The Hard Truth About Situationships
BY XUEN-LIJULY 1, 2023
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Recently, I got to have one of those deep talks with one of my girlfriends. Naturally, the topic of relationships came up, as they always do. She told me that she had been talking to a guy, and they’ve been casually hanging out for almost two months. As expected, I asked her whether she would consider making the relationship official. That’s when she hit me with a “He said he’s not ready for commitment right now, and he likes how things are at the moment,” So I asked her, “What about what you want?”, to which she replied that she wants to keep things casual as well.
POV: Watching a friend get into a situationship with a guy who’s only there for a good time, but will almost definitely wreck her self-esteem and trust (I cannot interfere, this is a canon event), sux.
Situationships seem to have become the norm in our generation. Commitment is rare, and we’re all becoming emotionally damaged, anxious people with a ton of trust issues as a result. So, how do you define something that’s not meant to be defined?
At its core, a situationship is an ‘almost relationship’. You’re not ‘just friends’, because you do things that normally only couples do, but you’re also not just casually hooking up. This can look like casually seeing each other and hanging out, but never discussing or defining the future of the relationship. It thrives on non-commitment and our creeping dread of dying alone, which is why so many people are getting into no-label relationships. People seem to think that situationships can protect them from getting hurt, due to the low-commitment nature of the relationship. But if that’s the case, why is there still so much pain throughout, and when it ends?
Here are some hard truths about situationships that you need to hear.
You can’t make them commit to you if they don’t want to
You can’t make someone love or commit to you. Despite relationship gurus online claiming to have the secret to getting someone to become ‘obsessed’ with you, relationships don’t work that way. Your situationship is not committed to you until they refer to you as their partner, and they are under no obligation to stay loyal to you or prioritize you. So, if someone says that they don’t want a relationship, believe them. Chances are, they’re probably still on dating apps.
It wrecks your self-esteem
Situationships involve a lot of uncertainties, which may not be good for your mental health. As we invest more time into a relationship that’s not really a committed relationship, it can feel like all your time and effort was wasted on something that was going nowhere. In most situationships, there’s always one person who wants more out of it, and the person who is more attached to a situationship will struggle with their self-esteem due to a lack of emotional investment from the other person. You’ll start to think that the reason they don’t want to commit to you is because you’re not good enough, when in reality, they’re just too cowardly to commit to anyone.
You start to believe that love is hard to get
If you’ve been in a situationship, or the early stages of a relationship, you’re probably familiar with the emotional rollercoasters that these relationships can take you through. According to clinical therapist Naomi Bernstein, these sustained periods of undefined courtship are the perfect breeding ground for a particularly addictive form of love. You’ll be emotionally affected by every response they give, and you’ll start to take anything they say personally. If this scenario goes on for too long, you’ll eventually start believing that you don’t deserve to be loved, and lose faith in finding long-lasting relationships.
They make us accept less than we deserve
In my humble opinion, situationships are seriously messing up how our generation views healthy relationships! It’s based on the idea that: You can’t get your heart broken if you’ve never even dated. Right? But the reality is, it’s just making us completely terrified of admitting that we want MORE, so we end up accepting less than we deserve. We’re willing to put up with anything if it means we get to keep them around because we think this is better than nothing.
The ugly truth about situationships is that they’re only an illusion of intimacy. We tell ourselves that we don’t really care about them, as if hanging out with them doesn’t make our day, as if seeing them getting close to another person doesn’t hurt us. If you actually want love and affection, you have to risk getting rejected, and you have to put your heart on the line, even if it means heartbreak.
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