When I was in college, I met a guy at a bar and started hooking up with him. He'd take me out to dinner with his friends and coworkers, I stayed at his place four nights a week, I even kept a toothbrush there, and it wasn't weird. We never spoke about it but for almost the entirety of our time together, I couldn't get over the fact that there was no label. We did so many grown-up things that had previously only existed in the "things only couples do" category of my mind together, like picking out a mirror for his apartment, but I couldn't shake the fact that he wasn't introducing me as his girlfriend when we went out to dinner with his friends.



Ever since, I have no idea how to refer to our time together. The only label I felt safe enough to use in front of him that expressed my feelings was "crush," but that minimized almost everything about our interactions. How should I refer to all the messy non-relationship-relationships?



I didn't find out until I heard Tony*, 27, at a party lamenting about how his current relationship status was giving him anxiety.



“Basically, we’re in this situationship where it’s like things either progress or they don’t.” A what?

A situationship, he explained, was the catch-all term for those relationships sitting at the intersection of “hooking up” and “in a relationship.” It’s a scary precipice, teeter-tottering between “more than hooking up” and “very much dating,” where a simple “what are we” can throw the entire system out of balance.

Getting involved in a situationship might be the worst thing you can do to yourself.

My mind was blown. For all the boyfriends that were never really my boyfriend, past hookups and their mealy scars of things left unsaid, there was now a clever umbrella term: situationships. And getting involved in a situationship might be the worst thing you can do to yourself.

If "friends with benefits" is platonic friends with sexual benefits, a situationship is a hookup with emotional benefits. "There must be some feeling involved in a situationship," Tony, says. "If there weren't any feelings, it would be merely a hookup."

"It is a hella annoying whisper of a step below official boyfriend/girlfriend thing," Chelsea*, 22, explained. "There's an emotional bond and fulfillment that mimics monogamous relationships."

But situationships, while often seen as an inevitable stepping stone into real relationships, are problematic by nature. The hope of something more is always there, dangling like a carrot over every late night "U up?" or shitty 3 a.m. meme you read too far into. The emotional aspect (however slight) differentiates it from a no-strings-attached hookup. While legit relationships are built on clear communication and understanding, situationships are built on the absence of them. They are ambiguous by definition.

There's at least a layer of mutual respect in no-strings-attached hookups. You communicate what you can emotionally give — even if that's nothing. The boundaries for situationships are drawn from things unsaid.

I remembered all the hours I wasted mentally running through postcoital TEDTalks on "What Are We and Why You Should Date Me" lying awake next to my much-more-than-a-crush. Of course I wanted to move things along and make things official. But fear that I might rock the boat and shatter the illusion that I was no longer Cool™ kept me silent. I wanted the label but wasn't confident I wanted it badly enough to walk away from him if he wasn't willing to give it to me.

Whether through fear or otherwise, situationships are often a stagnant game of chicken. Kaitlyn*, 22, says she falls into them easily because she gets attached to people easily. "Once that happens, I don't really want to find someone else," she explains. If they ask if she's happy with things as is without labels, she rolls with it, because she doesn't want to find somebody else.

Situationships can last months, or even years. Given the emotions involved, it's really only a matter of time before the party that wants to progress things either initiates The Talk, or decides to move on. Merely maintaining equilibrium doesn't magically evolve your tacit relationship into a real one.

If situationships are born from ambiguity and assumptions, the only way out is through an honest conversation about labels and expectations. Let's say you have that talk and your situationship progresses, becoming a Real Thing. Good for you! You've now won the right to refer to this relationship with a level of legitimacy that honestly should've been assumed given the emotional and sexual investment.

Save yourself from the fallout and set boundaries early on.

But what if the worst case scenario happens: You try broaching that conversation, fail, and part ways? You're left with memories that don't really feel like yours to claim.

There are few things in life that can make you feel as stupid as crying over a boyfriend you couldn't even call your boyfriend. It's one thing to be upset when your official partner has disappointed you, but when it's someone who won't even admit that the "dates" you've been going on constitutes as "dating," you feel doubly dumb. Do I even have a right to feel this way?

For all the ink that's been spilled about how toxic casual hookup culture is, situationships are a lot more destructive. You don't feel entitled to your emotions. You can't be angry or sad, or even comfortably summarize to your friends that you got dumped, because you weren't really dating in the first place.

So save yourself from the fallout and set boundaries early on. Normalizing situationships teaches people to lower their expectations and take whatever they can get from a partner, because hey, at least he likes you. But sometimes that's not enough and that's OK. The sooner you can lean into your feelings and stop being ashamed of having emotions, the sooner you can bounce back and get back out there.

As for my great situationship, things ended after I rolled over in bed away from him one evening and asked gathered the courage to ask a very chill "Do you even like me or anything?" He was quiet for a long time. "I'm trying to find the right thing to say," he said, but I already knew.

It's OK though. I have faith I'll go mirror shopping again someday.

*Names have been changed.

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Carina Hsieh Sex & Relationships Editor Carina Hsieh lives in NYC with her French Bulldog Bao Bao — follow her on Instagram and Twitter • Candace Bushnell once called her the Samantha Jones of Tinder • She enjoys hanging out in the candle aisle of TJ Maxx and getting lost in Amazon spirals.

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