How do situationships affect us?

Welcome to part 2 of our three-part series on situationships.
Today, we’re diving into the long-term psychological effects of situationships—and why so many of us leave one only to slip right into another. Cue: “ReLEase ME!”

Situationships are relationships that form and maintain themselves with ambiguity. 

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citation and things 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_01 0:01

So, today's episode is part two of three-part series I prepared for you about situationships. See, last week I answered the question of like, how did we end up in situationships? What makes situationships so common? We explored technology, feminism, economy, and the pandemic, and how all these things motivate us to get into these noncommitted situationships and how situationships, well, keep us non-committal. So, today's episode, we're gonna go a little deeper and it's gonna get a little darker because we're gonna go further into the emotional impacts of situationships and why they leave us so hurt when they end. And yes, for the most part, they do end. That is a bit of the teaser for the rest of this episode. And why do we keep getting into them? It's answering the question: why do I go from one situation ship to another? Welcome to Things I'm Meant to Say Naked, a podcast about mental health, desire, intimacy, and the truths that we carry in our bodies. I'm Figgs, a certified sex therapist, a licensed mental health counselor, a lover, and someone who has spent way too much time overthinking and turning that into her career. This show is free education, commentary, and letter to the versions of us that we don't know what the hell we're doing. But we want to feel really good at doing it. Some episodes will be just me offering insights, stories, and spicy tastes in the erotic. Others will feature guests, lovers, and maybe a little bit of 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 let's start with my favorite attachment. Yay. I love attachment. I I generally do like working with attachment and sex therapy. I use a lot of EFT and sex therapy, which means emotion-focused therapy. Emotion-focused therapy not only focuses on, well, attachment and attachment wounds, it also includes how these wounds interact and impact our relationships and our relationship patterns. Very effective. I love it. The great thing about working with attachment is that it's pretty flexible and applicable to outside of monogamy. It's not just great for my monogamous, but also for my non-monogamous, my polyfolks, my relationship anarchists, my swingers, however you want to be. And it also applies really well for also BDSM dynamics or relationships, however you want to define that partnership. So of course, I am going to apply attachment theory to situationships. Of course I am. Come on. This is my thing. This is my jam. I am going to piggyback from the last episode when I describe situationships as romantic relationships that may have nearly all the elements of a healthy romantic relationship, but lack the commitment and communication to allow for the relationship to not just grow, but also to end. See, these relationships that are formed in situationships are maintaining themselves with ambiguity. And the people who find themselves in situationships don't know whether to fully emotionally invest in these relationships because vulnerability can mean it may end abruptly. And the thing is, you don't know when it will end abruptly. There's a lot of ghosting involved in situationships, unfortunately. And that can make these emotional bonds feel real fragile. The antidote, it's just communication, intimacy, but again, these bonds can feel so fragile. So that being said, it's gonna be really hard to convince me that these are healthy attachment relationships. I mean, listen, I'm I'm willing to be proven wrong. I constantly tell my clients, and I even tell my listeners, prove me wrong. Prove me wrong. You find evidence against any of those studies I bring up. Science is a developing field, it's not stagnant. Bring it. I love it. Challenge me. I love to be challenged intellectually and emotionally. I mean, that's why I chose this career. Go ahead, but it's gonna be really hard to convince me that these are healthy attachment relationships. Listen, hear me out, okay? Hear me out. A lot of EFT therapy focuses and works towards building healthy attachment style. It means being comfortable with emotional closeness and distance. It's being aware of your needs and wants and anxieties and being able to manage those feelings through coping skills and interdependence. I love the word interdependence. I use it a lot in my practice. It means not just maintaining your individual identity, your wants and your needs, but also putting effort into maintaining the health of the relationship as a whole, like almost like it's a whole identity, and you keep both at the same time. It's juggling and it's beautiful. And I love talking about interdependence, but for that to happen, you have to express these things to your partner. It does, it doesn't work in isolation. It sees conflict not as an end to a relationship, but as part of building a healthy relationship. And healthy attachment also means holding space for your partner's feelings and working towards compromise and compassion without sacrificing your own. In other words, I'm telling you and I'm asking you to value others' feelings and experiences as much as you value your own. That can be really hard. That can be really hard for a lot of people. Healthy attachment and healthy relationships, it's not just an act of courage, but it also feels safe. And safety, well, it also sounds boring. I know it. I know a lot of my clients say it's boring. I get it, I get it. It's the it does sound boring. But as you can tell from what how I'm describing healthy attachment, situationships just don't fit. Okay. It just doesn't fit. See, if if a relationship's built in ambiguity and lack of communication, it it's hard to maintain them. Instead, they they mimic a lot of the things that you see in a dynamic are what we call sometimes as the anxious avoidant trap, anxious avoidant dynamic. It's just it hear me out. You're gonna see how I see situationships as an interaction between anxious and avoidant attachment style. Because if a relationship is built on ambiguity and lack of communication, it's hard to maintain them without having some form of hypervigilance and or detachment. That if you're worried, your true feelings will come out and scare that person away. And you're trying not to be too much, you're trying to be chill while simultaneously keeping track of the text conversation that fluctuates between intense, powerful, and passionate exchanges and then radio silence, you're gonna develop some kind of relationship anxiety. I mean, yeah, it's totally normal. I mean, I was I would ask you, like, what are you? What are you doing? I just as a therapist. I'm like, what, how would you define this relationship to me? And when my clients can't really answer that question, I'm like, oh, this sounds like a situation ship. And on the flip side, the side when I'm referring to more avoidant tendencies or avoidant attachment style or mimicking avoidant attachment style, the lack of communication and label in a relationship creates an unknown whether this relationship is built to last. See, in the culture of FOMO, where you're encouraged to ask for more, but also to move on, detachment and avoidance can feel like a safe distance in which we just don't get hurt. It's a safe distance where you don't get hurt. And when these situationships do end, because a lot of them do end, it can be a confirmation that they weren't meant to last. And it keeps us in this perpetual fear that we can't be vulnerable in a relationship if something better is gonna come up. Hear me out. This is my take. This is my take on situationships is that if we normalize situationships, are we possibly raising a whole generation of insecure attachment style? That's my take. It's like if we're encouraging normalizing situationships as a step towards committed relationships, I wonder if this is encouraging and raising a whole generation of folks with insecure attachment style. Because here's the thing with attachment style, it doesn't always have to form, it's flexible. It's like plastic. You can bend it, you can reform it, you can make it healthier, and you can make it insecure. It doesn't have to come from early childhood experiences, it can come from romantic experiences. And if we normalize these kind of relationships, I wonder if we're raising a whole generation of people who will have an insecure attachment style. And hear me out. This is my second take about situationships, is that they mimic emotional abuse. I'm not saying they're emotionally abusive, I just say they mimic a lot of the elements you find in emotional abuse. And I say that because the ambiguity in situationships can create a constant state of unease and hypervigilance. For people who want commitment, the looming possibility of abandonment can cut deep, leading to lower self-esteem, mistrust in others, and hesitation to date again. I get that all the time. I'm scared to date again. This last situation ship just it hurt me so much. And the push and the pull of affection followed by ghosting can even create a kind of traumatic bonding. These cycles mirror patterns often seen in emotionally abusive dynamics where intimacy is inconsistently offered and then withdrawn. And over time, the unpredictability trains the brain to cling harder rather than letting go. This answers the question: why do I keep going back? And from a neurological perspective, because we do like to include neurology in this, uncertainty activates the same pathways we see in grief or with withdrawal. The brain reward system, empathy circuits, and threat detectors fire unpredictably, leaving people obsessively analyzing every small interaction for proof of safety. This state of chronic stress keeps cortisol levels high, it disrupts dopamine regulation and erodes motivation and focus. And in the long run, it chips away at self-worth and reinforces the painful belief that being mistreated is somehow deserved.

