
Situationships seem harmless, but they’re brutal.
If you’re lucky enough to have never gone through it, situationships are relationships that end too early. You’re not official yet, but you thought everything was going great: you had chemistry, enjoyed spending time together, and made plans for the future.
Then, they leave with no explanation.
Nobody tells you how much it hurts to lose love before it happens. It feels like you’re reading a book without an ending. You want more, but there’s nothing more.
It’s no wonder you can never move on.
So you spend weeks (if not months) trying to overcome this brutal rejection. You want to move on; you just don’t know how. You feel stuck. Even worse: you doubt your self-worth.
It’s time it ends. With these mindset shifts, you can finally get control of your love life.
You’ll stop suffering for people who didn’t do the bare minimum for you.
1. Learn the brutal truth.
I will start with the most brutal truth. It might hurt at first, but this might be precisely what you need to finally move on from your situationship.
You might think you had something special together. So you are hurt now because you think you lost the opportunity of a lifetime. How often do you find true love? What if you never find it again?
But there’s one reason why it didn’t work.
There’s one reason why your situationship never became a relationship: they don’t love you.
Your situationship ended because they simply didn’t feel the same as you. They didn’t think there was anything worth fighting for. When your crush loves you, they will never risk losing you. It might hurt to hear this, but I think it’s good news.
You will move on because you deserve more.
You don’t deserve a person who doesn’t love you enough to make you official. You deserve a person who makes you official, introduces you to their family, and makes plans with you.
Loving you is the bare minimum your partner has to do. Don’t suffer for someone who can’t even do that.
2. Do you want to date a coward?
When situationships end, they normally follow a pattern: your partner ghosts you. They don’t bother to give you an explanation. After, you never had anything official to end.
That’s the action of a coward.
Ghosting is the easy way out. It’s easy enough to block you on social media. It’s difficult as f*ck to have a difficult conversation to end things.
But here’s the catch: you can’t date a coward.
The person you marry can turn your life upside down. Your partner will influence your routine, the place you live, and your finances. What’s worse: this person will raise your children.
You can’t make such a big commitment with a coward.
I know it hurts like a b*tch now. But it would hurt even more to marry the wrong person. If they treat you so poorly now, how would they treat you in the future?
3. Your relationship doesn’t exist.
You can’t move on from a situationship because it’s perfect.
Let me explain. Your situationship ended before it became a relationship. So you have room to fantasize and create the relationship you want. You create your perfect future together: with a big house, two children, and one dog.
You can’t move on because you created the perfect relationship in your mind.
And guess what? It hurts like hell to lose a perfect relationship.
But that’s not the full story. You may feel like you lost a perfect relationship, but you didn’t. You missed one important detail.
Your perfect relationship is only perfect because it never happened.
Every relationship is perfect in your mind. In real life, that’s another story. Real relationships take a ton of effort, and they’re far from perfect. It’s not always sexy to put effort into your relationship. But at least it’s real.
So don’t grieve for a fantasy relationship. You might not see it now, but a real relationship is always better than a fake and perfect one.
4. There’s no “what if.”
Situationships put you in a dangerous trap. You get stuck in a “what if” world where you could change everything with one small detail. “What if I had tried harder?” or even “What if I was a better person?”
Except there’s no what if.
There’s no alternative universe where everything worked out perfectly (or, if there is, that’s not the universe you’re in). There’s no one wrong decision you made that doomed your love life.
Love has no explanation.
When you’re in the “what if” loop, all you’ll achieve is heartbreak.
You won’t find answers to your questions. You won’t find comfort. You won’t change what happened.
If you want to move on, you have to forget your need for answers. If they wanted a relationship with you, they would’ve stayed. It’s as simple as that.
Don’t waste your precious time on people who didn’t choose you.
5. You get to create your closure.
How did your situationship end? Let me rephrase it: did your situationship really end? Or did they just ghost you with no explanation?
Situationships typically don’t have closure because there is nothing to end.
When they never committed to you, why go through the trouble of explaining why they want to leave? It’s way easier to block you on social media and move on.
That hurts like a b*tch because it doesn’t give you closure.
You have a lot of questions and no answers: why did they leave? Did you do something wrong? Was everything a lie?
They didn’t give you closure. But you get to create yours.
You can do whatever it takes to finish your situationship: write a letter (and burn it), talk to the mirror like it’s the final conversation or role-play with a friend. You might not get all the answers, but you get closure.
You’ll notice it becomes 10x easier to move on when you have a clear breakup.
…
Situationships are brutal, but you’re strong enough to overcome them.
These mindset shifts can give you a fresh perspective so you can finally move on. Remember: your energy is limited. When you spend your energy on people who don’t deserve you, you have no energy left for yourself.
It’s okay to feel upset. Rejection hurts like a punch in your face.
But it’s not okay to dwell on it forever. So feel sad if you have to. But, as soon as you can, stand up and keep going. Not for others, but for yourself.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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