Roaching is hiding the fact that you are still seeing other people and treating a setup as exclusive only when caught.
Roaching describes quietly dating multiple people while letting a new partner assume the connection is exclusive. When confronted, the person claims that exclusivity was never actually defined.
It often surfaces when you discover other dates and they shrug it off with “we never said we were exclusive.” The deception lives in the silence and the implication, not in any spoken promise.
The name nods to the idea that where there is one hidden partner, there are probably several more, like roaches behind a wall. It tends to come with vague answers about weekend plans, slow replies, and protected calendar time.
The protection is an early, honest conversation about what you both expect from the connection. Defining exclusivity out loud, rather than assuming it, removes the gray area that someone could otherwise exploit later.