Latest / 21st Century Dating Decoded!™ / Speed Mingle Dating Slang of the Week: "EXOSKELETON-ING"
Transcript
- Brad Peters: Welcome to Twenty First Century Dating Decoded, the official Speed Mingle podcast. Let's welcome our host for today's deep dive. Picture this, right? It's ⁓ it's maybe 8 30 on a Friday night. Okay, setting the scene. I like it. Yeah, so you're just sitting on your couch and you've been seeing someone new for a few months. Things are going, you know, incredibly well. The honeymoon phase. Exactly. So you finally decide, okay, it's the time. You open up Instagram. You pick out a really great photo of the two of you at dinner and you just hit post. It's out there. Right. The relationship is officially public. So you set your phone down and you get that little, you know, that little rush of dopamine. Yeah, waiting for the likes to roll in. Totally. But then, like ten minutes later, the screen lights up. You have a direct message request from someone you don't even follow. ⁓ no. I know this is going. Tap it. Right. Right. And it's a message from your new partner, X. And it just says, hey. Saw your post, we should probably talk. Oof. Your stomach just instantly drops. Right to the floor. Yeah, your heart rate spikes. Because the safety and the excitement of that cozy Friday night just vanish in an absolute second. It's just immediate panic. The invasion is so immediate. Because suddenly you are holding the baggage of a relationship that you are never even a part of. Which is incredibly unfair, honestly. It really is. And we are starting right there today because that specific visceral panic. It's becoming this universal feature of modern romance. It really is, yeah. And it's weird because normally when we talk about human behavior, we like to think we have these clean, precise structures, like I don't know, a medical diagnosis. Right, like an x ray. You break a bone, the x ray shows the jagged line, and the doctor just says, you know, there it is. It's broken. Exactly. But you step into the world of twenty first century dating, and that X ray machine is just fundamentally shattered. Completely broken. We are looking at a romantic landscape that is, well, it's entirely chaotic. It's the Wild West out there for you guys. It really is, because the traditional guardrails like local communities or getting introductions through friends or just the clear rules of courtship, they have largely dissolved. Coof. Yeah. And what we are left with is this highly ambiguous, incredibly high stress environment. Which brings us to our mission for you today in this deep dive, because we are taking a massive stack of sources. To try and decode the bizarre, highly technical language that has emerged to describe all this chaos. It's a whole new vocabulary. It really is. We've got relationship sociology reports, behavioral management protocols, clinical transcripts from psychotherapists like Mary Joe Rapini, who is brilliant and cultural commentary from lifestyle platforms. Plus that really fascinating blog post from a writer named Gabriel Colombo. ⁓ yeah, we will definitely get to that. And bizarrely enough, we also have an engineering and standards report on wearable robotics. Which sounds completely insane for a deep dive on dating. Right. But it actually provides the foundational metaphor for our main focus today. But before we get to the robotics, the thesis connecting all of these documents is that technology hasn't just changed, you know, how we meet people. No, it has fundamentally altered the psychological structure of dating itself. How so? Like break that down for me. Well There's a sociological report in our stack by Swenzo, and it argues that dating has transitioned into this digital market driven almost entirely by what they call consumer logic. Okay. I want to pause right there on consumer logic because that makes it sound like we're out here buying dishwashers on Amazon, not, you know, looking for love. Are we really just shopping? Honestly, according to the sociology, yes. Think about it. When you open a dating app, the interface mimics a digital catalog. Scrolling through faces. Exactly. You are presented with this illusion of infinite choice. In an older localized pre digital dating pool, your options were strictly limited by geography and your social circle. Right. You dated someone from your hometown or your college. Yeah. And that forced a certain level of investment in the people you actually did meet. But now, because there is this perceived endless supply of alternative partners, just, you know, one swipe away. The grass is always greener. The incentive to work through friction or establish doof boundaries drops to near zero. Wow. Okay, that makes total sense though. It's like if you buy a sweater and it has a loose thread, you don't sit down and learn how to sew. No, you return it. You just return it and order a new one with next day delivery. And this consumer mindset has birthed an entirely new dictionary because singles have had to literally invent vocabulary to describe the awful behavior this environment encourages. They really have. It's fascinating. Let's look at the first major behavioral pattern the research identifies. This falls under the umbrella of disappearing acts. Which is a perfect illustration of consumer logic in action, really. The way relationships end now is highly indicative of a system totally devoid of accountability. Right, because we all know ghosting, right? The sudden unexplained cessation of all communication. You just vanish. But the lexicon has evolved because the behavior itself has escalated. The sources define a new phenomenon called cloaking. Okay, cloaking is just wild to me. Yeah. Have you ever experienced a situation where someone not only stands you up for a date, but they literally block you on every single platform before you even figure out they aren't coming. So aggressive. It is. You're sitting there at the table, you pull up the app to see if they, you know, message saying they're stuck in traffic, and