Dating in 2025 can be complicated and layered. You’re swiping through endless dating app profiles, trying to attend singles’ events or are tired of asking friends to set you up. What’s making it a tad more complex is the emergence of new terms that find their way into our collective vocabulary – adding nuance and terminology to phenomena that have existed in shades of grey all along.
The new words that seem to have entered the dating dictionary include “mankeeping,” “banksied,” “ghostlighting,” or “chameleoning.”
We break down the new lingo and tell you which ones are red flags to watch out for.
What is Mankeeping? When Love Feels Like a Project
Ever heard of a woman complaining about how her man feels like a ‘project’? Or that she is tired of “trying to fix him”?
Well, turns out, she is mankeeping him.-1754391523178.jpg)
Picture courtesy: Freepik
If a woman is doing most of the emotional labour in the relationship, it’s now termed ‘mankeeping’. It’s been coined by Angelica Puzio Ferrara, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University,
It refers to emotional exhaustion women may face from being unofficial therapists for their male partners.
Banksied: Worse than Ghosting
This one has an art reference!
Banksy, one of the world’s best-known street artists, is known for disappearing after creating his iconic works.
Read: No Husband, No Problem: How India’s Single Women Are Thriving
His pseudonym has now been transformed to make a new dating term: banksied.
It refers to a partner showing affection, but then slowly detaching themselves, without proper explanations. It’s when a partner puts the other through emotional turmoil, by withdrawing and not communicating – creating a toxic loop of messy emotions. It doesn’t include fights or arguments, but an intentionally created sense of distance.
Picture courtesy: Freepik
It’s worse than ghosting simply for the emotional chaos it causes.
What is Chameleoning in Relationships?
As chameleons do in the animal world to survive, this trend refers to individuals morphing themselves and their personalities to fit their partner’s world. It may include their interests, style of dressing or even how they behave, to fit their partner’s preferences.
While this may stem from a place of insecurity for some, it may have far-reaching implications that include resentment later on.
Some also see this as potentially manipulative, where a person’s true colours may feel very alien when they finally show up. It also means that a person comes across as inauthentic and lacking a sense of identity.
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