Why do we get into situationships?

Welcome to part 1 of our three-part series on situationships.
Today's episode dives into why they happen and why they are so common. This episode is part one of a three-part series exploring the dating phenomenon of situationships. 

For updates, follow me on instagram and tiktok: @thingsimeanttosaynaked

Or learn about figs, the therapist and her services go to figstherapy.com

Citation and stuff I read:

Delizo, S. K. D. J., Dapliyan, Y. A. R., Ban-eg, H. T. A., Canlas, C. A. F., Tong, N. I. D., & Yusingco, E. R. I. (2025). Navigating Ambiguity: An In-Depth Exploration of Situationships in Contemporary Romantic Relationships.

George, A. S. (2024). Escaping the situationship: Understanding and addressing modern relationship ambiguity among young adults. Partners Universal International Innovation Journal, 2(3), 35-56.

Gibson, T. J. (2020). If you want the milk, buy the cow: A study of young black women's experiences in situationships

Langlais, M. R., Podberesky, A., Toohey, L., & Lee, C. T. (2024). Defining and describing situationships: An exploratory investigation. Sexuality & Culture, 28(4), 1831-1857.

Singh, S. Fooling in the Name of Love: Welcome to Gen-Z Relationships.

Shah, K. (2024, January 31). Half of 18 to 34 aged Americans have been in a “Situationship.” YouGov. https://business.yougov.com/content/48492-half-of-18-to-34-aged-americans-have-been-in-a-situationship 

