English vocabulary: useful words to talk about relationships

‘Hugs and kisses’, ‘butterflies in your stomach’, ‘a pounding heart’ – what am I going on about? Love and relationships of course!

Talking about relationships can be a tricky, and you don’t want to make a mistake when trying to tell someone else how you feel about them. To avoid any mix-ups, here are some useful words and phrases about dating in English.

When they are dating, people are often either ‘casual’ or interested in a ‘steady’ relationship. A ‘casual’ dater, someone ‘playing the field’, is someone who isn’t looking for a serious relationship, while a ‘steady’ dater is looking to possibly settle down with the right person soon.

Maybe you haven’t had the opportunity to ask the person you like out on a date yet, or perhaps you only have a ‘crush’. A ‘crush’ is when you really like someone but you haven’t told them yet. Perhaps you might start ‘flirting’ with them. If you ‘flirt’ with someone, it means you are trying to playfully impress them.

Once people have started a serious relationship, they often say they have ‘found the one’, referring to their ‘boyfriend’ or ‘girlfriend’, the person they want to be with forever. Before they ‘get married’ and make their relationship legally binding, some people enter into an ‘engagement’. When two people are ‘engaged’, it means they have made an agreement to get married. There is often an engagement ring representing this promise.

However, sometime love stories come to end. Perhaps you and your ‘significant other’ (the person you are with: boyfriend, girlfriend, husband or wife) no longer feel the same way about each other, and you no longer have ‘butterflies in your stomach’ (that nervous feeling in your belly when you’re with someone in the beginning). It might be time to ‘break up’ with the other person.

This means to end the relationship and go your separate ways. If you are married, this break up
would be called a ‘divorce’. You would need to officially document the separation to end your marriage.

Well, let’s not leave on a sad note here! There are other types of relationships like your ‘best friend’. This is a friend that you are very close to and share many aspects of your life with. Some say relationships come and go, but friendships remain.

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