what gets you out of it — and it is a lot more pleasant than waiting to learn volume three.
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