According to Tinder’s 2022 Year in Swipe report, the top dating trend among singles aged between 18 and 25 is that they’re “owning the situationship as a valid relationship status.”
The platform saw a 49% increase in members adding the phrase to their Tinder bios between January and October 2022.
Like the relationship it refers to, the term “situationship” isn’t officially defined in the English language. Associated dating terms like boyfriend and girlfriend are dropped as well.
“In our research, we define a situationship as an ongoing sexual or romantic liaison that lasts six months or more that one or both parties don’t see as going anywhere,” Elizabeth Armstrong, the chair of the University of Michigan Department of Sociology, told Insider.
People in a situationship tend to publicly portray themselves as single, but at the same time, have no immediate intent to end the liaison, she said: “It’s something that has stepped off the relationship escalator in terms of progress, like moving towards cohabitation, marriage, or some kind of greater seriousness.”
It’s not exactly like casual dating, which is usually a means to an end, Myisha Battle, a sex and dating coach, told Insider.
Battle is also the author of “This is Supposed to be Fun,” a sex and dating guide published in January 2023.
“It’s like you’re dating around until you find something more. But I think with situationships, there’s no end game in sight, really,” Battle said. She pointed out that it isn’t quite like being friends with benefits either.
“With friends-with-benefits, there’s a kind of implicit understanding that there’ll be no hard feelings if it doesn’t work out,” she added.
“But with situationships, I think people are just seeing where things go, and maybe one person will have a vision of some kind of future whereas the other might not.”
Although the term “situationship” has been floating on the internet for a few years, it is unclear where or when it originated.
But with the rise of TikTok — and the habit of oversharing details about our personal lives online — the term has entered our collective consciousness.
Just take a look at the thousands of videos under the #situationship hashtag on TikTok, which has collectively amassed over 5.5 billion views.