their profile is just Gone. Erased. You are officially cloaked. It's awful. Why do people do that? Well, what is psychologically significant about cloaking is the preemptive nature of it. The person doing the cloaking is utilizing the digital architecture, specifically the block feature, to completely insulate themselves from the emotional consequences of their own rudeness. They don't want to feel bad about being a jerk. Exactly. They don't just want to avoid the date. They want to annihilate the digital bridge entirely so they never have to witness your reaction. It is the ultimate manifestation of conflict avoidance. Which brings up another term from the reading. Fizzling. ⁓ fizzling. This one feels less aggressive than cloaking, but somehow it's almost more insidious. Fizzling is basically the slow fade. Right. They gradually lose interest. Yeah. Their texts take six hours to arrive instead of six minutes. The answers get super short. And the relationship just kind of starves to death without anyone actually calling it off officially. Fizzling operates on a mechanism of plausible deniability. Explain that. Well, if I just get a little bit busier at work and a little bit worse at texting, I never actually have to face the discomfort of saying, hey, I don't see this working out. Just fade into the background. Right. The burden of the breakup is essentially transferred to the ether. And the ambiguity leaves the recipient in this terrible state of. Cognitive dissonance. You're constantly wondering, is the relationship ending or are they just having a really crazy week at the office? And that ambiguity is exactly what causes the anxiety. You're left analyzing a text message that just says, cool, wondering if it's the end of a relationship or just a casual reply. It's exhausting. It is. But speaking of anxiety, I have to bring up zombieing. The sources also sometimes call it submarining. This one is so common now. It's when someone ghosts you. Completely disappears for like six months, and then out of absolutely nowhere, you get a casual text like, Hey, how's your week going? Yeah. As if they didn't just abandon ship entirely. The audacity of zombieing is really fascinating from a sociological perspective because it reveals how digital communication flattens time. Flattens time. What do you mean? Think about the physical world. If you ignore someone in real life for six months, you would have to orchestrate a very awkward high-stakes encounter. To re-enter their life. You'd have to knock on their door or approach them at a coffee shop. You'd have to apologize, probably. Exactly. There's a social toll. But in a text thread, a message from six months ago sits directly adjacent to a message sent ten seconds ago. ⁓ wow. That is such a crucial point. Yeah. The phone doesn't care that half a year passed. The interface makes it look like one continuous, uninterrupted conversation. Exactly. The digital architecture creates this presumption of perpetual access. The zombie assumes that because they still possess the numerical coordinates to your pocket, your phone number, they are somehow entitled to your attention at their convenience. They're completely bypassing the social toll that their absence should have cost them. Precisely. It's just exhausting for anyone trying to date right now. And it's not just people disappearing, it's people who stick around but absolutely refuse to commit. The research groups all of these into on the hook behaviors. Keeping your options open. Yeah. Breadcrumbing is the famous one, right? Dropping little flirty texts or, you know, liking your Instagram stories just to keep you interested without ever actually making a plan to see you. But why? What is the actual psychological payoff of doing that? It is entirely about dopamine harvesting. Dopamine harvesting. That sounds so clinical. It's intermittent reinforcement. By breadcrumbing, an individual secures the validation that you are still interested in. That provides a nice little dopamine hit to their ego. And they get it for free. Right. Without having to expend any of the energy, time, or vulnerability required to actually date you in real life. They are just keeping you in reserve. Like a backup generator in case the power goes out. Exactly. The research also mentions benching or cushioning, which is literally just stringing someone along in case the primary person you are dating doesn't work out. Which is so cold. Yeah. But the behavior that truly baffled me in this category is dial toning. ⁓ dial toning is a big one. According to the dating platform Plenty of Fish, sixty percent of singles have experienced this. Sixty percent. That's a massive majority. It is. You match with someone, they ask for your number, you give it to them, they text you, you reply. Okay. And then they never speak to you again. It is the modern equivalent of acquiring a trophy, really. Just collecting numbers. Yes. The goal was never the conversation. The goal was simply the acquisition of the number. Once the number is acquired, the game is won. And the consumer logic dictates they just move on to the next conquest. That's just wild. The fact that 60% of people have experienced this really highlights a massive breakdown in viewing potential partners as, you know, fully realized human beings. I genuinely struggle to understand how we got to a place where treating people like disposable commodities is just a regular Tuesday. It's the digital market environment. And it's clearly messing with our heads. Because the sources point out that we are reacting by actively sabotaging ourselves now. The research categorizes a whole set of behaviors under dating the wrong people. This section is really revealing. Let's talk about white clawing. White clawing is a highly specific cultural term. It describes the phenomenon of staying with a romantic partner who you find incredibly bland, boring, or devoid of personality. Much like a basic hard seltzer simply because you find them physically attractive. A stunning twenty