Situationship

As a recently divorced woman, I have delved into the world of online dating. It has been more than a decade since I last experienced the dating scene, which means I know approximately none of the manners, vocabulary, or “norms” of the current dating world.

So naturally, I started conducting thorough research. By which I mean, I let the Instagram algorithm feed me an endless stream of content about dating apps and modern romance.

To my dismay, what I discovered was apparently the horror that is modern dating.

According to my feed, one way to avoid the ache of heartbreak is to keep a “roster,” dating multiple people at once and distributing your attention so you do not “catch feelings,” become “delulu” (internet slang for “delusional”), or get too attached. Basically, the more emotional distance you can create, and the more “cool” you remain, the better your odds of surviving this war of love.

The idea is to protect your heart by never opening it too much in the first place.

And perhaps the ultimate test of this strategy is the situationship.

A situationship is a romantic or sexual connection that is not officially defined, labeled, or committed. You may spend time together, text each other, sleep together, share parts of your lives, and do many of the things couples do, while keeping the relationship somewhere in the wonderfully confusing territory between casual and committed.

At first, I thought: what a quintessential representation of our current culture, with its growing appreciation for nuance, ambiguity, and everything that exists between neat categories. Some might even call it an exercise in Negative Capability, the ability to remain comfortable with uncertainty without demanding an immediate, concrete answer. On paper, it sounds like such a sophisticated strategy for protecting ourselves.

The problem is, it does not always protect us the way we expect it to.

Somewhere between the texts, the dinners, the inside jokes, and the hours spent together, feelings can develop anyway. The heart you were so determined to protect quietly opens without asking for your permission. Suddenly, you care much more than you planned to.

But there is another way this can go: the armor works too well.

That was my experience.

I kept parts of myself guarded and tucked away because I thought that was what would protect me from disappointment and pain.

The situationship eventually ended, and I realized that I had protected my heart so well that I had also shielded it from the very thing it wanted: nourishment.

Because, surprise! We have a soul. And it needs more than protection. It needs real connection.

Wanting to protect our tender hearts is such a human thing. And casual connections are not inherently bad. But my situationship taught me that connection always asks something of us. If we open our hearts, we risk getting hurt. If we keep them closed, we may protect ourselves from pain, but also from genuine closeness.

As for me, I think I would rather find myself in relation to someone than merely in a situation with someone, even if that means getting a few cuts and scratches along the way.

Written by SAKURACO