If you’ve dated in the age of social media — particularly now that you’ve pivoted from posting the occasional status update to running 24/7 multiplatform documentaries of your existence — chances are you’ve been watched, liked and followed by a crush, a lover or an ex.

Prying eyes on Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter can be exciting when they come from a prospective romantic partner, confusing when unrequited and infuriating when the looker is an ex. In the last case, it’s as though the specter of a Relationship That Could Have Been is peeping over your shoulder, keeping tabs without having to commit to any real-world interactions.

Naturally, there is a name for this 21st-century phenomenon, which has joined ghosting, Netflix and chill, breadcrumbing and other recent entries to the dating lexicon. It’s called orbiting.

Unlike ghosting, which is a fancy word for disappearing from a lover’s life without notice, orbiting could not have existed before the dawn of social media. It is a behavior bound to the medium, and to an age in which people can be hyper-connected without ever speaking. Distant methods of digital observation — likes, views, etc. — are what binds the orbiter and the orbited. The phrase has been floating in the social stratosphere for at least a year now: It cropped up in a Youtube video in November 2017, with a slightly different definition, and this April, was defined in its current form by Anna Iovine in an article for Manrepeller.