Situationships Are The Worst Part Of Dating In 2023 (And I’m Done With Them)

If I could describe a situationship in one word, it would be “exhausting.” That’s because situationships drain almost everything out of you. Situationships only waste your time and break your heart.

Situationships are basically the modern-day equivalent of playing house, but today “playing house” is more like “doing wifey shit for a dude who won’t even call you his girlfriend even though you text all day, know the root of his childhood trauma, fuck, go out to dinner, cuddle on the couch, visit IKEA to help him pick out furniture for the home you’ll never share, and provide endless emotional support because he refuses to see the therapist he really needs.”

If I sound bitter and pissed, it’s because I feel completely and utterly defeated by the dating scene we need to navigate in order to find love. Situationships aren’t just something you risk getting involved in when you start talking to someone new; situationships are pretty much guaranteed until you find the real thing.

If you think about it, modern dating culture makes the perfect environment for situationships to not only exist but to thrive because everything is so surface-level, detached, and non-committal.

To date today means you must swipe for dates on apps where you glean whether or not someone is worth pursuing based on a series of Hinge prompts and a collection of curated photos. If you end up meeting them for drinks, you cannot really act like it’s a date even though you met on a dating app.

And then, if you continue to see one another after the initial meeting, you simply say you’re “talking to” or “hanging out” with them. You can’t say you’re “dating” because you have yet to define what your relationship is, or what it is you two are heading towards, because you think it’s too soon to have that talk and you don’t want to seem clingy, desperate, or overly attached.

And so, you roll with it. You wait. You become closer. You catch feelings. You spend more Sunday mornings at their apartment than you do at your own. You continue to wait. You meet their friends. You shop at IKEA for furniture. You give advice about their shitty manager. You listen to their sleep talk. You check the time and decide to wait some more.

Eventually, you realize the clock you’ve been referencing doesn’t really exist. But now it feels awkward to bring up what you’re doing since it’s felt like an unspoken and mutual understanding that you enjoy spending time together without the labels and commitment. So you continue to see them.

And thus, the situationship is born.

The tricky thing about a situationship is that it’s almost seamless to get into one but so much more difficult to leave. You have feelings for them. You are afraid to lose them. You convince yourself that what you have is better than not having them around at all.

It’s not.

You deserve better than a situationship. You deserve better than someone who can’t decide whether or not you’re worth committing to. You deserve better than being someone’s option, not their choice.

You deserve commitment, care, and compassion. If someone can’t or is unwilling to provide those things for you, you can give them to yourself and you do so by walking away.

If there is one thing that is a hard rule it is that indecision is a decision. If it’s been literal months and they still act aloof around you even though they see you naked every Saturday night, it’s time to move on.

Situationships are absolutely the worst part of modern dating. I’m done with them, and I hope you are too.