Situationships are the limbo of relationships.
They give you all the signs that they like you. They make plans, text you every day, and even say they like you. Their feelings are crystal clear.
Yet, they never make you official.
Despite acting as if they like you, they never commit to you. That’s the situationship: you’re emotionally involved, but you’re not official (although you’d like to be in a relationship).
Situationships are confusing as hell.
Your partner says one thing, but their decisions don’t match that. So you’re left to wonder: where is this going? Am I wasting my time? You’re neither here nor there.
Nobody deserves to stay stuck in that limbo.
So let me help you see things clearly, so you can either move on or change your status. These are signs that your situationship will never become a relationship:
1. They never take the initiative.
Taking the initiative is as uncomfortable as sleeping on the couch after a fight. You need to think ahead, make plans, and invite your date. You also risk getting rejected. All that while you could be at home, watching Netflix.
Why would you go through this for someone you don’t like?
You wouldn’t. You also wouldn’t start a relationship with someone you don’t truly like. So the first sign your situationship doesn’t like you enough is that they never take the initiative.
Don’t get me wrong: it’s okay if you take the initiative. I’m all for going after the things you want.
But if you’re always the one who makes plans, your date gets comfortable.
When they like you, they’ll want to see you. It’s as simple as that. That’s why their efforts to make plans (or lack of) show their true emotions.
2. They forget small (and important) details.
Small details feel insignificant. Your partner can still love you and forget you don’t like onions, right? One action (or lack of) doesn’t determine how someone feels about you.
But those small details matter because they’re what makes you who you are: your birthday, favorite movies, things you like to eat, and little habits in your routine.
Here’s the brutal truth: people remember what’s important to them.
How many small details do you remember about your best friend? I’m guessing more than you can count. Now, how many details do you know about your coworker you only speak to once a week? I’m guessing not many.
The difference is you genuinely care about your best friend.
I’m not saying they dislike you. But if they were genuinely in love, chances are they’d remember those details.
3. They never meet you halfway.
When you’re in a relationship, you make one million decisions together, and you don’t even notice it. I’m talking about truly small decisions like choosing what to eat for dinner or what movies to watch.
“What’s wrong with that?” you might ask. The problem is that you won’t agree with your partner in every decision. That’s impossible (unless they’re your clone).
You need to meet your partner halfway.
But guess what? Nobody likes to give up on what they want. It’s way better to have things your way. Meeting halfway is annoying as f*ck.
Why would you do that for someone you don’t like?
You wouldn’t. It’s not worth the trouble. It’s troublesome to do things you don’t want to. But that’s what you need to do if you want a serious relationship.
When your situationship never meets you halfway, they don’t like you enough to have a relationship with you.
4. They’re not clear about the future.
You may not want to hear this, but real-life relationships are not romantic like in the movies. Real relationships take one small (and very unsexy) skill: planning.
Relationships take a great deal of planning.
Anything you want to do as a couple requires planning: buying a house, having children, or traveling. Even going out for dinner requires some small planning.
But a person who isn’t interested in you won’t bother to make plans.
Here’s the deal with plans: they’re a tool to create the future you want. You’ll never make plans about something you don’t want. So you can see your crush’s true intentions by the way they talk about the future.
What does your crush say about the future? Do they want to build a family, settle down, and find love? Or do they want to travel the world and have adventures? One isn’t better than the other, but it helps you see where you stand in their future.
Your situationship doesn’t make plans with you because they don’t want you in their future.
Bonus: you don’t feel loved.
This one is kinda tricky because you can’t measure how you feel. You can measure how many times they call, the dates you have, and what they say. You can measure their efforts.
You can’t measure your feelings or even what makes you feel this way.
You can’t say what makes you feel loved. But you’ll know it. You may not want to see it, but you’ll know when your crush is serious about you or not.
Someone who loves you will do their best to show you. They’ll create unique experiences, spend time with you, and put in the effort without making it feel like an effort. They’ll never risk losing you.
Ultimately, that’s the difference between getting to know each other and a situationship.
…
I know some sentences in this article are hard to read. It hurts to see your crush doesn’t reciprocate your feelings.
But it hurts more to waste your time with a jerk.
You don’t deserve to stay in the relationship limbo. You don’t deserve to feel confused. You don’t deserve to guess what their next move is. You deserve a real relationship.
When your situationship doesn’t want to give you what you deserve, the best you can do is leave as soon as you can. Every minute you spend in a situationship is one minute you don’t spend looking for the real deal.
These signs aren’t rules set in stone. But they can give you clarity so you feel safer to make the next move (whether you move forward or start something new).
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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