Everyone is using the term situationship wrong. It’s not a situationship unless you’re in a situation. That sounds stupid. Let me clarify.
What is a situationship? First, what isn’t a situationship?
It’s not what you’d call a relationship to your friends or parents. You’re just... situated in the same place and time. The term implies an element of random fate. You didn’t choose this devastatingly casual sneaky link — cosmic forces have landed you in the situation of being in some guy (gender-neutral)’s room at 2 a.m. talking about everything but the depth and nature of your feelings for each other.
Those feelings can definitely be intense — we have seen the greatest minds of our generation destroyed by the emotional fallout of situationships — but something about it must be temporary, dramatic and kind of ridiculous. Situationships, above all, make good stories.
But lately, I’ve heard people use “situationship” to describe what are pretty normal college hookups. There’s already a word for that: casual hookups (whether you actually want it to be casual is a separate issue).
What about that on-again-off-again thing that you refuse to define because you’re out of touch with your feelings? Mark Zuckerberg didn’t make ‘it’s complicated’ a Facebook status for nothing.
Same deal with your friend that you have feelings for and you make out with sometimes: that’s your friend with benefits, or as one English major and former Ubyssey editor once called it, an “intimate and nuanced friendship.”
These may be hot, heartbreaking or emotionally treacherous, but they aren’t situations. Misusing the term “situationship” waters it down and takes away its true power from those whose weird relationship lore really can’t be described in any other way.
Some examples of situations:
- One of you is about to move away so neither of you want to acknowledge that you two might just have something real, rare and irreplaceable (fight or flight situation)
- You’re co-workers. Yikes. (HR situation)
- You’re working on a progressive political campaign and she’s an ethereal coquette public relations intern for Big Vape (conflict of interest situation)
- They’re your roommate who you have intense sexual tension with, especially when they make you wrestle other men at their secret organizations’ underground meetings, but maybe they’re actually an insomnia-induced figment of your imagination? ([REDACTED] situation — we’re not supposed to talk about it)
- They’re poly and dating multiple people but you’re only allowed to date them (monopoly situation)
- You’re from rival houses, both alike in dignity (medieval situation)
- You’re closeted gay lawyers during the McCarthy hearings (Fellow Travelers situation)
If you can’t relate to any of these examples (yet), don't worry, I'm not invalidating your specific situationship — the possibilities for situations are as infinite as they are unique. But, if your “situation” is a regular case of miscommunication or mismatched expectations, find your own damn label.
Situationship is a great shorthand term, and part of the fun of a fling is the ambiguity. But categorizing relationships — because they are relationships, just like friendships are — as situations, rather than a dynamic that you’re responsible for creating with another person, can hold you back from acting with clarity and kindness.
So tell people with your chest how you feel, and save the label “situationship” for when you’re in a genuine, absurd, four-hours-and-seven-ciders-of-context situation.