According to a 2024 survey by YouGov, 50% of adults aged 18-34 have experienced a situationship. A connection that feels romantic but lacks definition.
It’s 2:08 a.m. and Mia is staring at the ceiling, phone face-down beside her. She knows if she flips it over, there’ll be a text, not a good-morning one, not even a “wyd.” Just his name, a single word, something like hey. Always lowercase. Always too late.
And she’ll reply, because that’s what they do.
They’re not together, not really. But they’re not strangers either. They share Spotify playlists, late-night confessions, half-secrets about childhood dreams. He knows her coffee order, she knows how his voice sounds when he’s tired. But ask either of them what they are, and the answer evaporates into nervous laughter and shrugs.
Situationships live in the grey area between friendship and romance – a connection without a clear label or commitment. They’re defined more by shared moments than by boundaries, blurring the line between casual and something real. Not relationships, not flings. Just something. Undefined, flexible, convenient. Love without labels.
“They’re horrible,” says Jake Stoneman, a 22-year-old whose gone thorugh more flings than he can count. “I think it shows deep rooted commitment issues where someone is always bound to get hurt. It’s a reflection on this generations issue with taking responsibility for their actions. Although modern love is evolving, I think situationships are something that needs to go.”
In a generation that documents everything, this kind of love lives in the unposted moments. The photos that stay in camera rolls, the “drafts” of Instagram captions that never make it out. The unspoken in-between.
Ask Mia’s friends, and they’ll say it’s freedom. “Why rush into labels? We’re still figuring ourselves out,” they insist, sipping matcha lattes, fingers tapping through Tinder profiles like playlists they might get bored of.
“I actually love them for now,” adds Zuzanna Alskin a 3rd year student at Kingston. “You learn a lot through different experiences,” she adds.
Commitment feels old-fashioned – like a cassette in a Spotify world. Everyone’s afraid of wasting time, but they’re also terrified of choosing wrong. So they hover. Swipe. Ghost. Return. Repeat.
One night, after another half-hearted argument about “where this is going,” Mia sits by her window and watches the city lights blur into gold. Her phone buzzes again – his name. She doesn’t open it right away.
She’s thinking about her parents, who met at university and never left each other’s side. Their love wasn’t glamorous, but it was there. Real. Solid. The kind that doesn’t depend on being “seen.”
She wonders if her generation is too connected to actually connect – if love now needs irony to feel safe.
Back in the 90s, universities were love’s quiet meeting ground: lecture halls turned into chance encounters, libraries into the backdrop of beginnings. But the rhythm has changed, in 1995 only 2% of couples met online and by 2017 nearly 40% did, love sparked by algorithms rather than accidental glances. These days, just a third of students find romance on campus and only a small fraction of those stories end in marriage. Proof that even love has learned to log in.
But still, she replies. Because even in the uncertainty, there’s comfort. There’s something about almost-love that feels addictive. It’s the hope that maybe, one day, the “almost” might become real.
Mia isn’t alone. She represents an entire generation navigating love in grey areas, a generation that’s redefining intimacy without commitment and affection without labels. Mia represents all of us trying to navigate love in a world where everything feels both temporary and too permanent. For a generation raised online, maybe being “almost something” feels safer than being nothing at all.