seven percent of people admit to doing this. I read that and immediately thought of a friend who dated a guy for like four months. Let me guess, he was gorgeous. ⁓ he looked like an Abercrombie model. Hmm. But the guy had zero opinions on anything. Didn't like music, didn't watch movies, didn't have any hobbies. My friend justified it for months before finally realizing She was essentially dating a very handsome houseplant. A handsome houseplant. That's a perfect way to describe it. Right. But then you have something far more common, which is fleabagging. Yes. Named after the acclaimed television show. Fleabagging is the consistent, knowing choice to date incompatible or toxic people. And the data here is actually staggering. Lay it on me. Sixty-three percent of women and thirty-eight percent of men admit to a pattern of flea. Okay, wait, why the massive gap there? Why are so many more women admitting to this self-sabotage? Well, it often ties back to socialization around emotional labor. Okay, how so? Many women are culturally conditioned to believe they can, you know, fix or rehabilitate a problematic partner. They view red flags not as deterrence, but almost as projects. ⁓ I see that all the time. I can change them. Exactly. Men, conversely, might underreport this behavior due to a lack of vocabulary for emotional incompatibility. Or simply because consumer logic encourages them to prioritize superficial metrics over long term compatibility anyway. That makes a lot of sense. But regardless of gender, fleabagging is fundamentally a defense mechanism. Think about it. If you continuously date people you know are wrong for you, you never actually have to face the terrifying vulnerability of a relationship that has the potential to succeed. Wow. Because if a really healthy, great relationship fails, it's actually a tragedy. It hurts. It's devastating. But if you date someone you know is terrible and it fails, you can just say, Well, I knew they were terrible. Yeah. It's a built-in emotional insurance policy. That's exactly what it is. Which brings us to the most rigid defense mechanism of all typecasting. Typecasting occurs when an individual strictly filters their dating pool based on rigid personality metrics. They rely heavily on astrology signs or tests like the Myers Briggs type indicator or Enneagrams. I see this constantly on dating profiles now. Like I am an INFJ looking for an ENTP. Just straight up no Geminis. It's everywhere. And it is a fascinating illusion of control. When the dating landscape feels overwhelming and chaotic, which we've established it does, humans naturally seek out categorization to manage their anxiety. We want to put things in neat little boxes. Precisely. By typecasting, you are trying to outsmart the chaos. You are attempting to pre-screen a human being's infinite complexity. By reducing them to a four letter acronym or a zodiac sign. It's a shortcut. It's a way to avoid the messy, unpredictable reality of getting to know someone organically. It's like trying to read the end of the movie before you even buy the ticket. That's a great analogy. And while you're busy trying to control the narrative, there are people out there who are just using the entire dating ecosystem to build their personal brand. ⁓ the performative behaviors. The performative behaviors are generally dystopian. I won't look at cosplay. Cosplaying brilliantly illustrates the intersection of digital intimacy and the gig economy. It's so weird. It really is. This is when an ex or someone you maybe went on a few dates with reaches out after a long period of silence. But they aren't reaching out to reconcile or catch up. No, they want something. They are reaching out specifically to ask you to follow their new influencer account or support their side hustle or donate to a GoFundMe they are running. Sixty-one percent of singles have been on the receiving end of cosplaying. The sheer transactional nature of that is just mind-boggling to me. You used to be romantically involved with this person, and now they are viewing you solely as a potential subscriber to their YouTube channel. Because in a hyper-connected, monetized digital landscape, every single person in your contact list is perceived as social capital. The boundary between a personal relationship and a professional audience Has entirely collapsed. Okay, so let's synthesize this for a second. We have this environment where people ghost, they zombie, they breadcrumb, they monetize their exes. The underlying theme here is that nobody knows how to just say goodbye anymore. The endings are never truly final, exactly, because the digital door is always slightly ajar. And that is the core pathology of this entire environment. The sociologist Swenzo terms this boundary dissolution. Boundary dissolution. Yes. Before the internet, breakups were physically enforced by space. You just stopped going to the coffee shop they frequented. You didn't run into them. Out of sight, out of mind. Right. But today, your digital lives remain inextricably linked through mutual friends, algorithms, and public profiles. The boundary between the past and the present is incredibly porous. Which sets up our main event for today. All of these behaviors, the zombies coming back from the dead, the orbiters watching your stories, the cosplayers looking for a follow. These are all ghosts of the past refusing to stay buried. They won't let go. And that brings us to the deepest dive of today's analysis, the most invasive, uncomfortable manifestation of this digital haunting, the phenomenon known as exoskeletoning. Exoskeletoning is a relatively new piece of dating slang, but it captures an incredibly specific and destabilizing event. Let's define it clearly for everyone listening. It is defined as the phenomenon where a romantic partner, ex-lover intentionally reaches out to, follows, or messages you the new romantic interest. Okay, I really want to make sure we underline this part. This isn't your partner's ex texting your partner. No, not at