Add this one to your sad dating dictionary: trickle ghosting.
The term entered the lexicon of heartbreak thanks to a viral Reddit post Wednesday. Its original poster shared that her partner of four years had all of a sudden slowed down his communication with her — to a trickle — only getting back to her every couple days.
The “trickle ghosting” behavior, which lasted about two months, was even worse than plain old ghosting, where a love interest disappears altogether.
“I can’t say he fully ghosted me, because he would occasionally send me a message, and didn’t remove me from any social media,” the anonymous poster wrote. “From that point I’d try to contact him by calling, texting, sending a message on Facebook and he didn’t respond. After about 4-6 days of no communication, he would end up sending me a couple of texts and then I wouldn’t hear from him for several more days.”
The woman eventually reached out to a friend about her ex’s behavior — and was surprised to learn he had told all their friends that they had broken up. To make matters worse, he was also cheating on her, the poster wrote.
The frightening new word follows a long line of awful things that can happen to those in relationships. Most recently, it was “cloaking.”
“Cloaking is when a person doesn’t just stand you up for a date, they also block you on any app that you’ve previously communicated on,” UK Mashable reporter Rachel Thompson explained in a video describing a recent dating nightmare.
There was also ‘”Scrooging,” coined by eHarmony. It’s the act of dumping someone before the holidays in order to avoid having to buy them a gift.
And then it was “phubbing,” or snubbing your partner for your phone, which one in 10 people admitted to in a recent survey.
And who could forget “Gatsbying” — where, like the Great Jay Gatsby, you flaunt your beautiful lifestyle on Instagram to attract crushes — or, worse, “stashing,” when one partner hides their better half from loved ones and doesn’t post about the relationship on social media.
There appears to be no end to the ways people can be awful in relationships.