💬What is Talking stage?

Where the talking stage came from

Dating apps stretched the front end of a relationship out. You can be in conversation with several people at once, none of it costs anything yet, and nobody wants to claim more than is true. So a holding word appeared. Saying you are talking to someone announces interest without announcing a decision. Older generations had the same phase; it simply had no name, so nobody had to defend how long theirs was lasting.

Used well, it is the most useful part of dating. Nothing is decided, so you find out how someone talks when there is nothing to perform: what they do when a plan falls through, whether they ask you anything back. A few weeks does that job. Once you have met a few times, the stage has told you what it can.

When it has stopped being a stage

• It has run past a couple of months and neither of you has used a different word.
• The messaging is constant but the meeting is always next week.
• You describe them differently depending on which friend is asking.
• Every time it moves a step forward, one of you retreats back into the chat.

How to move it along

Make one plan with an actual date on it, in the coming week, not "soon". Move the conversation off the app early — the app rewards staying inside it. Ask something you genuinely want to know instead of the funniest thing you can think of. And after the third time you meet, if it is still called talking, say what you would like it to be. One awkward minute is cheaper than four more months.

"Talking" is not a status the other person has agreed to either — they may be further ahead than you assume, or well behind. A stage that never ends stops being a stage: it becomes an undefined arrangement neither of you chose, and by then the conversation weighs far more than it did in week three.

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