all. This is the ex finding your profile, bypassing their former partner entirely, and dropping themselves directly into your lap. Precisely. They're initiating contact with the new completely uninvolved variable in the equation, you. And whoever coined the term exoskeletoning Created a sociological metaphor of profound depth. It's a great word. But to truly understand why it's such a brilliant term, we have to look at the etymology of the word exoskeleton. And this is where that engineering and standards report on wearable robotics finally comes into play. Yes. Let's trace this because the linguistic journey of this word is amazing. When I hear exoskeleton, I immediately think of Tony Stark. Iron Man. Yeah, I think of Iron Man suits, military tech, sci-fi movies. But the engineering report traces the origin, and it has absolutely nothing to do with robotics originally. Not at all. The term actually originated in 19th century zoology. Wait, really? Yeah. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the noun first appears in the 1830s and was heavily popularized in the 1840s by the English biologist Sir Richard Owen. A Victorian biologist studying crustaceans. Exactly. In biology, an exoskeleton is the external supporting structure of an animal. It is the rigid, Hard outer shell of a crab, an insect, or a spider. Okay, I'm with you. This shell provides protection and support, but it has a massive evolutionary drawback. It is fixed. It does not grow. So what happens when the crab grows? For the living creature inside to expand and mature, it must undergo a process of molting. It has to physically rip itself out of that rigid structure, leaving the hollow shell behind in order to grow a new larger one. So you basically just have this shed. Hollow shell just sitting there on the ocean floor. Yes. Now watch how the word transfers disciplines over time. By 1964, the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory publishes a report titled Wearable Exoskeletal Structure. Because the military wants to build a machine to amplify human strength. Exactly. And by 1965, Popular Science magazine is writing about machines that let you carry a ton, inviting the public to imagine strapping on an exoskeleton. Then, by twenty thirteen, Harvard researchers are publishing papers on soft exosuits. The word literally moves from a dead biological shell to a mechanical apparatus designed to artificially amplify a human's presence. It's quite a leap. I am just marveling at the internet's ability to repurpose language. We took a word from an eighteen forty study on crab molting, gave it to military engineers in the nineteen sixties to describe a mechanical supersuit, and now in the twenty twenties, Gen Z is using it to describe A bitter X creeping on your TikTok. It is poetry, honestly. But break down the metaphor for me. How does the crustacean shell map onto a messy modern breakup? It works on multiple layered levels. First, it's obviously a clever play on the idiom skeletons in the closet, you know, the unresolved baggage or past relationships a person hides away. But because of social media, these skeletons are no longer locked in the closet. They have grown an external structure, they have mobility. They can step out of the closet and walk right into your direct messages. The skeletons are weaponized now. Exactly. But on a ⁓ much deeper psychological level, the X represents that rigid 19th century zoological shell. ⁓ so. When two people are in a relationship, they build a dynamic, a shared structure. When the relationship ends, the mutual partner, the living creature in this metaphor, molts. They move on, they grow, they enter a new relationship with you. Okay. But the ex-partner is often trapped inside a fixed perception of a relationship that no longer exists. ⁓ wow. They're living in a ghost town. They are occupying a hollow representation of the past. They are the ex-shell. And when they reach out to you, they are trying to artificially amplify their presence, much like the military exoskeleton, to exert force on an environment they no longer naturally belong in. Okay. That is an incredibly powerful way to frame it. If you are listening to this right now and you've been exoskeleton, you have to internalize that concept. The person messaging you is not a current threat to your relationship. They are just a hollow shell, frozen in time, interacting with a version of your partner that literally doesn't exist anymore. That's the perfect way to look at it. But that begs the question, right? How does this dead shell reanimate? How does the haunting actually mechanically trigger? Well, the clinical data indicates that exoskeletoning rarely, if ever, occurs randomly. It isn't just out of the blue. It is almost universally catalyzed by a specific trigger, which the sociological research labels a social media milestone. The hard launch. The hard launch. Now, for anyone not deep in internet culture, a hard launch is when you officially declare your relationship on the grid. Right, you make it known. You post a clear, unmistakable photo of the two of you together, tagging their account. Making it permanently visible on your profile for everyone to see. It is a public visual receipt. Now let's contrast this with a soft launch. ⁓ the soft launch is an art form. It really is an intentional deployment of ambiguity. You post a photo of your dinner table, and there just happens to be two glasses of wine. Or a photo where your partner's hand is visible resting on the steering wheel of a car, but their face is completely hidden. Right. A soft launch is basically saying to your followers. I am romantically engaged, but you do not have the security clearance to know with who yet. Exactly. It's teasing it. And the psychological literature points out that these launches are heavily tied to our attachment styles. ⁓ interesting. How so? Well, someone with an anxious attachment style might push for a hard launch rapidly, right? Because they are seeking the public validation to soothe their