I’ve played this game before, although not entirely as formal. It’s basically when you don’t want to ghost each other, and you’re both being or attempting to be polite about it so that you can keep them as a possibility for later.

I’m not saying to be uncivil, but that’s usually what’s going on, and it’s really obvious when you don’t have any long term commitments between each other that won’t need to be resolved in the future.