My first situationship 🥲
So to start off I have to use the word “situationship” lightly, very, very lightly. Generally, a lot of the words in my vocabulary should be used quite gently given that they’re mainly just Urban Dictionary backwash at this point.
Anyway, I have to tread lightly with that word because it was the type of situation(ship) where the other party would probably balk at the term, as official-sounding as it is — please step away from me with your clingy label maker, you were just some girl I hung out with a few times, can you chill.
And to be fair to the other party, I wouldn’t have called it that at the time either, but post-situation, when you’re attempting to google away the pain, summoning all the wise women of Quora and Reddit to carry you through, you’ve got to settle on some sort of terminology. Choose your category of dating trauma and tuck in. So whether it was or not, by OED or his standards, I feel like for lack of a better word it’ll do.
We met on Hinge, as the story often goes. We talked for a while (enough for that dumb bitch noughties romcom fuelled fantasy machine to start dusting itself off). We had a date, he was nice, handsome, we got on pretty well, but I didn’t feel any chemistry and was preparing to copy and paste the nice to meet you, “friendly vibes”, “good luck with your dating endeavours” schtick into our thread. Until… he didn’t ask me out again.
My brain fired up. The game was afoot. I had to solve this puzzle, I had to understand why he didn’t want me. It was like getting a fail mark without any feedback (and I know this is just a feature of adult life, but it’s a shit feature). And it wasn’t really about feedback, I just had to win. I did tend to hand over rights on my self-worth pretty quickly back then; they just seemed to slip right into the first unavailable man’s clumsy hands. So suddenly, just like that, Hinge man became the arbiter of my romantic worth. I gave it away that easily.
After mulling over it for a while, I ask him out again, telling myself this was me being assertive and powerful. Lol. He was warmer this time, gave me a bit more, but also mentioned the multiple other dates he’d been on and looked off dreamily as he detailed how nice they had been. Again, the gauntlet had been thrown or whatever, I had to beat them. To his credit, he did say he didn’t want anything serious, and it didn’t even matter if I did, because my ego just couldn’t deal with the fact that he didn’t want me that much. Some little unloved kid inside me was stamping its foot, demanding commitment. From a fuckboi.
This dynamic carried on for a couple months, me chasing him, him giving me enough to be somewhat encouraged, but then always, predictably, restoring the coldness, the arms’ lengthiness of it, and me continually confusing my anxiety for romantic feelings.
Until one fateful night, after weeks of trying so hard to play it cool, I hear myself blurting out to him that I might be after intimacy after all (“not from him obviously” (but obviously from him)).
He firmly declined. I think his exact words were “it turns me off when someone likes me more than I like them”, which is quite ego-death-y to hear when you are naked in said person’s bed.
I want to say it was self-respect or something Erin Brockovich-like that made me get up and leave and finally send that let’s just be friends text, but it wasn’t. I was so ashamed and so anxious, I had to get out of there. I wanted a hug and it didn’t feel appropriate to ask him for it.
After that main character moment feeling passed, I started to feel pretty sad. For some time. All the while being so ashamed of feeling so much for so little. I kept putting timelines on feeling better, there’d be a big unveiling of a fixed, non-yearn-y new me, ready to have that final revenge dress sort of bullshit encounter with him. I had breakthrough after breakthrough, most of which had nothing to do with him, but really about old wounds that this dude had somehow squelched open.
I was gripped by this deep sense of urgency to prove I was over it, I was good now, I was loveable. But only with external things. I had to look amazing, have a boyfriend, be successful in all areas of my life, so I could say “look, see!!!” And it was frustrating because everything was happening inside of me, and it was kind of ugly and hard and I couldn’t immediately package it up into something cool. So I had to, with a significant degree of discomfort, slow down, when everything and everyone felt like they were whizzing past me on the expected trajectories, and keep reassuring myself that what I was doing counted too, even if no one else might think so.
One thing that has helped is recognising my brain is just pretty tired most of the time, it wants to take the familiar route, which used to lead to him. So when that happens, usually in the mornings, when I wake up and get hit by the anxiety that precedes the day, I’ll try and course-correct a bit, meditate, journal, whatever (I know, I know, ground breaking stuff, I guess just pop in anything that’s low effort but redirects you slightly like a kindly rail replacement usher). It takes a lot of energy and practice though, and sometimes I definitely can’t be bothered and go back to the old shitty thought trough.
He came into the picture at a very lonely time in my life, I was just a tub of insecurity, ripe to be incorporated into someone else’s world at the expense of my own. But when I’m really honest about the life I want, he doesn’t fit into it comfortably. It’s cringey, and big and silly, and probably really uncool at times, and I’m huge and loved and allowed all my emotions. I keep defining that big life, thinking how it feels viscerally, making that the fantasy I pop in my head each night.
I guess also de-lousing the story of its romance helps, knowing that the feelings I was having were mostly about soothing my fragile ego. Letting my ego get bruised, letting myself be a bit shit, being ok with him not wanting me. I had to accept and have compassion for that school girl inside me that would keep feeling like she needed to retake the test, pass that module somehow, and keep reassuring her that this was an exam she should try and fail.
A helpful bit of advice that I got from a Jillian Turecki podcast is to ask myself, every time I find myself wanting him in that petulant, childlike way, why do I not think I deserve the love that I want? Why do I think it’s acceptable to settle for crumbs? And that’s not a question to beat myself up with but just to calmly look at what’s going on with me right now, unravel why I go for people that make me work so hard to stay at their table.
I wont lie, I still miss him at times, but it’s like an emotional chocolate bar craving, it’s just my go to, very human way of smothering my discomfort at being single. But I try to not let that cascade into some bigger, more epic story of being meant for each other etc. etc. Because we weren’t. I forget how much anxi I had, the temporary relief of each of his texts, the taut moments in between when I wondered if he’d ever reply again.
If you’re going through this, firstly (and if relevant) you have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of, situationships are triggering af. If you find yourself pining, it may just be because you’re feeling sad or bored or frustrated and trying to escape (in a very understandable way) through a quick and easy romantic fantasy, it doesn’t mean you’re not over it. But have faith that over time they just won’t be much of a feature any more, those crunchy, jagged feelings won’t be there, and in the meantime you’ll have worked through a lot of shit that had nothing to do with them in the first place. Keep going.
