The intentional dating dictionary

Every era of dating invents words for its problems. Ghosting needed a name around 2015; by now it has an extended family. This dictionary covers the vocabulary that matters if you're dating to find a partner — each term with a plain definition and, where it earns one, a note on what to do about it.

One pattern before the alphabet soup: almost every term below describes either direction or its absence. Keep that sorting rule and you can decode the next five years of dating vocabulary without a new dictionary.

Ways to date on purpose

Intentional dating

Dating with a stated destination. You know what you're looking for — a partner, a family someday — and you say so early, in your profile and in person. The opposite isn't casual dating; it's vague dating. We wrote a full piece on it.

Slow dating

Fewer matches, more attention on each one. Instead of running eight parallel chats at whim-level interest, you take two or three seriously. Apps built around daily limits are the mechanical version of the same idea.

Hardballing

Stating exactly what you want from the first date — commitment, kids, timeline — and letting people opt out early. Sounds aggressive, works like a filter. The people it scares off were leaving anyway; they were just planning to do it in month eight.

Values-first dating

Choosing people by how they handle money, conflict, and family — before chemistry gets a vote. Chemistry still votes. It just doesn't chair the committee.

The time-wasters

Situationship

A relationship with the texture of commitment and none of the terms. Nobody has said what it is, which usually means one person is hoping and the other is comfortable. The fix is one question: “where is this going?” If the answer is a shrug, that's the answer.

Breadcrumbing

Sporadic, low-effort attention — a like here, a “thinking of you” there — designed to keep you on the shelf without buying anything. The tell is the timing: contact spikes exactly when your interest fades.

Future-faking

Talking about the future — trips, apartments, “when we have kids” — to keep the present comfortable, with no steps taken toward any of it. Watch feet, not mouths. Someone building a future with you does present-tense things about it.

Signals worth reading

Green flags

Behaviors that predict a good partnership: repairing after arguments, consistent effort, curiosity about your world. Easier to miss than red flags because they're quiet. The field guide is here.

The timeline conversation

The talk about when — marriage, kids, city — as opposed to whether. Most people delay it out of politeness and lose a year finding out they disagreed all along. What your own answer signals.

The effort filter

Any mechanic that costs something — a long questionnaire, a membership fee, a daily limit — and quietly removes the people who wouldn't have followed through. Inconvenience, used deliberately, is a feature.

Family-minded

Wanting a family someday and choosing partners accordingly. Not “ready for a baby now” — a direction, not a deadline. It's the word for Bean's audience, and the one worth putting in your bio if it's true.

The bigger picture

Swipe fatigue

The flat, picked-over feeling after months of high-volume matching. Not a personal failing — a predictable response to treating people as an infinite feed. The cure is usually fewer, better decisions, not a break followed by more of the same.

The dating recession

The measured decline in dating among young adults — fewer relationships, less dating — while the desire for marriage stays high, documented by the Institute for Family Studies (2026). Our read on what it means for you.

Words we use at Bean

Baby preview

An AI-imagined image of the child two people could have, generated from their photos. Imagined, not predicted — no technology can know what your baby would look like. What it changes is the frame: you're looking at a possible future instead of a stranger's highlight reel.

The three-swipe day

Bean's daily limit: three real decisions, then the deck closes. A constraint that turns browsing back into choosing — and this dictionary's favorite example of an effort filter.

None of these words will find you a partner. They'll help you name what's happening while you look — and naming it early is most of the battle.