internal insecurity. They want everyone to know they are claimed. Exactly. While someone with an avoidant attachment style might prefer the soft launch, maintaining a barrier of privacy and control over the narrative. The sources mention that if you force a hard launch unilaterally, like posting the photo, without your partner's enthusiastic consent, it can feel really coercive. It absolutely can. Because you are stripping away their privacy boundary without asking. Because a hard launch dissolves the boundary between private intimacy and public consumption. But crucially, for the ex who is secretly monitoring their former partner's digital footprint, the hard launch is the catalyst. Like it's the trigger. It is undeniable visual proof that they have been replaced. It completely shatters any lingering denial they might have been holding on to. And that shock to their system is what awakens the ex shell. So the Friday night photo goes up, the shell reanimates. What happens next? Well, the behavioral protocols outline four primary forms of contact that the X will use to infiltrate your life. Let's walk through the timeline. Form number one, the friendly DM. This usually happens almost immediately after the launch. The X slides into your messages and the tone is aggressively welcoming. ⁓ I hate this one. It's usually something like, Hey, I saw you and so and so are making things official. Just wanted to say hi. I'm so happy for you guys. Which sounds so nice on paper. But it's a trap, right? It is a Classic Trojan horse maneuver. It is highly manipulative because it actively weaponizes social politeness. Explain that. Well, think about it. If they approach you with hostility, if they are mean, you can easily block them and feel completely justified doing it. Right, they're just being a jerk. But by feigning friendliness, they establish a beachhead in your digital life. They force you into a corner where ignoring them makes you look like the insecure, rude, or jealous new partner. You feel socially obligated to reply, ⁓ thanks so much. And the minute you reply, you've validated their access to you. You let them in. You open the door. But let's say they don't message. Form number two is the slow burn, the behavioral protocol calls it, the subtle lurk. The subtle lurk is a pure surveillance tactic. They don't message you, they don't like your photos. But you notice their name appearing at the very bottom of the viewer list on every single Instagram or TikTok store you post. They watch everything. Or even worse, they look at your LinkedIn profile knowing full well that the platform will notify you this person viewed your profile. Okay. The LinkedIn lurk is the most unhinged move in the playbook because it's so corporate. It's like, why are you looking at my resume? But why just watch? Why not say anything to me? Because the goal is psychological real estate. They are normalizing their presence in your daily notifications. Just a little reminder that they exist. Exactly. It generates a persistent, low-level anxiety. Every time you post a joyful moment with your partner, you are subconsciously aware that the ex is sitting in the digital audience watching you. It subtly alters your behavior. It's like having a ghost standing in the corner of your living room who just refuses to speak. It's very unsettling. But eventually, some of them do speak, and they escalate to form number three. The warning shot. This is where the exoskeleton drops the facade of friendliness entirely. They reach out under the pretense of concern, offering unsolicited advice or, you know, spilling tea. Just trying to stir the pot. They'll send a message like, Hey, I see you're dating them now. Just thought you should know as a warning how they treated me at the end. Okay, let's pause right here. Because I have to push back on the idea that this is always malicious. That's fair. Go ahead. If my new partner has a history of toxic, abusive Or deeply dishonest behavior, a small part of me genuinely wants to know that, right? How are you supposed to tell the difference between a legitimate helpful warning shot from a whistleblower trying to protect you and a bitter ex who is just trying to blow up your new happiness out of spite? That is the most difficult needle to thread in this entire phenomenon. And our source transcript from psychotherapist Mary Joe Rapini addresses this exact vulnerability. What'd she say? Rapini notes that exoskeletoning places the new partner in a highly precarious situation because emotionally and psychologically, this ex has access to data about your partner that you do not possess yet. They've seen behind the curtain. They know how your partner behaves in a conflict, they know their flaws, their habits. Which means you can't just dismiss the warning outright. It plants a seed of doubt. Exactly. It forces you to navigate a history you had absolutely no part in creating. However, Rapini and the behavioral data suggest that the intent behind exoskeletoning is overwhelmingly self-serving, not altruistic. Okay, what's the proof of that? Look at the statistics we have. 22% of singles report having been exoskeleton, but only 6% of singles admit to having done it. That is a massive 16% gap of pure denial. It is. And that discrepancy exists because the individuals reaching out know on a fundamental level. That's what they are doing is socially unacceptable. If it was really a public service, they'd admit it. Right. If it were truly an altruistic duty to warn strangers, people would claim the behavior proudly. The fact that they hide it suggests that even when they justify it to themselves as a warning, they know they are crossing a boundary. They know it's messy. Which leads us to the ultimate escalation, form number four: the fact check. The behavioral protocol calls this gaslighting by proxy. This is a high impact, highly destructive tactic. The X utilizes digital receipts to create an immediate crisis. They will send you a screenshot of a text message or a timeline saying something