Modern love: a guide to the new London language of hooking up

After some heavy ‘tuning’ with a ‘non-ex’ they’re definitely ‘benched’ — unless they ‘moon’ you first. Confused? Never fear, Phoebe Luckhurst has a guide to the new London lexicon of hooking up
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Love has come unfixed. Once upon a time, roles and relationships were set and invoked with specific descriptors: boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, date, one-night stand. But the world is less certain now, and we are more capricious: perhaps fidelity is unrealistic when dating apps offer a whirring carousel of better options. Especially in cities like London, where we are harried and ambitious and stretched too thin, before we even start thinking about relationships. Plus, we’re spooked by commitment and paralysed by the volume of our options. And thus, instead, we pursue an obscure agenda of unclear situations with people we know well, or only met this evening, after mutual swiping.

This romantic uncertainty is of the zeitgeist: American author Emily Witt has written a much-anticipated book about it. Released this autumn, Future Sex is partly a meditation on the new reality of love in the 21st-century city and partly a memoir of her own escapades. After turning 30 and realising — slightly surprised — that she hadn’t found anyone, the New Yorker went on a pilgrimage to the West Coast, seduced by the mythology of its free- love philosophy. She is eloquent and insightful — this isn’t filth-lit — but especially when tackling the confusion of defining how we’re carrying on now.

“‘Hooking up’ implied that our encounters had no ceremony,” she writes. “‘Lovers’ was old-fashioned and we were often just friends with the people we had sex with, if not ‘just friends’. Usually we called what we did ‘dating’, a word we used for everything from one-night stands to relationships of several years. People who dated were single, unless they were dating someone. Boyfriend, girlfriend, or partner imply commitment and intention and therefore only serve in certain instances. One friend referred to a ‘non-ex’ with whom he had carried on a ‘non-relationship’ for a year.”

It will resonate with Londoners. Most people have a “non-ex”: one of those people you messed about with for ages but with whom you were categorically never in a relationship. You never break up because you never started going out — though if you think that simplifies things you’d be wrong. “Hooking up” feels right for some situations but not others, though you can’t quite work out why. Most of us have shagged one of our friends — with some it gets weird, with others it doesn’t. It rarely gets weird with the one you’d predict, and vice versa.

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It’s confusing, and if it ends it will be replaced by something else confusing. This is how we’re hooking up — or something else — now.

Meet-not-so-cute

Obviously there are the apps. Periodically you will be introduced to someone by a friend, or meet someone appealing at a party. These modes of meeting are not new, nor are they particularly inspiring.

However, they all involve meeting people IRL, which is analogue and outdated. Technology has presented us with subtler, more sophisticated ways of embedding ourselves into the lives of people we like. For example, it is likely that you have sat on a Sunday evening, a desultory eye on the television, focused mainly on your phone, where you are “checking in” on all the people you might fancy/think you have a chance with. Facebook is the best platform — everyone in the same place — but if the object of desire has a particularly titillating Instagram account, you might jump between apps. Obviously, everyone is doing it; few are naming it, or admitting to it, though a certain coterie of twentysomethings call it a “babe audit”. “It’s important to check your options,” says one. “It’s also gratifying to remember you have attractive friends.” Though he insists there is an altruistic aspect to it: “It’s mainly done to set up friends.”

Another underground expression is “tuning”: when someone attempts to “tune” their unclear relationship with someone by doing something like liking one of their Facebook profile pictures (not a new one, maybe a few back) or an Instagram post. Not a really, really old one, because then it’s clear you’ve spent a while scrolling, and it looks like you’ve been caught out stalking. You want them to know you’re thinking about them, but not thinking exclusively about them. That is, of course, the fundamental frustration of someone “tuning” you: there’s nothing certain about it. It might mean they like you but it’s not a declaration of anything much and will not necessarily lead anywhere. Chances are you “tune” people unthinkingly, all the time.

Periodically, tuning someone will get you somewhere, though. Congratulations, you have pulled.

9 break up signs you should know

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Hating dating

In the past, single people sat around and provided mutual succour for their respective romantic situations, probably. Now you find yourself in a “situation” — you are unsure how you got there but here you are — and no one can help you. For your “situation” is unlikely to be similar to the “situations” of any of your friends. One mate has been hooking up with someone for three months but they have never seen each other in daylight; another is calling a girl he’s seen three times his girlfriend. Several have intense pen-pals whom they message all day. Nothing has ever happened but your mate talks about their pen-pal as those in relationships use “we” instead of “I”.

Obviously, you have plenty of friends in happy relationships. They don’t know what they’re doing either: yes, they’ve defined these terms, but what about the terms of the future? Their shared future? However, they mostly suppress this needling anxiety. Of course you also know some scumbags. Another popular contemporary buzzword is lining up a “layby”, which is when someone is dissatisfied with their current “situation” and so starts flirting with a potential future date. You have probably done this, been a layby, and discovered that an ex had lined up a layby before you broke up.

Loving it loving it loving it

Relationships look different today, too. Contrary to popular lore, love does actually exist and flourish — indeed, many couples, especially those in their 20s, have periodic freak-outs about this: specifically, the fact that they are sincerely happy and shouldn’t they want to go on Tinder dates and shag four different people a week? Many of them are still shagging each other four days a week, although often it has to be done on the sly, as they are likely hutched up with a collection of university cohorts and also have their own (separate) schedules to attend to.

Crucially, couples are less insular than they used to be, though this creates its own set of uncertainties. For example, most of them want to spend as much time with their friends as with each other, which creates an attendant set of tensions. Whose friends get you for new year? Or do you split? And isn’t that a bad omen? Whose friends do you go on holiday with? What happens when plans clash — dinner round your best friend’s, night out for his brother’s birthday — and you’ve both promised to the respective organiser that you will both be there?

Essentially, the uncertainty here is created by being too popular. However, it still merits (limited) sympathy.

Breaking up isn’t that hard to do

Once, people probably broke up maturely, in conversations inarguably final in tone. Now we have ragged non-endings.

Obviously there is ghosting: where someone just stops answering any messages. Its relation is “mooning”, when someone switches their phone into “do not disturb” mode (which is sometimes symbolised using a small half-moon symbol) so that they don’t get any notifications from messaging apps. It’s uncaring and encapsulates the selfishness of our on-demand dating culture: you want someone hanging around, but only at times of your choosing.

On that note, others have reported a rise in “benching”, where a player puts one of their toys on the “back bench”: messaging them just frequently enough to keep that toy hanging but not enough to make the toy feel like they’re worth anything at all. Benching can carry on for years, with one party growing more wild-eyed and miserable.

Love’s an amusing game but it’s hopeless trying to learn the rules.

Follow Phoebe on Twitter @phoebeluckhurst

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