What is this?

Situationships is a carefully curated series of essays exploring the undefined in sex, love, and intimacy.

It started as all great ideas do: with two best friends, a bottle of red wine, and a card game designed by a therapist (shoutout to our Lord and Savior, Esther Perel). One thing lead to another and we began to dig deep, reminiscing on relationships that were, weren’t, and could have been. This ultimately led us to a topic we share a love-hate relationship of our own with…

Situationship

Sit·u·a·tion·ship

/ˌsiCHəˈwāSH(ə)nˌSHip/

Noun

  1. a set of circumstances in which one finds themselves connected to another.

  2. the state of being connected without a definitive label.

  3. incredibly fucking frustrating.

We have found that this is an almost universal experience. A set of experiences we do not talk about, perhaps because we do not deem the undefined real enough to share or to validate. Perhaps because it allows us to excuse mistreatment with phrases like “well, we weren’t actually dating.” Yet, there is so much we learn from each situationship. We learn our own boundaries, we learn our own desires, we learn about communication, about vulnerability, about trust. We also begin to determine who we are, who we are not, and what we believe we are worthy of. Situationships change the way we navigate space, view time, and experiment with others. They have lasting effects and lasting consequences. And, while they may remain undefined, they begin to outline pieces of who we are, and start to define us in turn.