Talking stage

The talking stage is the stretch between the first message and the moment two people agree they are dating. You text daily, maybe meet, and nobody has named it yet. It differs from a situationship in one way: the talking stage is supposed to end with a decision. A situationship is what you get when it does not.

Updated October 5, 2026

Means

The phase before dating is agreed

First seen

By 2016 as a phrase; 'talking' for early courtship is decades older in US slang

Related terms

Situationship, Red flags, Green flags, Ghosting, Love bombing

In Swedish

Talking stage

If you met someone on an app, you have probably been in one. The useful questions are how long it should take and how it ends.

What happens during the talking stage

Mostly, you text. Every day, often several times a day, about nothing much. Somewhere in the first few weeks you meet once or twice, for a coffee or a drink. Some people now skip the drink on purpose, which is dry dating, and some ask for a short video call first, which rules out kittenfishing before anyone books a table. Then you go back to texting.

Under the small talk, both of you are working out the same thing: what does this person want? A relationship, something casual, someone to message at 11 p.m. Nobody asks directly yet. Asking feels like it might spoil it.

It is usually not exclusive. Both of you are probably still on the dating apps, and at this point that is fair. Nobody has promised anything, so nobody has broken anything. Running several talking stages at once, openly, is roster dating, and it is one route to dating app burnout.

Signs you are in one

• You talk most days, and neither of you has put a label on it.
• You have met a couple of times at most.
• Nobody has asked “what are we” yet.
• You both know it is early, and you both act like it.
• You would not call them your partner, and they would not call you theirs.

The difference from a situationship is the state of the decision. In a talking stage it is pending. You are still finding out. In a situationship it is avoided. You have found out enough, and nobody wants to be the one to say it. Dating starts when someone states what they want and you both call it dating.

Time is a clue. Three weeks of daily texting is a talking stage. Six months of it, plus an occasional weekend together, is something else, however casually you both describe it.

How long it lasts (and the 3-6-9 rule)

Nobody has measured it. We looked for a study on how long the talking stage lasts and found none, so any number of weeks you read online is an opinion.

You will also run into the 3-6-9 rule. It is a rule of thumb from social media, and it is about relationships rather than the talking stage. It sets checkpoints at three, six and nine months where you are meant to stop and ask whether it is working. It has no research behind it either. As a reminder to check in, it is harmless. It says nothing about when the texting should turn into dating.

So here is a rule of thumb of our own, labeled as ours. If you have met twice and still cannot say what you want after about a month, say it anyway, or stop. Two meetings is usually enough to know whether you want a third. A month of daily messages is enough to know whether the messages are going anywhere.

What to do about it

1. Decide what you want. A relationship, something casual, or nothing with this person. You do not have to announce it yet. You do have to know it.
2. Ask for the next meeting instead of more texting. A second or third date tells you more than another week of messages. If you are worried about the conversation, borrow a few of our first-date questions.
3. Move it forward in one line. Something like: “I like talking to you. I’d rather see you than text you. Are you up for that?”
4. Or end it in one line. “I’ve enjoyed this, but I don’t think it’s going further for me. Take care.” That is the whole message. It does not need a paragraph of reasons.
5. Do not disappear. The talking stage is where ghosting feels most acceptable, because nothing was promised. The other person still checks their phone. Either line above takes less effort than avoiding someone for a week.

Red flags in a talking stage

Some patterns are worth noticing early:

• Endless texting, no meeting. Weeks of messages, and every plan to meet somehow falls through.
• Hot and cold. Days of constant contact, then silence, then a message as if nothing happened. If the silence runs to weeks, that is zombieing.
• Too much, too soon. Constant flattery, plans for your future together and big gestures before you have met more than once or twice. That can be love bombing.
• The relationship exists mostly in your head. You have planned the trip and they have not confirmed Saturday. That drift has a name: delulu.

None of these proves anything on its own. They are reasons to ask the direct question sooner.

What the research says

Very little. We looked for peer-reviewed research on the exact phrase “talking stage” and found none. The closest is a 2024 study of what US college students mean by “just talking.” Hardesty and colleagues surveyed 403 undergraduates and ran focus groups, and the students described a deliberately vague early phase that lets closeness grow without anyone having to be the one who wants a relationship (Hardesty et al., 2024). Beyond that, what exists is a word history and a few definitions.

The word came first. Language Log traces “talking,” in the sense of early, informal courtship, back decades (Language Log, 2019). Green’s Dictionary of Slang, as quoted there, records it for courting from 1953, and as US campus slang for dating in 1989 and 1990. The phrase “talking stage” is newer. It was in use among US teenagers by 2016, when Achona, a school paper in Tampa, called it “a household name” (Achona, 2016).

Feeld, a dating app, defines the talking stage as everything from the first message to the “define the relationship” talk (Feeld, 2024). That is close to how we use it here, with one addition. This page assumes the talk should actually happen. How to have it is on DTR.

Dating apps publish their own surveys about the talking stage. We do not cite them.