like, Are they still telling people we broke up in March because we were still sleeping together in May? Oof. They are just dropping a bomb on your timeline and suddenly your entire relationship foundation is shaking. You have to turn to your partner and say, You need to explain this. It creates chaos. Which makes me wonder. What is the psychological payoff for the ex? Why are they spending their Tuesday evening orchestrating the destruction of a stranger's piece? To understand the motives, we have to look past the specific text messages and look at the underlying psychological drivers. The behavioral management protocols identify three primary mechanisms. Okay, let's hear them. The first and most foundational is the loss of control and the maintenance of access. Break that down for me. What are they trying to control? Well, when a breakup occurs, direct access to the former partner is usually severed, right? Ideally, yes. The ex struggles profoundly with this sudden loss of agency. They can no longer influence their former partner's day, their mood, or their decisions. By reaching out to you, the new partner, they have found a back door. So it's not even about me. No. You are not a person to them. You are an indirect conduit. back to their former partner. If they can upset you, they know you will confront your partner and suddenly the ex is indirectly controlling the emotional weather in your partner's living room again. That is incredibly dark. It's like they can't walk through the front door, so they throw a rock through the back window just to make sure they're still getting inside the house. Precisely. That is a great visual. What's the second motive? The second motive is comparison or reconnaissance. Because social media fuels an architecture of absolute transparency, the ex feels a compulsion to inspect the upgrade. They want to see what they were replaced with. They are driven by insecurity to evaluate you. They want to see if you are more attractive, more successful, or if their former partner just appears happier overall. And if they find out you are happier, they move to the third motive, sabotage. Sabotage is where the behavior becomes actively destructive. The ex wants to introduce friction and doubt. Our clinical sources note that in this phase, the ex often utilizes the victim card and falls into a well documented psychological model called the Cartman Drama Triangle. Okay, you need to explain. Like I'm five here. What is the Cartman drama triangle and how does it play out in my Instagram DMs? Okay, think of the Cartman drama triangle as a deeply dysfunctional stage play with a script that requires exactly three actors the persecutor, the victim, and the rescuer. Okay, I have the stage in my head. Who is who? The ex writes the script, they cast their former partner, your current partner, in the role of the persecutor, the terrible, abusive villain. They cast themselves in the role of the helpless victim. Right, they were wronged. But for the play to actually work, they need a third actor. They need a rescuer, or at the very least, an audience member to validate the victim's suffering. And when they slide into my DMs, they are shoving a script into my hands and dragging me onto the stage. Exactly. They are trying to force you into the role of the rescuer. They want you to validate their narrative to say, ⁓ my gosh, you're right, they are terrible. So if I agree with them. If you accept the script and engage with them at all, the drama triangle is complete and they have successfully pulled you into their emotional chaos. I am just mind blown by how mechanical this all is. Because you synthesize all three of those motives, the backdoor access, the reconnaissance of the drama triangle, the most liberating realization emerges. Which is. Exoskeletoning is almost never actually about you. It's not. It is entirely about the exes internal struggle for agency restoration. You are just a prop in their stage play. You are collateral damage in their unresolved conflict with their own past. I want to bring in a really fascinating, somewhat bizarre parallel here from our stack of sources. We have a blog post from a journalist and lifestyle writer named Gabriel Columbo, dated early twenty twenty one. Yes, the Columbo piece. He publishes a Mini dictionary of cold blood apps dating, which actually includes one of the early definitions of exoskeletoning. But what I find wildly interesting is the context of the rest of the blog post. Do you remember what else he was writing about on that exact same page? The geopolitical references, yes. The juxtaposition is stunning. Right. Right next to defining dating slang, Colombo is writing about massive structural collapses in the real world. He discusses Giuseppe Conte, the Italian prime minister at the time. Resigning and causing a political crisis in Italy. And Brexit. Right. In the very next paragraph, he's talking about Brexit, invalidating UK passports, causing chaos for travelers who were suddenly stranded because the rules of the border changed overnight. Just massive upheaval. Now we are obviously not here to debate Italian politics or Brexit. We were just reporting what's in the text here and not taking sides on any of it. But why put those massive political events right next to dating slime? Because intuitively, Colombo recognized a thematic overlap. He is writing about the anxiety of unstable structures. Unstable structures. Just as political borders and governmental structures become unstable and undergo radical, confusing shifts, digital dating has created a world of radically unstable personal borders. Unstable personal borders. That is the perfect term for it. Think about the passport analogy he uses for Brexit. A passport is an agreement. It dictates who is allowed to enter a country and who's kept out. For decades, a breakup functioned like a revoked passport. You weren't allowed back in. It was a clear, enforceable boundary. You lost access. But the digital age has dissolved those borders entirely. The rules