Whether you find it clunky or you find it cool, Emma Watson defines her relationship status as ‘self-partnered’. Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin ‘consciously uncoupled’ a few years back. They are not just single and divorced, respectively. The beauty of a wide vocabulary is that you can pick the words you prefer. If they aren’t enough, create new ones.
Cultural buzzwords aren’t just redundant ways of stating the obvious. They emerge because they help us laconically define complex emotions and experiences. One of the newer terms I find most useful is ‘negging’, where one’s confidence is undermined, as a seduction technique (I know — disgusting). When this happens, having this word means that I can see the undercurrent of my own intrigue, a response to subliminal cues, and not be confused by it. On a deeper scale is ‘gaslighting’ — a word through which we now understand an entire category of abuse. Knowing these words means that it’s harder for the manipulation to work. We no longer need to explain feelings to our support systems when trying to parse a situation (aside: don’t you love the flexibility of the word ‘situationship’?).
These powerfully concise words have a deceptive simplicity. Take the word ‘creep’. In the pre-MeToo years, it was a word for what we now categorise as unwanted sexual advances. I don’t know when it came into popular parlance, but I remember the word it replaced. That was ‘desperate’, as in “Just ignore him, he’s desperate!” But that was the wrong word, too poignant. It shamed a person for their loneliness, which meant to reject them was an act of insensitivity. When ‘creep’ came along, it offered more than just an alternative description. It offered a different attitude, which correctly blamed the perpetrator for unacceptable behaviour.
‘Ghosting’ is a useful one, but it contains so many variables that offshoots clarify it better. ‘Caspering’: rejecting someone kindly before disappearing (shows decency, no?). ‘Orbiting’: when they stay active on your social media (making you neurotic about what you post). Illustrator Samantha Rothenberg coined ‘paperclipping’: rather than just ghosting you, a particularly insecure one will pop up randomly (timed right around a really attractive selfie, or an accolade you’ve received with coattails to ride on) for validation. ‘Marleying’ is when they materialise around festive occasions, like in A Christmas Carol. Maybe they’re ‘zombie-ing’ — returning from the dead, so to speak, after a long period for a sudden encore in your inbox.
Less concisely, but in the same spirit — when people ask me what my husband does, or where he is, I prefer to say, “I don’t have a husband.” It has a different ring to it than “I’m not married”. My response often elicits blushing, a stumble, some honest emotion (confusion, alarm) splayed across the asker’s face. I use their awkwardness to draw a line which only rudeness can cross. They tend not to. This is what Emma Watson’s ‘self-partnering’ is about. She’s not signalling availability or acknowledging inevitable coupledom. She’s turning an absence into an asset, literally on her terms.
Sharanya Manivannan
@ranyamanivannan
The Chennai-based author writes poetry, fiction & more