Cast your mind back to The White Lotus season one. Real estate agent Shane (Jake Lacy) has just married journalist Rachel (Alexandra Daddario) and now they’re “enjoying” their Hawaiian honeymoon. Except, well, something’s afoot. While Shane basks in an almost comical level of ignorant bliss, tension simmers beneath the surface. Rachel knows that this man, who wears pastel polos and a Cornell cap unironically, isn’t “the one”. Because we all know, really, don’t we. Shane is what some have recently taken to calling a “placeholder partner”. As in, a partner who looks like the real deal—maybe you live together, maybe you’re even married!—but, crucially, isn’t.
Of course, all of these newly minted dating terms—“soul ties”, “micro-cheating”, “orbiting”—mean very little in the grand, amorphous, technicolour scheme of things. Every relationship is different. Not one experience is the same. And the concept of “the one” is a strange one. But I do think there’s something to be said about the singular experience of play-acting a relationship in the hopes it might stick—or, indeed, until something better comes along. The worst thing about being a placeholder partner is that you often don’t know you’re one—or you do know, somewhere deep in the dark recesses of your subconscious, but you choose to ignore it.
What is a placeholder partner?
As with everything else in this godforsaken life, the term “placeholder partner” originated on TikTok and quickly gained traction from there. Again, it refers to a partner that occupies a temporary space, rather than a long-term one. “But isn’t that just… dating?” I hear you ask. I mean, yes, but there’s an element of “future faking” at play here. You’re doing all the things that look like two people in a genuinely committed relationship, except one of you privately isn’t invested. Think: Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character Tom in 500 Days Of Summer or Aishwarya Rai’s Saba in Ae Dil Hai Mushkil—those are placeholder partners.
How do you know if you are a placeholder partner?
Online, the common consensus seems to be that any type of vagueness or mixed signals, however subtle, usually indicates that you’re the placeholder partner as opposed to “the dream girl”. “Is he bad at communication? Is he bad at making plans? Is he bad at texting back? Is he vague about how he feels about you?” asks one TikToker. “If you are his dream girl, he is going to lock that shit down as quickly as possible.” If you’re still unsure, rewatch the cult 2009 rom-com He’s Just Not That Into You.
Of course, “reading the signs” isn’t always easy if you have a partner who makes empty promises about a shared future—marriage, kids, whatever—as a way to keep you around, without ever really meaning it. Though I do suspect that most of us know the true status of our relationship and what space we occupy within it if we listen to our gut properly. Even Shane on The White Lotus probably knew deep down—and he didn’t know anything!
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: vogue.in
