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Situationships can create emotional intimacy without mutual clarity or commitment.

Relational ambiguity has been found to increase anxiety, rumination, and attachment insecurity.

Commitment gets stronger when partners integrate each other into their social worlds.

Consider seeking clarity if your situationship creates more anxiety than contentment.

You’ve probably heard of situationships, but they're for other people, right? It means a relationship without a clear definition, between people who usually behave like a couple. When you ask about it, they’ll say, “It’s complicated,” or shrug and say they’re figuring it out as they go. Perhaps they have moments of deep intimacy, and can share their fears and insecurities—but without a shared understanding of the roles they play in each other’s lives. Sometimes they talk every night—and sometimes, almost not at all. They haven’t met each other’s close friends or families, as though their relationship exists in a private bubble. When you hear that a friend of yours is involved in something like this, you might wonder if it’s all that healthy—but what if it describes your relationship, too?

Instead of “situationship,” psychologists might use the term “relational uncertainty.” Defined by Knobloch & Solomon (1999), it means being underconfident about the status of a relationship whose future is unknown. So, is your relationship clear, or is it ambiguous?

Sign #1: You Avoid Defining The Relationship

If you’ve been together a short while, you’ve probably had conversations about “what this is.” Perhaps these talks have been awkward, or you’ve left the terms intentionally vague. Asking for clarity about the future of a relationship can feel like admitting you care enough to wonder where it’s going. So perhaps situationships form because of romantic anxiety: They let people get together without having to have that talk. But over time, as the relationship continues, the likelihood of anxiety grows: Relational uncertainty is usually associated with stress and anxiety, in the form of heightened internal reactivity to cortisol—often known as the “stress hormone” (Priem & Solomon, 2011). When relational certainty drops, anxiety and stress can grow.

Sign #2: Emotional Intimacy Exists Without Commitment

Sometimes, being close to someone both creates and relieves anxiety. Long talks, cozy mornings in bed—sharing them with a partner can be wonderful. At the same time, though, making these connections without knowing if your partner sees you as a long-term possibility can be frightening. When emotional closeness like this persists alongside vagueness and instability—as if some days, you feel like you could be married, but others, you’re not sure if they’ll respond to your texts—you’re experiencing a powerful relational asymmetry. It happens all too often, as Stanley, Rhoades, and Markman wrote in 2006. They called it “sliding”—gradually forming commitments without making overt decisions—which increases the risk of a poor relationship outcome. But this, too, can hurt you: A gradual escalation of emotional entanglement without clarity can make you more susceptible to instability.

Sign #3: You Feel Anxious, Not Secure

This could be the biggest clue that a situationship is not moving in the right direction: When you’re alone and you think about your partner, you feel worse. Perhaps you compulsively check your texts, or leave weekends free just in case they’re available. Adult attachment theory describes this hypervigilance as attachment anxiety, as described by Mikulincer & Shaver in their 2007 book: an ambiguity about the availability or commitment of one’s partner that can activate deep, internal uncertainties about abandonment or unlovability. As much fun as a situationship can be, if you have this kind of anxiety about your partner’s feelings, you’ll be living under a cloud of emotional distress.

Sign #4: The Relationship Exists Mostly in Private

If meeting your partner’s friends is significant, then meeting their family is downright fraught. But in time, if two people are serious about each other, their social lives will become integrated. In her frequently cited article, "The influence of social networks on romantic relationships" (2011), Susan Sprecher reports that as romantic partners are accepted and integrated into each other’s social groups, their commitment to each other becomes reinforced. Conversely, when you can’t be “verified” by your partner’s friends or family, you’re likely to feel more unstable.

Sign #5: One or Both of You Keep Future Options Open

The final sign of a situationship won’t surprise anyone: it's the tendency to prioritize future possibilities over present-day connection. Perhaps you and your partner have intentionally kept your Hinge and Tinder profiles open and active. When the holidays, or Valentine’s Day, roll around, you just laugh together in a noncommittal way. This reluctance to foreclose alternatives sounds respectful and modern—although it also means an implicit rejection of commitment. As far back as 1980, studies in social psychology have shown that turning away from other options will reinforce commitment (and, conversely, that keeping these options open will weaken investment in a relationship). Be aware that the benefits of staying flexible may be outweighed by the worries it can generate.

Why Relationships Matter

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Navigating Situationships

Ambiguous relationships can be as hard to leave as they are to define. Recall that positive reinforcement tends to produce repeated behavior; a caged rat will keep pressing a lever if it is rewarded by a food pellet each time. But if the rat only occasionally, randomly receives a pellet in response to its lever-pressing, it will press the lever even more frequently; better said, intermittent reinforcement powerfully motivates behavior. Perhaps, then, people in situationships are a little like these rats. Every now and again, the deep, satisfying moments of connection with our partners can keep us coming back for more, long after we’ve begun to worry about the future, as reported in Joel et al. (2018).

If your relationship makes you feel more anxious than satisfied, consider seeking clarity. This isn’t the same as asking for reassurance; you’re not telling your partner that you need more from them. Instead, you’re acknowledging that the relationship seems vague, which makes you want to know how your partner sees it. Having this kind of talk can alleviate this worry by illuminating the future, even if the answer to “is this serious” isn’t what you hope it will be.

If you’re not yet ready for this conversation, you can still take stock of where you are right now. Notice your partner’s level of investment in the relationship—not just by being present for deep, intimate moments, but also by showing up when you need them. Look for clear choices, rather than just a passive drift in the direction of comfort. Trust the behavior patterns you see over any promises you hear. Also, try to be honest with yourself about the amount of worry you’ve been feeling. Anxiety can sometimes be a reasonable, meaningful indicator of the risk of harm in an unpredictable environment.

Lastly, and most significantly, if your partner won’t respond to your need for greater definition, you may need to find clarity by walking away. Ambiguity is not comfortable for everyone, and quite often it creates and prolongs distress. Achieving clarity by ending a situationship may hurt in the short run, but can turn out to be the right decision over time.

Joel, S., Impett, E. A., Spielmann, S. S., & MacDonald, G. (2018). How interdependent are stay/leave decisions? On staying in the relationship for the sake of the romantic partner. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 115(5), 805–824.

Knobloch, L. K., & Solomon, D. H. (1999). Measuring the sources and content of relational uncertainty. Communication Studies, 50(4), 261–278.

Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2007). Attachment in adulthood: Structure, dynamics, and change. New York, The Guilford Press.

Priem, J.S, Solomon, D.H. (2011). Relational Uncertainty and Cortisol Responses to Hurtful and Supportive Messages from a Dating Partner. Personal Relationships. 1;18(2): 198-223.

Rusbult, C. E. (1980). Commitment and satisfaction in romantic associations: A test of the investment model. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 16(2), 172–186.

Sprecher, S. (2010). The influence of social networks on romantic relationships: Through the lens of the social network. Personal Relationships, 18(4), 630–644.

Stanley, S. M., Rhoades, G. K., & Markman, H. J. (2006). Sliding Versus Deciding: Inertia and the Premarital Cohabitation Effect. Family Relations: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Applied Family Studies, 55(4), 499–509.

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