art: bofenglin

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

So when I was a grad student, we came up with this ritual that was sacred to us. And it was whenever we were stressed out, whenever we needed to vent, which was nearly every day, we will call in a BSB night. And for those of you who don't know, well, I mean, I don't expect you to know, BSB stands for the bullshit bottle. It was almost like an emergency meeting where a bunch of grad students will pitch in, buy the cheapest bottle of wine, we will pass it around, and just complain. I think that was the best part was the complaining. And we would complain about school, internships, our jobs, and of course, the latest situation ship. Eventually, especially during the pandemic, BSB nights became an integral part of Fridays. It became our Friday tradition, and situationships became known as the bullshit. And to this day, we still call it the bullshit. I know I'm not the only one, okay? I know I am not the only one who has been in a situation ship. In fact, I looked it up just last year, a UGov survey. I just gotta add, I love these UGov surveys. I love what they choose to survey, but you know, gotta give it to them. UGov did a survey last year in 2024, and they found that nearly half of adults ages 18 to 34 have been in a situationship. In other words, nearly half of millennial and Gen Z adults have been in a situationship. This is pretty common. And so today is part one of a three-part series because yes, this is a lot of information, and I just can't fathom packing all in into one episode. So I am gonna split it into three episodes. So three episodes in which we are gonna talk about situationships. Today's episode, I am gonna focus on what makes them so common and why do they leave us with more than just heartache? And a cheap wine hangover. Welcome to Things I'm Meant to Say Naked, a podcast about mental health, desire, intimacy, and the treats that we carry in our bodies. I'm Fix, a certified sex therapist, a licensed mental cancer, a lover, and someone who has spent way too much time thinking and turning that into your career. Some episodes will be just me for insights, stories, and spicy taste and be reading. Others will feature guests, lovers, and maybe a little bit of a chaos. So get comfy and let's get into the things that we were meant to say naked. Although this podcast explores themes of mental health, relationships, and sexuality, it's for educational and entertainment purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health care. If you find yourself struggling, please reach out to a licensed provider in your area. So as a 95 baby, I consider myself a zillennial. Okay. I am right at the end of millennial, and I am right at the start of Gen Z. So that means my childhood was filled with playing outside and getting dirty with the neighborhood kids. I had scraped knees and dirt under my fingernails literally every day. But by high school, Instagram and Snapchat were already part of my daily life. I grew up with my parents telling me to never trust strangers and much less get into their cars and MySpace. And Tinder felt like this scary thing when I started college, and now it's ironically just standard practice for singles. Whereas people once had these meat cutes at grocery stores, on campus, or through friends. Now we have near infinite access to people we otherwise will never meet. And on the surface, I mean, that sounds like freedom, meaning people outside of your daily life, outside of your social circles. That sounds great. But in practice, online dating has made us more individualistic and more homebound. Instead of hitting up our local jazz bar or weekend event, campus event, many of us are doom scrawling through Tinder, hinge, or grinder, swiping through what feels like an endless catalog of potentials. And maybe, you know, maybe this is the pandemic that made us go indoors. They made us over-reliant on technology to manage the most intimate part of our lives. But this is something I'm seeing that started way before the pandemic. And I say this because some researchers believe that online dating is creating what's called a choice paradox. The more choices we have, the harder it becomes to choose. So think about it like this it's like being on Netflix and staring at all those show options that we spend a good 30 minutes deciding what we're gonna watch next, despite their growing watch list that just keeps accumulating. And then sometimes it just becomes so overwhelming that we end up just re-watching our comfort shows. So online dating plays by similar rules. But here's the catch. So the way that these many of these apps work is that you cannot see your next potential until the one on the screen, you have to make that decision to match with them or not. And this pressure to decide becomes so overwhelming because you don't know if the next option is better. And then you're thinking of like, what if I can't go back to the person I didn't swipe right on? I have friends that have created strategies on online dating in which they review their their messages, their matches, see which ones to eliminate to give them the option of being able to match with the new potentials because now there's a maximum amount of matches on hinge, which is crazy. I I can't imagine talking to eight people at the same time, but that's the maximum. And people are actually creating strategies so they can see more options outside of eight. Online dating has turned the intimate into a gamified form of consumerism and it's putting a lot of pressure on folks to have the best online profiles to keep a person's attention for more than two seconds. That is ridiculous. In sex therapy, in my private practice, I don't necessarily call myself a dating coach. I don't, but it I find myself that it is part of sex therapy in this extent. Whereas in in sex therapy, we talk about communication, we talk about consent, we talk about boundaries, we talk about expectations and how to communicate that, especially in the beginning of dating when it's so important. And so, of course, I'm gonna see online profiles. My clients love showing me their hinge profiles, their Tinder profiles, and they're like, hey, figs, what do you think? A lot of times I have to comment on how the profile can be so surface level and doesn't really show their essence. And although I speak in a very much humanistic perspective, where I encourage folks to meet people in outside settings, I encourage my clients to join clubs, run clubs, hobbies, you name it, improv. I always encourage them to meet people organically because that's when you really get to know someone, especially in their setting, in their environment. And so the idea that you have to form a whole opinion about a whole person in two seconds because there's another option. It's ridiculous to me. It's it's surprising to me. Um, if you haven't noticed already, I haven't online dated in a long time. So maybe this is why I'm a little biased. But I will go into this and maybe after hearing this, maybe you'll try online dating a lot less because this is where it gets a little bit more interesting. A lot of researchers postulate that online dating extends to actual dating. We cannot commit just maybe because there's someone still better out there. It's that choice paradox again. And this is why we enter the situationship. Here come situationships, which is a connection that might