Situationships: Why More People Are Choosing Undefined Relationships Over Commitment
The word "situationship" is relatively new to mainstream vocabulary, but the dynamic it describes has existed for considerably longer. Two people are involved with each other. They spend time together, maintain some degree of emotional connection, and in many cases are sexually intimate. However, neither of them has formally defined what the relationship is or where it is going. That absence of definition is not an oversight. In many cases, it is a deliberate choice made by one or both parties, and that choice is what makes the situationship worth examining as a social phenomenon.
Search interest in the term has grown substantially over the past several years. Google Trends data shows a consistent upward trajectory from around 2019 onward, with a particularly sharp increase between 2022 and 2024. The growth maps closely onto broader shifts in how younger adults, in particular, are approaching romantic connections. However, the behavior is not limited to any one demographic, and the structural factors driving it are present across a wider range of age groups and relationship contexts than popular coverage of the term would suggest.
This article examines what situationships are at a functional level, why they have become more prevalent, what research in relationship psychology describes about their costs and mechanics, and what the observable structural differences are between a situationship and a more defined relationship arrangement.
What a Situationship Is
A situationship is a relational arrangement that carries many of the functional features of a romantic partnership without the explicit mutual agreement that defines one. The two people involved are more than casual acquaintances and, in most cases, more than friends, but they have not established the terms of the relationship in any formal or even informal way. There is no agreed-upon exclusivity, no shared understanding of where things are headed, and no vocabulary in common use between them for describing what they are to each other.
The core feature across all situationships is the absence of an agreed-upon relational framework, and that absence is the structural element that distinguishes the arrangement from both casual meeting and a defined partnership.
It is worth noting that the absence of definition is not always equally distributed between the two people involved. In many situationships, one person has a clearer preference for definition than the other, but declines to push for it out of concern that doing so will destabilize the arrangement. That asymmetry is one of the more consistent features documented in the qualitative research on this type of relationship.
Why Situationships Have Become More Common
The increase in situationship-type arrangements is not the result of any single factor. It reflects a convergence of several structural changes in how people approach relationships, work, and personal identity over the past two decades.
The availability of meeting applications has changed the baseline assumptions people bring to early-stage romantic connections. When the pool of potential partners is perceived as large and continuously available, the cost-benefit calculation around committing to a specific person changes. Commitment forecloses other options, and in an environment where those options are visibly accessible, the threshold for committing rises.
This dynamic is visible even on platforms oriented toward serious relationships — on a site like NewLoveChapter, where users explicitly signal a desire for commitment, some still find themselves drifting into undefined arrangements rather than having the conversation that would settle things. meeting app users consistently report higher levels of relational ambivalence and lower rates of relationship formation relative to people who meet partners through offline channels, a pattern that aligns with this dynamic.
Economic instability is another structural factor. Research on marriage and partnership timing consistently shows that people are more likely to delay or avoid formal relational commitment during periods of financial uncertainty. The period from approximately 2008 onward has been characterized by a degree of economic instability for younger adults in particular, including housing costs, employment precarity, and student debt levels that have no clear historical precedent in the post-war period. Formal commitment carries implicit resource implications, and those implications are harder to absorb in an unstable economic context.
The cultural shift in how personal identity relates to romantic partnership is also relevant. For much of the twentieth century, partnership was understood as a constitutive element of adult identity, particularly for women. That framing has weakened considerably. Adult identity is now more likely to be organized around professional development, personal interest communities, and individual self-actualization projects, with romantic partnership understood as one component rather than the central organizing structure. A relational arrangement that does not require the level of integration that a defined partnership demands is more compatible with that identity framework.
Attachment style research also offers a partial explanation. Dismissive-avoidant attachment, which involves a deactivation of the attachment system and a preference for emotional distance, is associated with a higher likelihood of maintaining undefined relational arrangements. Individuals scoring higher on avoidant attachment dimensions are considerably more likely to report current or recent involvement in relationships they describe as "undefined" or "without labels."
What the Research Describes About Costs
The situationship arrangement is not neutral in its effects on the people involved. Research in relationship psychology describes a consistent set of costs associated with relational ambiguity, and those costs are worth examining in some detail.
Ambiguity about relational status is associated with elevated anxiety and reduced well-being across relationship psychology literature. Relational uncertainty predicts lower relationship satisfaction, higher negative affect, and a reduced sense of personal security, even when the relationship is otherwise functional on other dimensions. Furthermore, those effects tend to be stronger for people who have a preference for a definition that is not being met by the other person.
The emotional labor associated with maintaining a situationship is also documented. The absence of an agreed-upon framework means that each interaction carries the potential for the implicit terms of the arrangement to be renegotiated, whether intentionally or not. A shift in contact frequency, a comment about the future, or a meeting with a partner's social circle can all carry disproportionate interpretive weight in the absence of an established framework. Managing that interpretive load requires ongoing cognitive and emotional effort that is not present to the same degree in a defined relationship.
Physical health effects associated with relational ambiguity have also been documented. Ambiguous or unreliable social bonds are associated with elevated cortisol production and other physiological stress markers, a pattern that reflects the attachment system's threat-detection function operating at a partial alert state when the security of a bond is uncertain. In a defined relationship, that system is more able to settle into a lower-activation state.
Who Enters Situationships and Why
The demographic and psychological profile of people who enter situationship-type arrangements is more varied than popular characterizations of the phenomenon would suggest. It is not exclusively a behavior of commitment-avoidant individuals, nor is it limited to any particular age group or gender.
Research on the motivations people report for remaining in undefined arrangements identifies several recurring patterns. Convenience is one. The arrangement provides companionship, intimacy, and emotional connection without the organizational demands of a defined partnership. For people whose primary focus is on professional development or other life projects, that tradeoff is attractive.
Hope for escalation is another reported motivation. A meaningful proportion of people in situationships report staying in the undefined arrangement because they believe it will eventually progress into a defined relationship. That belief may or may not be accurate, but it functions as a motivator for continued investment in the arrangement.
Avoidance of the defining conversation is a third pattern. Many situationships persist not because both people actively prefer the arrangement but because neither has been willing to initiate the conversation that would either define or end it. The cost of the conversation, including the risk that it will produce an outcome neither party wants, functions as a barrier to resolving the ambiguity.
The Situationship as a Structural Arrangement
Understanding the situationship as a structural arrangement rather than as a personal failing or a cultural symptom yields the most accurate analysis. The conditions that make situationships more common are largely structural: the architecture of meeting technology, economic conditions that affect the timing of commitment, shifts in the cultural relationship between identity and partnership, and the distribution of attachment styles across the population.
Those conditions are not going away in the near term. The prevalence of situationship-type arrangements is likely to remain a feature of the relational landscape for the foreseeable future, and the research describing their costs and mechanics is accumulating at a rate consistent with their increasing social visibility.
The observable features of the arrangement, the asymmetry in preference for definition, the elevated interpretive load, the connection to avoidant attachment patterns, and the structural factors driving their prevalence are all available for analysis. That analysis produces a clearer picture of the phenomenon than the moralized or romanticized framings that dominate popular discussion of the topic.
The content of this article reflects Daniel Whitaker's independent research and analytical findings. Readers are advised to consult multiple sources and exercise their own judgment when evaluating any platform discussed here. This material is provided for general informational purposes only and does not constitute professional or advisory guidance.