Why Modern Love Lives in the Grey, Courtesy of the Situationship

“Situationship.”
We all hate the word. Or at least pretend we do, while continuing to live inside it.

It sounds casual, harmless even. A placeholder term for something that’s almost love but not quite brave enough to call itself that. And while I’m not saying it’s always a bad thing to be in one (okay, maybe I am), situationships have become the emotional default of modern dating. Not because we don’t want connection but because we’re deeply unsure about commitment.

Do you ever think twice before asking what are we? Not because you don’t care, but because you’re scared of sounding like you care too much? That hesitation isn’t accidental. It’s a direct product of how fear of commitment now shapes the way we date, flirt, attach, and exit.

In today’s dating culture, commitment has quietly become synonymous with risk. It means responsibility when things go wrong. It means staying in the conversation when it’s uncomfortable. It means you don’t get to disappear without explanation. And for many people, that feels heavier than loneliness.

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So instead, we keep things undefined.

Modern dating rewards ambiguity. Being “chill” is praised. Wanting clarity is often framed as pressure. Labels are treated like emotional contracts rather than communication tools. The safest place to stand is somewhere in the middle, close enough to feel something, distant enough to leave cleanly.

This is where fear of commitment stops being about fear of love and starts being about fear of accountability.

Because let’s be honest: situationships offer a very specific kind of protection. If someone leaves, you can’t accuse them of betrayal. If feelings get uneven, you can tell yourself it was never that serious. If someone meets someone else, there’s no cheating, just unfortunate timing. It’s emotional insurance. Pain, but with plausible deniability.

Dating apps have only amplified this mindset. There’s always another option, another match, another maybe. Commitment can feel like closing all the tabs when you’re not sure which one matters most. What if you settle too soon? What if someone better is one swipe away?

Cinema has captured this anxiety for years.(500) Days of Summer famously romanticised emotional availability without commitment; Tom enjoys all the intimacy of a relationship while insisting he doesn’t believe in labels. La La Land frames choosing ambition over commitment as poetic, almost noble. These stories resonate because they reflect something familiar: the desire to feel deeply without being held responsible for what those feelings might demand.

What often gets lost is that avoiding commitment doesn’t avoid hurt, it just delays it.

Someone almost always ends up doing more emotional labour. Someone waits. Someone reads into mixed signals. Someone hopes silence means patience, not avoidance. And the irony? Fear of commitment often creates the exact chaos it’s trying to prevent; confusion, resentment, quiet endings that sting far longer than honest ones ever would.

There’s also context here. Many people grew up watching unstable relationships, emotionally unavailable adults, or marriages that felt like endurance tests. Commitment started to look like a loss of self rather than a shared choice. Add burnout, economic uncertainty, and a culture obsessed with productivity and self-optimisation, and it’s no wonder people hesitate before anchoring themselves to another human.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: commitment isn’t a promise of forever. It’s a promise of responsibility while you’re there.

It doesn’t mean you won’t change your mind. It means you’ll communicate when you do. It doesn’t mean certainty. It means clarity. And in a dating culture obsessed with exits, clarity has quietly become radical.

Situationships aren’t the enemy. Avoidance is.

And maybe the real shift begins when we stop treating commitment like a trap and start seeing it for what it actually is: not the end of freedom, but the beginning of honest participation.

Also Read:

The Year We Learned to Sit With Discomfort

Why Everyone’s Walking On Eggshells Around Movies Right Now