have sex. It doesn't have to include sex, it has intimacy, the feels, but it just lacks that steady commitment, the labels and the communication. It's so common to hear people say, hey, let's just test out the waters. Oh, this one's my favorite. Let's see where this goes. There's no strings attached. Don't worry, figs. No, and there's no strings attached between us. I hear that all the time in my office. No, we're just testing out the water, see where this goes. And it's interesting because situationships have almost become a natural step before committing to a relationship. And that sounds great on paper. I mean, you're testing out the waters, you're trying out different people at the same time. Wonderful. I, you know, it's it's great not to overly commit in the beginning, but I will talk later how situationships lack the depth that's needed for us to actually commit and trap us in a cycle where it actually never goes anywhere. And another reason we may be seeing a rise in situationships is due to the women's sexual liberation movement. And I don't hate this, okay. I'm gonna go ahead and say I'm a feminist. It it comes with being a therapist, all right? You you learned about how um mental health is impacted by gender socialization. Okay, you you learn so much that you just it's it's it I don't know how you can become a therapist and not be and not take in some form of feminism. It's impossible. All right. So I'm I'm telling my current feminists who are listening to this. I'm like, okay, girls, ladies, folks, men's, all right. I shouldn't limit feminism to women. See, that was me being a bad feminist. I can do better than that. Well, hear me out, okay? You'll see why I don't hate this. And you won't hate this after hearing this, okay? So, because of the women's sexual liberation movement, women are more financially independent and educated. No longer do they have to rely on men, nor do they only find purpose through family planning. It's great. Instead, we have women asking and expecting more from men, including helping with domestic work and emotional intelligence. Okay, you see where I'm going with this? It's not that much, it's just helping out with chores and emotional intelligence. God forbid, I want to have a conversation about feelings. So, this is my take. Um, this is Fig's takeover. My take is that our understanding of men's mental health and building their ability for emotional intelligence and softness has not cut up yet with the growing expectations of women who have been expecting to carry the emotional labor for centuries. Okay, women have been socialized to read the room, to manage conflict. You have to understand, I wasn't taught emotional intelligence in school. I was taught by managing and talking to my large Latino family. That's just the expectation. And the result of men not being socialized to manage their feelings, to cope with their feelings, to have consideration and empathy, and align that with masculinity, an integrated form of masculinity. We're seeing that women are committing less readily and demanding more from their partners before investing deeply. So you see where I'm going with this? It's not feminism feminism's fault. Is that we haven't really put the time and effort to integrate it into masculinity. And I that's why uh most of the time, all the time, I do feminism therapy with my male clients. And most of my clients are men, and so they're getting feminist therapy without the F-word. And so it's funny, their intelligence, their emotional intelligence, their ability to withhold and stay in these amazing relationships. I I have to say, I build the best boyfriends, I really do. And I all do that without using the F-word. And when I finally use the F-word, they're like, Yeah, I had a feeling. They're like, I can't go back now. Um I'm happy. And I'm like, great, I'm happy to see you happy. That's why we're here. And no, this is not, I'm not in some kind of mission to make every man a feminist. None at all. My job is just to point out how men are socialized to emotionally withhold from others and themselves, and how they're socialized to suppress, and how suppression has caused them so much pain and has caused terrible coping skills. I mean terrible. We got drinking, we got drugs, we got impulsivity, we got punching walls, okay. I my clients come to me broken and I just help them heal and rebuild themselves. And if that means softness, if that means kindness towards themselves, if me saying that teaching men how to be kind to themselves is feminism, then it is. What can I say? That's my job. I just teach men how to be kind to themselves. So we look at that and then we layer the economy. Oh, yeah. So I actually did read economy articles. I I am really am an academic and a nerd. I will read anything. I will meet I will read medical journals and teach myself as I go. And so when you layer this with the economy, thanks to the recession and the higher cost of living, people are becoming financially independent much later in life. A lot of us are still living with our parents or have a ton of roommates because rent is just too damn high. Now that we are more concerned about our resources, our time and energy due to the scarcity, committing to a relationship seems like a significant investment we just can't afford. I have to be really sure before I give the person this person what I have left. Or rather, I barely have time, money, and energy for myself. How can I give that to another person? As a straight think about it this like, why would I give that to a person who can't even reciprocate the emotional part for me? We're still building men, okay? We're still building their emotional intelligence. I have to be really sure before I give this person what I have left. And we're seeing more people working remotely and taking part in digital nomadism, including myself. I left Miami because it was too damn expensive. As a native Miamian who has been, my family has been in Miami for now three generations. I had to leave because I couldn't afford it. And I now am traveling the world and it's great. I love it. But there's no place like home. So we have people moving across the country to another country or to a different continent. And the time we have with people, it's becoming increasingly liminal. And therefore, it is like unrealistic to commit to a relationship that can change or end with the passing of time or visa. Why commit when your life might change with the next job or visa? So, with all of this, the apps, the economy, shifting gender roles, it's no wonder millennials and Gen Z find themselves stuck in situationships. They become less of the exception and it's becoming more of the rule. So, this is what I call the situationship conundrum. Imagine getting used to a dating culture where commitment is basically off the table. In many situationships, the topic of what are we, it's avoided like the plague because we all have seen it. We'll text, so what are we? Or maybe we'll ask, and that's the end of the situationship. Or worse, we get ghosted. How many times when we I've heard when my clients are allow themselves to be vulnerable in these situationships, they are met with no response. And I will talk about that actually, I believe, in the next episode about the effects of ghosting, especially in terms of situationships. But look at that. A dating culture created this step before commitment where we avoid catching