Situationships have become normalized and the Generation Z is at this forefront of this.
People often need to pay more attention to the middle ground between being committed to a partner and keeping things casual. Young people who are dating are opting in.
The days when going to a movie or having a milkshake together was enough to make a couple of officials are long gone. Instead, modern dating has become a series of “baby steps” that young people have to take care of and are sometimes hard to understand.
Research has shown that Gen Z’s views on dating and sex differ from those of the generations before them. They are very practical regarding love and sex, so they don’t put as much value on long-term relationships as their older peers used to.
That doesn’t mean, though, that they’re not interested in romance and closeness at all. It just means they’re finding better ways to meet their needs and wants in those areas. This change has led to the idea of “situationships,” a word for the gray area between being friends and being in a relationship.
A situationship is a hard-to-define stage of dating that has become very popular among Gen Z, according to experts. “Right now, this solves some kind of need for sex, intimacy, companionship, or whatever it is,” says Elizabeth Armstrong, a professor of sociology at the University of Michigan, US, whose research focuses on sexuality and situational relationships. As a result, people are becoming more interested in relationship classification. This year, the number of Google searches for the term “relationship classification” hit an all-time high after gaining traction late in 2020. In addition, Armstrong says that people of all races, genders and sexual orientations are interested in situationships.
The rise of this term, especially among young people who are dating, shows a lot about how Gen Zers are rethinking what love and sex mean in a different way than previous generations.
There’s no need to “go somewhere”
A situationship is a casual relationship between two people with emotional and physical connections. It is not the same as being in a committed, exclusive relationship. Situationships are sometimes limited by time and the idea that a casual relationship is best for the time being. This could be the case for two college seniors in their last year, who might want to avoid starting a serious relationship because their new jobs might take them to different cities.
Armstrong says that situationships are popular because they go against the idea of a “relationship escalator,” which is the idea that close relationships should have a linear structure with the goal of reaching traditional relationship milestones like co-living, getting engaged, and getting married. She says that a “situationship” goes against the idea that being with someone but not going anywhere is “wasting time.” She says that Gen Z increasingly agrees with this idea. Instead, people in these situations choose to be in a relationship that isn’t clear-cut. Armstrong says they think “the situationship works for right now, for whatever reason.” I’m not going to worry about having something “going somewhere” right now.
This is supported by research. For example, Lisa Wade, an associate professor of sociology at Tulane University in the US, talked to 150 undergraduate students during the 2020-2021 school year. She found that Gen Z is less willing to define the relationship or admit that they want it to move forward. She says that her research has shown that “holding one’s cards close to one’s chest is not unique to today’s young people,” but that Gen Z is especially reluctant to talk about how they feel with each other.
People on social media like TikTok and Twitter, especially Gen Zers, share many stories about relationships. More than 839 million people have watched videos with the tag “situationship” on TikTok. Videos with the hashtags “situationships” and “#situationship” have also gotten millions of views. There are also a lot of references to the word in pop culture. For example, the term is used in popular dating shows like Love Island UK and songs like “Situationship” by Swedish millennial singer Snoh Aalegra.
Situationships help put one’s path first
As Gen Z starts to date, there are new challenges to finding love. For example, the pandemic has completely changed how many people meet partners and date, and the fact that more and more people are turning to online dating can sometimes be hard on relationships.
Also, many young people put less emphasis on dating than they did in the past. With the climate crisis, an unstable economy with rising inflation, and political and social upheaval, young people are more involved in activism and looking for personal, professional, and financial stability first. Wade says, “Young people would say that relationships take them away from their educational and career goals and that it’s best not to get too attached because you might give up your path in life for someone else.”
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So, situationships can be the best choice for Gen Zers who want to explore their romantic and sexual identities without putting other commitments on hold. Armstrong says that the trend makes people feel like they have more choices, and it’s becoming more common for people to go into this gray area instead of avoiding it.
Even so, the growing popularity of situationships in today’s dating world shows a change in how young people may think about love and sex in the future. They are now embracing what they see as a satisfying middle ground that many people in previous generations avoided.
