There was a time when relationships came with names. You were either together or you were not. You were courting, dating, engaged, married, or clearly single. Today, we have invented a softer, slipperier word to describe something far more confusing. Situationship. Some say it simply means it is complicated. It sounds harmless, almost playful. It is anything but.
A situationship is what happens when intimacy arrives before intention. When emotions move in, unpack their bags, and are told politely that there is no address. It is closeness without clarity, commitment without courage, presence without responsibility. It is two people doing all the things that resemble a relationship, while insisting, sometimes loudly, that it is not one.
Everyone knows a situationship. Many people are inside one.
It often begins innocently. Two people talk. They laugh. They connect. They share vulnerabilities at midnight and jokes at dawn. They show up for each other in ways that matter. They fight like people who care and reconcile like people who are afraid to lose something. And yet, when the question finally comes, what are we, the answer dissolves into fog.
Let’s not label it.
Let’s see how it goes.
I’m not ready for anything serious.
These phrases have become the everyday language of emotional avoidance.
The tragedy of the situationship is not simply that it exists, but that it thrives on hope. One person is usually waiting. Waiting for clarity. Waiting for commitment. Waiting for a future that is always just ahead but never arrives. The other person enjoys the benefits of intimacy without the burden of definition. It is an unequal arrangement disguised as mutual understanding.
Situationships are rarely neutral. Someone is almost always losing.
They steal time quietly. Months blur into years. Birthdays are celebrated discreetly because public acknowledgment would raise questions no one wants to answer. Crises are navigated without rights. You can care deeply and still have no claim. You cannot make demands because nothing was ever agreed upon. You cannot complain because no promises were made. Over time, people learn to shrink their needs, swallow their questions, and mistake emotional silence for maturity.
Eventually, the waiting does something subtle and cruel. It teaches people to doubt themselves. To apologise for wanting clarity. To feel embarrassed for asking where they stand.
But clarity is not pressure. Intention is not control. Wanting to know where you stand is not desperation. It is dignity.
In many ways, the situationship fits perfectly into our current emotional climate. It offers connection without obligation in a world afraid of permanence. It allows people to feel wanted without being accountable, desired without being deliberate. Fear sits at the centre of it all. Fear of heartbreak. Fear of divorce. Fear of repeating past mistakes. Fear of vulnerability in a world that screenshots feelings and turns intimacy into content.
So people hedge. They stay halfway. One foot in, one foot out. They call it caution when it is often unresolved fear.
There is also a gendered imbalance that deserves honest attention. Too often, women are socialised to interpret potential and wait patiently, while men are socialised to delay and benefit from ambiguity. This is not an indictment of individuals. It is a pattern. And when ambiguity consistently advantages one side more than the other, it stops being accidental.
Ambiguity rarely settles evenly. It drifts toward the person with more options and away from the person with more hope.
What makes situationships particularly damaging is how they borrow the language of growth to justify stagnation. I’m working on myself. I don’t want to rush. Let’s just enjoy the moment. These phrases sound thoughtful, even enlightened, but they often function as emotional stop signs disguised as open roads.
To be clear, not every undefined relationship is harmful. People are allowed to explore. People are allowed to take their time. But exploration must have direction, and time must be paired with honesty. The problem is not the absence of labels. It is the absence of truth.
A situationship becomes unethical when one person knows they will never commit but allows the other to keep hoping. It becomes cruel when ambiguity is used as a strategy rather than a phase.
In the end, love does not require grand gestures, but it does require courage. The courage to say yes. The courage to say no. And the courage to admit, I cannot give you what you want, and allow someone to leave whole. Uncertainty can be a moment. Sustained ambiguity without honesty is not openness. It is avoidance.
Situationships are not proof that love has evolved. They are evidence that many people are afraid to stand still long enough to be seen clearly. But love, real love, has always demanded clarity. Anything less is not modern. It is unfinished.
Love asks a simple question. Will you stand still long enough to be chosen, or will you let someone else walk away with their dignity intact?
The post Situationship: Love in limbo, by Stephanie Shaakaa appeared first on Vanguard News.
