From situationships to ghostlighting: How Gen Z is rewriting the rules

On a solo trip to a place where the language was unfamiliar, you happen to talk to a stranger around a bonfire. You had been trying to find a group for a jeep ride to the hills the following morning. He couldn't help you with that, but you kept talking anyway. Later that night, he called you over to play cards with his friends. By the time he walked you back to your dorm, it was nearly 2am. You said goodbye without even a handshake.

You did not exchange phone numbers or Instagram handles, no photographs to take home because you thought your mind was the camera. You know only his first name. You know the city where he currently works, but not the name of the company he works for. You know his hometown, but that is about as far as the trail goes. For a while afterwards, it seemed strange that something could feel so full, and yet leave behind so little. There was no chat to re-read, no mutual friend to follow up with. The encounter had no name because it never needed one.

Most encounters now leave something behind. Maybe a profile, a string of messages or a follow request. Even someone who disappears can leave behind enough evidence to reconstruct the disappearance. You can talk to somebody for weeks without defining your relationship. You can wake up to their good morning message, know what they had for lunch, send them a photograph from your day, sleep with them and still not know what to say when a friend asks whether you are together. There is a word for this—'situationship’.

There are words for other things, too. Earlier, ‘ghosting' was a common slang used when somebody disappeared but now, going one step ahead, there is ‘ghostlighting' to describe when someone who has disappeared suddenly returns, sliding back into your life as though nothing happened. ‘Breadcrumbing’ is when they keep coming back, paying you just enough attention to keep you from moving on. ‘Micro-mance’ signifies the small gestures that have always mattered—like sending a song, remembering somebody's favourite snack or knowing how they take their tea. It is easy to laugh at the vocabulary. Some of it sounds as though a relationship has been taken apart and labelled with a set of sticky notes.

But perhaps the words were invented because this generation needs them. If somebody stops replying after four dates and then comes back, it is less painful to say ‘I got ghostlighted’, than ‘I liked this person, they did not reciprocate, but now they are back’. The word can be a small kindness. It tells you that the thing which made you feel foolish has happened to others, too. It also means that you can talk about somebody's behaviour without having to talk about your own feelings. That may be the more interesting part. A person can be interested in you and still not want a relationship. They can want you today and be uncertain tomorrow. There is no slang for the particular sadness of finding out that somebody likes you, but just not enough.

The younger generation is also more practical when it comes to relationships. Money, jobs, rent—all these have to be taken into consideration while deciding the status of a relationship. Take Ankit, a 27-year-old Kochi-based professional who dates casually.  He wants a long-term relationship eventually, perhaps a live-in one, but marriage itself does not matter to him. One of the reasons is money. He does not feel financially secure enough to make that leap. It is a surprisingly unromantic reason, but then a relationship is rarely only romantic. There are cities that are expensive enough to make moving in together a financial decision. There are careers that may require one person to move and the other to follow.  For people who are still trying to establish themselves, love can arrive at an inconvenient time. This practical approach to love is reflected in the term ‘choremance’—an outing built around errands, groceries or walking the dog.

Bumble's survey of 41,294 members aged 18-35 found that uncertainty about the future was influencing dating choices. Significantly, 62 per cent of women surveyed in India said this uncertainty had made them value stability more—a partner who is reliable, emotionally consistent and has clear goals. These demands might explain Ankit’s hesitation about a committed relationship. For some people, commitment is not frightening because they do not want somebody. It is because wanting somebody can eventually require decisions that have nothing to do with romance.

There are other reasons to hesitate, too. Leena, a 25-year-old queer woman working in Delhi, says she has never dated because it feels like a waste of time. Not dating also protects her from getting hurt. Her first crush in class 10 was on a straight girl, and that is how she discovered her sexuality. Then her school changed, the girl disappeared and, eventually, the intensity of the feeling went away. She did not look for another person. Some people enter adulthood carrying memories of heartbreak. She entered it knowing that feelings can exist without being acted upon. Being single is not always the absence of a relationship. Sometimes it is a decision, often made so quietly that even the maker cannot fully explain it.

There is a new word for the particular pessimism around heterosexual dating: ‘heterofatalism’. It reflects how seriously some young women have begun to question whether the old bargain of heterosexual romance is worth it. However, for Ragini, a 23-year-old bisexual student based in Kerala, the problem goes much deeper. Online dating was relatively easy a year ago; now she finds it harder. Some men can look at her sexuality as an invitation to sexual experimentation instead of as part of a person they might want to get to know.

Now, even the apps are trying to change. Justin McLeod, who founded the online dating app Hinge, has moved on to Overtone, a matchmaking company that is being built around voice, artificial intelligence and relationship science. In July, Overtone announced that it had raised $18 million. Rather than showing users an endless stream of profiles, it wants to make more curated introductions. There is something almost funny about this progression. First, dating technology gave us more people. Then it gave us more choice. Now another technology wants to decide whom we should meet. It sounds futuristic until you remember how matchmaking used to work. A friend or cousin knew somebody. You accidentally bumped into someone at a book or movie club and then found out for yourself whether you matched. Overtone simply removes the ‘accidental-organic’ encounters. But the machine can only work with what it can learn. It may know your interests and preferences. It may become very good at finding people who look compatible on paper. What it cannot know is why the person sitting beside you at a bonfire makes you feel unexpectedly safe. Technology is not capable of that sort of knowledge.

Perhaps that is why the smallest forms of affection are becoming more important for this generation than ever. Bumble's India research found that 92 per cent of the single Indians it surveyed said affection now includes small things like memes, playlists and inside jokes. Nearly half of its Gen-Z respondents said sharing a niche interest could itself be a form of intimacy. There is an ‘orange peel theory’ doing the rounds among the Gen-Z. The test is absurdly small. Ask someone to peel an orange for you and see whether they do it. It is less about the orange than the willingness to do something unnecessary for another person. Then there is the ‘chair theory’, referring to someone who pulls out a chair for you before you ask. Someone knows you like a particular snack or remembers a book you mentioned once. There is no audience for these things, and that may be precisely why they matter.

The public performance of relationships has become complicated, too. Young women are wary of allowing a relationship to become their entire public identity. A hand in a photograph is acceptable, but the man's face must be cropped out. This is called ‘soft launch’: you are telling the world that you are dating without explicitly revealing other details. The soft launch has a useful quality—it allows you to be in love without making a spectacle of it. It also leaves an escape route; if the relationship ends, there is less to erase. Perhaps that is the quiet anxiety underneath much of modern dating. Not simply the fear that a relationship will fail, but the fear of having been seen wanting one. The internet has made almost everything visible. Young people have responded by becoming very good at deciding what remains private.

A generation of women has grown up being told not to lose themselves in a man. A generation of men is growing up amid arguments about what masculinity should mean after the old provider model has been questioned. The old script is being rewritten. And when there is no agreed script, even ordinary things become negotiations, like who pays, who moves to a different city and who compromises. It is a lot to discuss with somebody you have only just met.

No wonder some people would rather keep things casual, and others would rather not date at all. Still others are hoping for something very simple—not a perfect match, not an algorithm that has studied their personality and produced the statistically appropriate stranger. Just somebody who notices, like the man from the bonfire. There was no relationship to define afterwards, no situationship to untangle, no soft launch to explain. There was not even a number to lose. Only a few hours in which two strangers happened to talk, play cards, walk back together and say goodbye. You still don't know what he thought about the evening. Maybe he forgot it. Maybe he remembers it differently. There is no way of finding out. And that uncertainty, which would once have seemed like the unfinished part of the story, now feels strangely like the story itself.

The names of the youth have been changed to protect their identity.