pocketing

/POK-it-ing/

noun

Meaning

The practice of deliberately keeping someone you are dating separate from the rest of your social life, such as by refusing to introduce them to friends or family, avoiding public couple behavior, or leaving the relationship unacknowledged online. Pocketing often suggests secrecy or emotional distance, although privacy, family concerns, or uncertainty about the relationship can also play a role.[1][4][5]

1. The act of hiding a romantic partner from friends, relatives, coworkers, or other important people in one's life.
2. The condition of being kept private or unacknowledged by someone who is dating you.
3. A dating red flag in which a relationship appears active in private but is treated as nonexistent in public.

Examples

“Three months in and I still haven't met a single friend. This is pocketing.”

“Is it privacy, or is he pocketing me?”

“She posts her coffee, her dog, and her gym routine—but never our relationship. Pocketing.”

“My cousin says the pocketing is temporary, but it has been a year.”

“We talked about the pocketing, and he finally introduced me to his friends.”

Origin and spread

Pocketing is a late-2010s dating term built from the ordinary verb pocket, which can mean to put or enclose something in a pocket. The dating sense figuratively treats a partner as something tucked away out of public view, but no reliable source establishes a single inventor or definitive first use. The earliest documented examples located are from July 11, 2019, when Poly.Land described the term, and August 2, 2019, when Maxim included it in a list of dating trends. Women's Health published a detailed explanation on November 18, 2019, helping bring the expression to a broader lifestyle audience. Later coverage commonly links pocketing with the related term stashing.

How to use it

Pocketing is informal and usually carries a critical or hurt tone, especially when a partner has been hidden for a substantial period or is excluded from events and social media despite an apparently serious relationship. It should not automatically describe someone who keeps a new relationship private for a short time, lacks close family or friends, or has legitimate safety or cultural reasons for discretion. The word can refer either to the behavior or to the person experiencing it: someone may pocket a partner, or the partner may say they are being pocketed.