Okay, it would appear that this is a word now, but what it means is anyone’s guess and, me being me, I just couldn’t resist the temptation to come up with a few definitions of my own.
Officially, (apparently) a “situationship” is what you are having with someone when it’s more than a friendship, but not quite a relationship and if that has still left you in the dark, then feel free to join the rest of us. Initially I wondered if a liaison like that could be termed a Claytons but that couldn’t be right. A Claytons is the friendship/not quite relationship you have when you’re not having one at all.
So, it has to be something else, and putting it bluntly, I suspect this term might be someone’s attempt to make Friends With Benefits sound a whole lot nicer. If you’re not up on that one either, it defines a friendship where two people opt to engage in non-exclusive sex, sans commitment, and no bad feelings should one or both of them enter into a more permanent relationship down the track with someone else. But while they’re doing FWB they are footloose and fancy free in an arrangement which allows them to have reasonably regular sex despite the absence of a Significant Other. Personally, that’s what I think a situationship is.
But perhaps not. It’s possible this may have become the go-to word instead, for the commitment-phobic to fall back on in an attempt to extricate themselves from another’s efforts to upgrade them to Significant Other. Commitment-phobics are happy to do sex, but live in fear of acquiring SO status, so a word that defines their all-take and no-give approach to intimate relationships, while leaving their partner stumbling around in limbo, is going to work really well for them. “Look, it’s evolving, but we’re still in a situationship at this point.” There’s probably no comeback for a statement like that, unless you ask them to define “situationship” which they probably won’t because then they would have to tell you the truth. As in, the relationship is never going to go anywhere.
That sounds feasible too.
Lastly however, situationship may just be a word coined by someone as confused about the status of their current liaison as we are about the definition, but it sounded good at the time so they said it and now it’s out there. Well yes, they’re together but not quite. Huh? Reminds me a bit of Gwyneth Paltrow’s “conscious uncoupling” or whatever she called it. Yes, I understand it meant a split of sorts, but was that split a temporary marital separation, a beeline for the divorce court, or a tricky physical disentanglement from a downright awkward tantric yoga position? Your guess is as good as mine on that one.
Meanwhile, feel free to mull over “situationship” and put your own slant on it. I admit, it does have the potential to become a buzz word, which means it could be applied to a swathe of situations, and it probably will be before too long.
Even if no one can define it.