of entry and exit in our personal lives have completely changed, and often without our consent. Social media leaves the border completely unmonitored. A breakup used to mean a clean severing of ties, but now the border is so porous that anyone can wander back in whenever they want. They just bypass security. And in that same post, Colombo drops an inspiring quote that he attributes to Tinkerbell of all sorts. ⁓ the Tinkerbell quote. Yeah, the quote is if you have to choose between me and her, choose her. Because if you really loved me, there wouldn't be any other choice. It is a highly melodramatic quote. But it perfectly encapsulates the emotional frequency of the exoskeleton. It really does. That quote is exactly the kind of toxic high stakes sentiment an ex might try to inject into your life during a warning shot. It's bait. It's pure, one hundred percent emotional bait designed to make you question your partner's loyalty. Which is why the single most important thing a listener can take away from this deep dive today is how to navigate that bait. Let's get tactical. Once you recognize that the motive is about their lack of control and that they are exploiting unstable personal borders, the next logical step is establishing a defense. How do you protect your peace? This is where the rubber meets the road. We are moving into the tactical defense portion of the dive. The behavioral management protocols outline a specific three step framework for handling an exoskeleton. The learner's protocol. Right. They call it the learner's protocol. Step one is the most critical. Set immediate boundaries. The foundational rule of step one is The disengagement rule. You must internalize that you owe this X zero access, zero response, and zero explanation. Nothing. You must restrict or block their account immediately. Silence is the most potent tactical boundary you possess. Because I know the temptation is to write back and defend your partner or to tell the ex off, right? Like, leave us alone, you sound crazy. But doing that is a trap. Any response, it even a negative defensive one is a victory for the ex. How is being told off a victory? Because it validates their effort. It tells them that the rock they threw through the back window successfully shattered the glass. If you engage, you accept a role in their Cartman drama triangle. Silence starves them of the script. Shut the border down. Block them. Step two of the protocol is neutral disclosure. You have to tell your partner that this happened, and the protocol stresses keeping the emotion out of it. Keep it factual. The script is literally just, hey. Your ex reached out to me today, I blocked them, but do you have any idea what this might be about? This step is a vital, unavoidable litmus test for your new relationship. You are presenting neutral data to your partner and just observing their reaction. What should a good reaction look like? A healthy, secure partner will immediately champion your boundary. They will likely apologize for the intrusion, validate your discomfort, and assure you that they are handling their end of the boundary. But what if they don't? What if they get weird about it? If your partner becomes highly defensive, if they try to minimize it by saying, ⁓ they're just crazy, ignore it. Without taking any accountability. Or if they get mad at you for bringing it up. Or worse, if they try to gaslight you into thinking you are overreacting, that is a massive red flag. You find out real quick if your partner's secretly keeping that X on the hook, maybe doing a little bread crumbing of their own. Exactly. Their reaction reveals whether they are a co-architect of the unstable border or if they are just as victimized by the ex's behavior as you are. And then we hit step three. Avoid retaliation. The protocol specifically says do not cyberstalk the stalker. Which, let's be honest, requires superhuman restraint. It really does. Your partner's ex just messaged you. The first thing you want to do is scroll back to 2021 on their grid to see what they look like together. To see if they took better vacations than you do, you want to investigate. It is a very human impulse, but the protocol warns against falling into the feedback loop. By digging into their digital history, you are voluntarily bathing in the exact psychological dynamic you are trying to escape. You're doing the work for them. You're doing the ex's reconnaissance work for them. This ties into a concept I found fascinating in the sources. The gray rocking technique. Grey rocking is a psychological strategy designed for dealing with narcissistic or highly manipulative individuals. I love the visual of this one. The premise is simple. You make yourself as uninteresting, unresponsive, and emotionally flat as a literal gray rock on the ground. Just a boring rock. When the ex tries to provoke a reaction, you offer absolutely nothing in return. No anger, no fear, no curiosity. You starve the parasite of the emotional energy it requires to survive. But here's where I want to get really practical with you, the listener. Because all of these steps blocking, neutral disclosure, gray rocking, they sound great in a textbook. But in practice, it's much harder. In reality, when that message pops up, your body completely betrays you. You feel sick, your chest tightens. It is a severe physiological stressor. And that is a crucial point. We cannot just address the social dynamic. We have to address the somatic response. Dealing with an exoskeleton triggers your amygdala. The lizard brain. It initiates an involuntary fight or flight response. Your nervous system perceives the digital intrusion as a literal physical threat to your safety and your tribal bond. So how do you hack the nervous system to get back to normal? The source material on no contact psychology outlines a few wild, but apparently highly effective somatic regulation techniques. They are very effective, yes. And I know what you're thinking as you listen to this. ⁓ You want me to do biological hacks