Grievances from Gen Z : The Situationship
For the past two months I’ve been seeing a guy I met on Hinge (surprisingly). While I never had much luck with dating apps in the past, after three years of insufferable Hinge dates things are finally starting to look up…I think. My current status: in a situationship?
As I’ve slowly been withering away in the situationship zone, torn between confessing my feelings and not wanting to ruin a good thing, I started wondering: how did this happen? When did dating become so complicated? Why can’t we just slip a piece of paper to the person we’re seeing that says ‘Do you like me? Yes or No?’
Yes, situationships have always existed but now they feel to be more common than actual relationships. Situationships have become so prevalent in modern dating, especially amongst Gen Z, which consists of those born between 1997–2012, that Google Trends reports the term ‘situationship’ hitting an all time high this month. On TikTok, videos captioned with #situationship have over 1.3 billion views. Which once again leads me to my question: Why has Gen Z embraced the situationship?
The rules of the situationship
Of course after the fourth date my mom went around telling everyone I have a new boyfriend, but little does she know that stage is about several other unspoken stages away.
First, we have to establish that we’re both into each other. But we can’t make it that obvious, anyone on the dating scene knows you need to play a little hard to get. Once we’ve established that we are into each other we have to continue to talk and go on actual dates. The moment meaningful time spent hanging out stops and late night texts become the norm then nothing serious will happen. Once a connection is established that’s when subtle hints of a relationship can be dropped. The time between hints being dropped and an actual label being established is when you enter the most dreaded zone, the zone I’m currently suffering in: the situationship.
When you tell anyone over the age of 50 about a situationship they’ll most likely go on a rant about how dating is so complicated nowadays and back in their day you just married whoever you worked with or whoever lived next door. But they didn’t have to deal with social media and dating apps that broadcast all of the other options available.
All our parents had to worry about was if their partner was sleeping with their secretary, or whatever they did back then. They didn’t have to awkwardly try to figure out if their partner was still on other dating apps, because if they’re still on dating apps then obviously you still need to be on them too otherwise you’re limiting your roster. When in reality, all you want is to get rid of your roster and only date them; but it’s too early to let them know that because you’ve only gone on 10 dates and bringing up a relationship may scare them…get it?
How did we end up here?
The rise of situationships can be attributed to its predecessor: hookup culture.
Hookup culture, a culture started in the late 90’s by millennials and continued by Gen Z, can be defined as a culture that “accepts and encourages casual sex encounters, including one-night stands and other related activity, without necessarily including emotional intimacy, bonding or a committed relationship.” Still confused? Try watching No Strings Attached, Friends with Benefits or pretty much any early 2000’s rom com.
Dr. Lisa Wade, sociologist at Occidental College, delved into hookup culture in her book American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus. Wade writes about the nuances of hooking up in college and the intersectionality of race, religion, gender and sexual identity within hookup culture. In an interview with NPR, Wade said:
If two students are going to hook up together and they want it to be meaningless, then they have to do some work to make sure that both they and everyone else understands that we’re over in this meaningless camp and not this powerfully meaningful one. And so to sort of convince themselves and other people or to show themselves and other people that it was meaningless, they have to find a way to perform meaningless. It’s not automatic. And they do that by, for example, making sure that they’re drunk or they appear to be drunk when they hook up.
Having normalized meaningless hookups clearly seeped its way into the dating arena. As mentioned in BBC’s article on situationships, sociologist Elizabeth Armstrong “argues situationships are popular because they challenge the ‘relationship escalator’: the idea that intimate partnerships are meant to have a linear structure with the goal of hitting conventional relationship milestones, such as cohabitation, engagement and marriage.” Of course, Gen Z loves nothing more than to challenge societal expectations.
While the term situationship has been tossed around since 2014, it wasn’t until 2019 when Love Island UK contestant Alana Morrison used ‘situationship’ to describe her dating history that it really permeated into pop culture. Since then, everyone living in the inbetween stages of a relationship have proudly adapted that word as their own.
Situationships are the crossover between casual and serious dating, it allows both parties to play their cards close to their chest. But is that really how we should be dating? It’s one thing to play hard to get and another to hold back your feelings for the sake of not getting hurt. Through my research, I’ve read countless articles talking about how to get out of a situationship and all of them implore readers to just be honest with themselves and their partners with what they want.
I recently began reading Dolly Alderton’s memoir Everything I Know About Love and am finding it hard to finish. Alderton’s an amazing writer who’s style I love, but her stories about the trials and tribulations of dating hit a little too close to home. So many of her stories about failed relationships and love lost all boil down to one thing: not expressing your true feelings.
If a casual relationship is all you’re interested in then make that known, but if you want something more, with great risk can come great reward. What’s the point of being in a relationship where you both want different things? Maybe one day I’ll listen to my own advice, but to all my fellow situationship sufferers reading this; hang in there.
