Alright alright, so we thought ghosting was super cruel. (Refresher: ghosting is when you and potential bae exchange a couple cute flirty texts, and then all of the sudden, bae is gone. Bae left the convo. Bae has disappeared. Did bae break his phone? Is bae sick? Did bae fall off the face of the earth? -- No sweetie, potential bae has ghosted and well, maybe, you need to get back on Tinder.)

But anyways, now there’s a new dating phenomenon (not new, but newly coined), and in a way, it’s waaaaay worse than ghosting. “Benching,” according to New York writer and editor Jason Chen, is when you’re in that cutesy talking phase with someone, and just when you thought they ghosted you and you need to find another fling, he/she comes back into the convo and your life, FULL FORCE. It’s like a ghost that never fully died and keeps coming back to haunt you, yet doesn’t actually want to commit to you. However, at the same time, he/she doesn't want to let you go of you either.

We’ve probably all been there. Just when you think “Mr. Fuckboii” or "Fuckgurl" is gone from your life, BAM his/her names pops up on your screen. Or maybe he/she liked your picture on instagram or maybe told you that you looked 10/10 bangable, and well sh*t, you’re hooked on him/her again. Point is, the ghost returns, not because he/she realized you were the love of his/her life, but for purely selfish reasons. The ghost wants to keep you on his radar, yet doesn’t actually have feelings for you. You're getting put on the bench, and he/she is the baseball coach and if one of his/her other potential’s starts losing, you'll get put back into this twisted game.

It’s terrible. It’s selfish, but honestly, we’ve probably been both put on the bench and/or put our own potentials on the bench. It’s one of those situations, where we don’t feel bad if we do it to someone, but the minute someone does it to us, we’re texting our girls to bring over a bottle of rose and come throw darts at the blown up poster of the offender.

Maybe we should just be honest, instead of stringing people along and placing them on the bench. I mean, that would be the noble, ethical thing to do, right? No one likes sitting on the bench,whether it's in middle school gym class or in real world dating life. But then again, do we really think all the fuckboii’s and fuckgirls of the world will hault their sophomoric dating rituals because it's the right thing to do?