just because an ex liked my story? Yes. Because it works. The first one they recommend is activating the mammalian diving reflex. This is rooted in evolutionary biology. When marine mammals dive into freezing water, their heart rate automatically slows down to conserve oxygen. Like a seal or a dolphin. Right. Humans have a residual version of this reflex. If you are experiencing a severe anxiety spike from an exoskeleton event, going to the bathroom and splashing freezing cold water on your face, Or holding your wrists under a cold tap forcefully activates the diving reflex. It tricks your body. It physically compels your heart rate to drop, overriding the amygdala's panic signal. It's a physiological circuit breaker, just cold water. The second technique is specific breath work. The protocol says to make your exhales longer than your inhales. Breathe in for four seconds, breathe out for eight. Why does the timing matter so much? It targets the vagus nerve, which essentially acts as the brake pedal for your nervous system. Short, shallow breaths signal to the brain that you are running from a predator. You're panting. Right. Long extended exhales stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, shifting your body from fight or flight back into rest and digest mode. They also suggest physical interrupts. When your brain is obsessively spinning like rumination, you have to pull your consciousness back into your physical body. You'd have to ground yourself. Do 20 jumping jacks. Hold a literal ice cube in your hand until it melts. Force your brain to process a strong physical sensation instead of a digital anxiety. And if the rumination persists even after that, the protocol recommends a psychological container strategy called scheduled worry time. I love this one. It feels like giving your anxiety a corporate meeting request. That is essentially what it is. If you cannot stop obsessing over what the ex said, you do not fight the thoughts all day. You'll just exhaust yourself. What do you do? Instead, you schedule a rigid fifteen minute window, say, at 8 0 p.m., exclusively for worrying. When the intrusive thought pops up at 2 p.m., you tell your brain, I acknowledge this, but we have an appointment to analyze this at 8 0 p.m. It prevents the anxiety from bleeding into your entire day. Exactly. You put the ghost on a strict schedule. By combining all of this, the boundary setting, the gray rocking, the nervous system regulation, you completely deny the X shell. The energy it needs to reanimate. You ensure that the hollow shell stays hollow. That's the ultimate goal. Which brings me to a concept that I think beautifully counteracts this entire chaotic landscape we've discussed today. The ultimate rebellion against the consumer logic of modern dating. The sources call it the sweatpants theory. It is a fantastic, highly grounded concept. Think about all the performative behaviors we talked about earlier: the typecasting, the flea bagging, the eclipsing where you adopt someone else's hobbies, the anxiety of the hard launch. Everyone's putting up fronts. Constant performance. Sweatpants theory argues that the most powerful thing you can do is be as effortlessly and authentically yourself as you are when you're wearing comfortable sweatpants on a Sunday morning. By removing the performative effort, you naturally repel the people looking for a performance. Exactly. If you are authentically, unbotheredly yourself, it acts as a natural filtration system. The toxic people, the orbiters, the breadcrumbers, the exoskeletoners, they require Drama and performance to thrive. They feed on it. If you are comfortable in your sweatpants, you aren't going to entertain an ex's dramatic stage play. You just don't have the energy for it. Authenticity becomes your strongest, most effortless boundary. It is the ultimate antidote to the friction of digital intimacy. Okay, let's bring all of these threads together. If you take anything away from this deep dive today, it is an understanding of the mechanics of modern romance. It's complex, but it's navigable. The slang we've covered. From the slow fate of fizzling to the audacious return of zombieing to the invasive haunting of exoskeletoning proves one fundamental truth. Technology has made saying goodbye an unfinished, highly complicated process. The digital landscape has permanently dissolved our personal boundaries. But if you are currently dealing with an exoskeleton, you must internalize that you are not alone and it is not your fault. It's really not. It is a structural flaw. In the architecture of modern social media, it is an ex struggling with a loss of control, is not a reflection of your worth, and it is not necessarily a reflection of the health of your new relationship. Maintain your tactical boundaries. Shut the border down. Restrict and block the hollow shells of the past. Communicate the facts transparently to your partner to test their security and regulate your nervous system. And stay comfortably in your authentic sweatpants. If you starve the drama of oxygen, the ghost disappears. As we wrap up this analysis, I want to leave you with a final, much broader philosophical concept to mull over. Let's hear it. The behavioral reports we've analyzed today suggest a profound, perhaps permanent shift in human history. In the digital age, a breakup is no longer a binary event. It is no longer a clean break. It's always messy. It is a lingering, highly visible, searchable architectural feature of a person's digital life. The footprints never really wash away. And that raises the ultimate question we want to leave you with. If the internet ensures that true, clean slates and romance are effectively extinct, how will that permanently change the way we view forgiveness and the heavy weight of the past in the partners we choose for our future? Welcome to Speed Mingle, where making real connections happens in stream, swipe, socialize, your ultimate connection network. Jump in now. Thanks for tuning in to the Speed Mingle Network.