DII: Interstitial Essay — From Signaling to Settlement

The chapters immediately preceding this one describe a system that appears communicative, expressive, and emotionally fluent, yet consistently fails to produce coordination, closure, or trust. This interstitial exists to make explicit what is otherwise easy to miss: signaling is not a side effect of modern dating; it is the mechanism that allows the system to function without settling anything.

Once goals collapse, closure becomes optional, and cost detaches from action, signaling becomes the primary currency of interaction. It fills the space where structure once lived. Warmth substitutes for commitment. Expression substitutes for decision. Activity substitutes for progress.

This is why so many interactions feel alive but unproductive. The system is not malfunctioning. It is clearing volume without settling accounts.

The purpose of naming signaling explicitly is not to moralize it away. Signals are inevitable in human interaction. The problem arises only when signals are permitted to advance state—to generate continued engagement, emotional investment, and expectation—without requiring any corresponding return.

At that point, the system crosses a line. It becomes extractive.

What follows in the next chapter is therefore not advice, therapy, or exhortation. It is a counter‑architecture. A description of what a dating system must do differently if it intends to produce coordination rather than perpetual motion.