The Situationship Sting: Why Situationships Are So Hard to Get Over
So you’ve been hanging out with a new person for a couple weeks. You text fairly regularly, you’ve definitely made out (if not more), there are obviously feelings involved. But they aren’t your partner. You don’t even know if your hangout sessions are real dates.
That’s right, babe. You’ve fallen into the special type of purgatory that is a situationship.
Don’t feel bad, we’ve all been there.
Think Kristen Wiig’s character in Bridesmaids. Or Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Tom in 500 Days of Summer.
Hookup culture mixed with a fear of commitment have led to romantic and sexual relationships lacking one key ingredient: clearly defined boundaries.
Maybe one person isn’t ready for commitment but enjoys the companionship.
Maybe one person is scared to push the other away and hopes that if they just stick around and go with the flow, the other person will come around and choose them.
And if you’re the latter, then you know just how hard it is to get over your situationship. You may have only spent a few weeks or months together but for some reason, they stick around in your brain and heart like a fucking parasite.
Why? WHY???
Why They Stick
What is it about situationships that make them so hard to get over? I was once hung up on a month-long situationship for a year. A year. It took me less time to get over a 3-year legit relationship. Let me explain.
Fantasy
When you start dating someone new, you fantasize about the person they could be, the partner they could be and the relationship you could share together. It’s perfect and oh-so-sweet.
If that dating stage progresses to a “real” relationship (aka defined boundaries), you get to reality-test the fantasy. That doesn’t happen with a situationship; you get stuck in the fantasy, making it incredibly tough to find any sort of closure. You keep ruminating about what could have been, all of their potential and the ideals you projected onto them.
Confusion
Situationships tend to burn fast and bright, ending as quickly as they start. You may feel blindsided and confused, unable to let things go as you spin out over all your unanswered questions. While you’re the only person who can give yourself true closure, it can feel impossible to access when you can’t even figure out what the hell just happened.
Dopamine
They’re so hot and cold, it’s horribly unattractive on paper and, yet, you’re obsessed. You can thank dopamine, the reward/pleasure chemical that the brain releases every time we do drugs, have sex, gamble, eat chocolate or get a text from a situationship. Uncertainty can ramp things up even more, making every single morsel of attention you receive that much sweeter. High highs followed by incredibly low lows. It’s so addictive that when the dopamine source disappears, it can feel like you’re going through withdrawal. No fun.
Gaslighting Yourself
“I don’t understand why I feel so terrible, I should just get over it. It wasn’t even a real relationship.”
It’s so easy to tell yourself that your feelings are crazy or that you’re making a big deal out of nothing. There were no defined boundaries and they weren’t your partner.
Oh that’s not working, you say? That’s because minimizing your emotions doesn’t make them go away. It just makes it impossible to process and move beyond them.
Isolation
With normal breakups, you lean on your friends and family for support. But with situationships, you might feel embarrassed to share your feelings with them. You worry that they might judge you or that they won’t understand. So you keep it all on the downlow and try to just get over it on your own.
Self-Worth
Why didn’t they pick me? What’s wrong with me??
Sound familiar?
So many of us end up in situationships because we’re hoping the other person will realize we’re great and want to be in a real relationship with us. Then it ends and we’re left with a million unanswered questions. Without answers from the other person, we absorb all the confusion and question ourselves.
Moving On
What if you just treated this like a breakup? Because, let’s be honest: it is a breakup. The emotional significance, the time and energy you invested, all the dreaming you did…losing that can feel truly devastating.
Let yourself feel all of your feelings without judgment. Cry it out with your besties, write in your journal, get a few pints of Ben & Jerry’s and take your gorgeous ass to therapy. Maybe you delete them from your phone, block them on social media and go no-contact. You need some space, babe, so don’t be afraid to take it.
Go through your post-breakup glow-up. I know you bent over backwards trying to make time for that situationship so it’s time to return to your self-care routine. Pick up a new hobby, touch some grass, drink a lot of water and lean into your platonic relationships.
Most importantly, take your time reentering the dating world. I know you may feel pressure to get back on the apps, go out on dates and find someone new to distract you from your pain that you’re trying to convince yourself you shouldn’t be feeling. But as much as it sucks, there’s always something to be learned from the experience. Maybe you realized you’re ready to learn how to set boundaries. Maybe you learned that it’s time to heal that anxious attachment style. Or maybe you figured out exactly what you want in a partner because of all the qualities your situationship was missing.
Take your time to grieve. It’s okay to mourn the imagined future that never panned out. Just like any other breakup, you will get through the pain. You will think about that person less and less with each passing day, you’ll carry those lessons with you and you’ll regain your sparkle. I promise.
