By Stephanie Shaakaa
SHE has been in the talking stage for eighteen months, texting every day, laughing, sharing memes, sending playlists, spending weekends together, knowing each other’s favourite foods and football clubs. But when she finally asks what are we, he laughs and says relax, we are just vibing.
Just vibing.
This is not a joke. This is a generation, a generation with more words for almost-love than anyone before us. Talking stage, situationship, sneaky link, breadcrumbing, benching, ghosting, orbiting, love bombing, soft launch, hard launch, no labels, red flags, green flags, delulu, main character energy, protecting my peace.
Each phrase is a survival tool. Emotional armour. Avoidance dressed up as creativity.
Talking stages let love slide. Situationships come with escape clauses. Sneaky links thrive in shadows. Roster culture rotates hearts like stock portfolios. Breadcrumbing feeds hope with crumbs. Benching pauses feelings. Ghosting vanishes responsibility. Orbiting keeps you in view without being present.
Love bombing, soft launches, hard launches turn love into performance. Delulu masks longing with humour. Main character energy insists your romance feels cinematic. Protecting your peace can be both necessary and weaponised. No labels and vibes hide fear as freedom. Red flags, green flags, attachment styles are studied, but clarity is avoided.
Why. Because we are terrified. Terrified of embarrassment. Terrified of permanence. Terrified of caring more than the other person. We grew up with viral breakups, screenshots, group chats, social media humiliation. Economic instability and delayed adulthood make commitment feel like a gamble. Dating apps gamified attraction. Endless swipes trained us to optimise partners the way we optimise careers and gadgets.
So we hedge. We downplay. We soft launch. We breadcrumb. We ghost. We orbit. All in the name of self-protection.
And here is the sting. We criticise emotional unavailability while perfecting it.
We say we want depth but reward nonchalance. We say we hate confusion but resist clarity. We say we want effort but fear expectation. We want intimacy, but only on our terms.
The talking stage is probation. Situationships are limbo. Sneaky links are desire in the shadows. Breadcrumbing prolongs hope. Ghosting avoids confrontation. Orbiting keeps you hovering in limbo. Roster culture treats hearts like options. Every term we invented exposes a fear we refuse to name.
Yet beneath every meme, every breadcrumb, every ghosted text, longing pulses like an untamed heartbeat. You stare at your phone at 2 a.m., reading the same text for the third time, wondering if a single word means something or nothing, replaying the conversation in your head until it burns. Screens are checked obsessively. Replies are over-analysed. Tone is decoded like intelligence data. Ambiguity is a sedative. It dulls the heart. Living demands clarity.
We leave before love fully begins. We flee suffocation only to embrace instability. We fear humiliation more than vulnerability. We are not incapable of love, only afraid of its cost.
And love today, real love, is radical. It is not a swipe. It is not a like. It is not a curated post. It is this. I choose you exclusively.
That sentence cancels the roster. Ends the talking stage. Stops the situationship. Demands bravery. It is rebellion in an era of strategic detachment.
Perhaps the most revolutionary act for this generation is not inventing another term. The revolution is saying what we mean and meaning it.
You cannot test-drive a human indefinitely. You cannot shrink your expectations to someone else’s comfort forever. You cannot audition for someone who refuses to cast you.
Emotional maturity is not knowing all the slang. It is deciding.
I want this.
I don’t want this.
I choose you.
I release you.
In a culture obsessed with keeping options open, exclusivity is rebellion. In a generation fluent in emotional theory, courage is revolutionary.
Maybe the Generation of Almost’s greatest act will not be inventing new words. It will be using the words we have mastered to finally say what we mean.
Because beta mode is safe. But full love. Full love is everything.
.Shaakaa can be reached through:
shaakaastephanie@yahoo.com