feelings. We even memefy it. I cannot tell you how many memes I found were the worst thing possible. The worst outcome of dating someone is surprised, actually starting to like them. That's ridiculous. Situationships often continue because they're rooted in fear. Fear of rejection, fear of vulnerability, fear of losing what little connection there is. And I notice, and this is me uh being in the therapist chair, it's just that this fear, again, fear of rejection, fear of vulnerability, fear of losing what little connection we have. We avoid actual vulnerability necessary to create and form genuine relationships. But that's the thing is like this culture is make it wrong. It's wrong to catch feelings, God forbid. And there's like that whole cycle. That's the conundrum. And I will go into this much further because making situationships now so normalize a natural step of dating. We're seeing that it leaves people so unhappy. And of course, I love giving academics their flowers, especially thesis. I ran into this thesis by Tarika Jamese Gibson. She did a thesis on the experience of young black women in situationships, and they found that many enter hoping it would transition to a committed relationship. Yeah. And instead, they often experience anxiety, high levels of anxiety, I might add, and dissatisfaction when those expectations weren't met. So yeah, entering the situationship is understandable. But here's the issue: the lack of communication, the lack of labeling, the lack of having communication about exclusivity of pacing of clarity leaves people in distress. And that's what makes staying in one hard to justify. Let me be clear. I don't want to confuse situationships with ethical non-monogamy. I don't. The whole premise of a situationship, this whole non-commitment, I said earlier, is that you don't want to commit, you want to explore your options, you want to see where things go. Okay. I don't want to confuse that with ethical non-monogamy. Because here's the thing in ethical non-monogamy, there are rules, there are communication and boundaries. Everyone involved knows what is happening, and everyone feels seen, heard, and validated. Honestly, poly folks, I call them the masters of communication. Monaga folks like us, we got nothing, nothing on them. And a lot of the strategies and skills I teach my Monaga folks, I like calling it the Monaga folks, I picked up from working with poly folks. They're truly the masters. You have to understand there's a big difference between situationships and ethical non-monogamy. Ethical non-monogamy, yeah, you mean you don't. You clearly stated you don't want to commit to just one person. Maybe there's a hierarchy, maybe you have a primary partner. But every person involved, every person in your system knows of one another, interacts with one another if they want to. That's the whole thing about rules. Share and receive what they need from that relationship. No matter how far or close that relationship may be. That is not in situationships. Situationships thrive on misunderstandings, lack of communication, the whole vagueness of let's not ask and let's not talk about what are we. Situationships thrive in silence. They're built on ambiguity. Asking, what are we? feels like taking a risk because it might, it might end with hearing, I'm just not ready to commit. Or worse, it introduces a power imbalance. One person becomes the safe option while the other becomes the only option. That's fucked up. I can say that in a podcast. I can't say that in the therapy chair. That's fucked up. There's so many times in a session when I just want to say that to a client about an experience that they had. And I'm sure they want to hear it from their therapist, their therapist saying, like, that's fucked up. See how my voice just deepens when I say that? That's fucked up. But I can't. That's that's the joy of this podcast, is I can actually let out my personality just a little bit more. So avoiding commitment also lets us dodge the emotional accountability. In a committed relationship, if you want out, you're expected to break up and offer some kind of explanation. Something that gives us closure, or maybe I prefer this actually, points us towards self-improvement. I have to say that that's actually the best part of being a therapist is working with breakups. I even put it on my psychology today page that I specialize in breakups. People seek me out because they need help breaking up with their person or they need help uncoupling. And I love turning something that can be very difficult to form a confrontation that's very uncomfortable and turn it into a point of self-improvement, of self-growth, of self-love. It's just it's magical. I love it. But proper breakups require vulnerability in itself, confrontation and conflict management skills. Skills many of us never learned. Insert men. Okay, not just men. Okay, I a lot of us don't know how to manage conflict. We avoid it. In a situation ship, no such obligation exists. And that's why so many end with ghosting, leaving the other person hurt and confused. And the ghoster, in turn, avoids ever learning how to have a hard conversation or building intimacy. You see how they're just not helpful for our mental health? Surprise, surprise. And here's the trap the ambiguity of a situationship means the person can leave at any moment, no matter how long they've been together. That makes vulnerability nearly impossible. But without vulnerability, intimacy can deepen. So it becomes a cycle. Who will bring their walls down first and who and will it be reciprocated? All for the illusion of having multiple options or something better out there. We don't invest in relationships and we don't invest in ourselves. Situationships thrive on the lack of vulnerability. When there's no intimacy, the other person remains an enigma. And so what ends up happening is that we project onto them, filling in the blanks with fantasies of who they could be. In healthy relationships, you get to know the real person, their values, their coping skills, how they handle conflict, and from there decide whether that aligns with you. But in a situation ship with days of silence, punctuated by late night texts of hey, you up, you you rarely get any clarity. You may stay attached, and to justify attachment, you lean on projections. And situationships prevent us from truly seeing whether a person is actually a good fit for us. You see the trap? By avoiding hard conversations, you don't even get to realize or learn if you really like this person. They just are just projections of things that we hope for. And you know, maybe the sex is great. That too. Let's not forget that this is also a sex therapy podcast. And so situationships keep us locked in a loop where the very label of non-commitment guarantees that things stay non-committed. So, yes, situationships can feel safe, familiar, even exciting at times. But they also can keep us stuck. And the antidote it's vulnerability, honesty, and courage. To walk away when what's on the table is not enough. Commitment doesn't have to mean forever. It just means clarity. And clarity is always sexier than confusion. So what do you think? Are situationships a stepping stone? Or are they just emotional limbo? Either way, buckle up, because the next episode we're diving into the real harm they cause. Oh yeah, no, it gets worse from here. I just want to make that clear. It gets so much worse.