SPEAKER_00 12:43

I hate that. And it's not just emotional harm.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

Situationships don't just mimic emotional abuse, but it has a lot of public health consequences too. Because situationships avoid clear conversations about commitment. Many people make assumptions about exclusivity that you see well in romantic relationships. And the lack of communication around boundaries and sexual health often leads to reduced condom use, power imbalances, and higher rates of STI transmission. And so when you put it all together, the ambiguity, the inconsistency, the sudden withdrawal, it becomes clear that many of the hallmarks of situationships overlap with the recognized patterns of emotional manipulation. There's breadcrumbing, which is doing your best to keep and maintain someone attached or their attention. So texting every couple of days to make sure they still like you. And then like you go into those patterns, that's that's breadcrumbing. The same thing as intermittent reinforcement. Maybe the sex is great when you guys do meet up after all those mental gymnastics, ghosting, and gaslighting. I'm not saying, again, I'm I'm repeating myself. Nor am I saying that the people who get into situationships are abusive. But I am trying to say that maybe it's the lack of structure and clarity is the problem. And here's the last piece that goes unspoken. The secrecy of it all, the isolation. It kind of reminds me of this recent article that came out. I think this the week I record I recorded this, there was an article that came out in vogue about how boyfriends are embarrassing. Well, situationships are pretty embarrassing. Many of us we don't tell our friends about situationships. I mean, why would I I tell them about an emotional roller coaster that might not go anywhere? A lot of us don't tell our friends because of fear of judgment, or maybe because they're good friends, we're scared that they may talk us out of it. Or maybe that they will feel hopeful or have their hopes up in my behalf. I mean, they want to see me happy, they want to see me in love. And those self-silencing thoughts keep us quiet. And that silence, that form of isolation, it doesn't just mimic the patterns of emotional abuse, it also prevents us from having honest conversations with loved ones that might help us see what we really want. And what kind of clarity we need. So if you ever found yourself in a situation ship, you're not alone. I spoke in the last episode how nearly half of Gen Z and millennials have been in a situation ship. So you're not alone, definitely not alone, and you're not weak for wanting clarity. The truth is our brains and our bodies are wired for security. And when we're kept in the dark, it really does take a toll on us. Yeah. Ambiguity might feel safe in the moment, but over time, it just chips away at us. It chips away our trust, it chips away our intimacy, and it even chips away at our health. I'm not here to shame anyone for being in a situation ship. I've been there too. I've talked about how I've been in the situation ship. But what I want is for us to notice the patterns, the harm, and to ask ourselves, what do I actually want? Because you deserve more than confusion, more than ghosting, and more than being someone's almost. I mean, are are situationships worth it? And are they emotional limbo dressed up as modern dating? I I leave you there for today. And if you're ready to take this deeper, the next episode of this part three-part series, we're gonna talk about how to break free of these cycles and what our healthy alternatives can actually look like. Until then, if you're like me, after reading and studying situationships for weeks, preparing for this three-part series, I think my pride doesn't let me to consider ever going back to a situationship again. So maybe you're like me, but until then, we'll talk next week, in which we'll learn how to break free of these cycles.