Why Situationships Rarely Evolve Into Relationships

Unsplash by Katerina Hliznitsova

I suspect that for a lot of people, just reading the term "situationship" makes you cringe. Coined to describe a type of relationship that usually has a sexual component but that lacks clear definitions or commitments, situationships tend to be characterized by ambiguity and uncertainty—two things that can make people’s anxiety skyrocket.

In today’s murky dating world, situationships are a place where many people often intentionally or unintentionally find themselves during the early phases. There are many reasons someone would intentionally choose to be in a situationship—including wanting companionship but not being ready or available for a relationship; not believing the person they are with is "relationship-worthy," although they enjoy the low effort benefits they are getting; or they feel fearful of a relationship and want to keep their options open while they make up their mind.

Some people, based on their own dating template, believe that having a situationship is part of how they choose to date; they may view it as a path to a more committed relationship. And if both people are on board with the vagueness of a situationship, there's really no problem. However, it usually becomes an undesirable situation when one person changes their mind and decides they want a more committed relationship, but the other person isn't ready for more, or when one person's expectations have been different from the beginning.

For those people who unintentionally end up in a situationship, they usually expect a more traditional intentional relationship paradigm from the start, where there are milestones towards increasing commitment. This usually looks like a short period of dating, a committed relationship, living together, and possibly getting engaged and eventually married.

But proper communication didn’t happen up front, and they find themselves paired with someone who may not share this perspective. They’ve already developed an emotional attachment, so now they are hoping that the situationship, if they wait it out, will become something more. A situationship, however, generally lacks a fundamental condition needed to evolve into the committed relationship they want: emotional safety.

To understand how this plays out, I’m going to compare forming a committed relationship to baking a cake.

When you first meet someone and you start dating, you are trying to assess whether or not you have the right ingredients to "bake the cake," as it were. Do you have things in common? Do you share the same values and views of the future? Do you enjoy their company? Do you have physical chemistry? At this stage, these things are only ingredients—and since you’ve never made this cake before, you won’t know if these ingredients will turn into a good cake until you create the right conditions for them to become a cake.

In order for ingredients to become a cake, you have to mix them and put them into the oven set at the right temperature for the right period of time. Only under those conditions will you get a cake. Whether or not the ingredients turn into a cake that you like and want to eat isn’t something you can know until the right conditions have been created.

In the context of forming a committed relationship, the "oven" is the right set of emotional conditions needed for an intimate bond to form. These include trust and safety, which allow for vulnerability. Trust means that you share good intentions towards one another, are on the same page in terms of what you want, and are both able to be honest about your feelings.

Trust also means that you and your partner will follow through on what you say. This allows for safety where both people can open up and share deeper sides of themselves. Only under these conditions do you get to see the real person, and unless you can see the real person, it’s hard to truly fall in love.

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Situationships are like having a bowl of mixed cake ingredients that never get put in the oven, so they can’t become a cake. They sit on the counter and eventually go bad. When someone doesn’t have emotional safety, you end up seeing the worst side of them. You get their insecurities, defensiveness, and guardedness on steroids because the threat centers of their brain have been activated. They are trying to protect themselves from getting hurt, all while pretending to be cool with a situation that feels dangerous.

When you put good relationship ingredients into the oven, by mutually agreeing to see what the ingredients can become under the right conditions of a safe exclusive committed relationship, it doesn’t mean the relationship has yet fully formed. It’s still in the baking stages. You still have to give it the proper time needed to develop. If you try to rush it or go too slowly with a cake, it gets ruined by being scorched or undercooked.

During the baking phase, you are still going to be getting to know that person and figuring out whether or not they are the right one for you. But doing it under the right conditions allows you to find out what the real relationship potential is. How long before it firmly becomes a “real” relationship? That is something you will just know. You will feel it and see it in the other person’s behavior. Like when baking a cake, you may need to at times stick a fork into it to see how it’s doing. You do this in a relationship by communicating and talking openly about how you’re feeling. If the right conditions are present, this should feel like a safe thing to do. If it doesn’t it’s probably not ready.

Does giving good ingredients the right conditions always yield the results you want? Unfortunately, no. You may find out that the ingredients didn’t meld together the way you wanted them to. Or maybe what you thought was sugar, turned out to be salt. There are no guarantees in relationships. While no one wants to have to throw out one cake and start again, the reality is that’s just how baking and relationships happen. Hopefully, with some practice, you become a better baker over time, and the right cake will be worth the effort.