Situationship

A situationship is a romantic or sexual relationship that neither person has defined. You act like a couple: time, affection, often sex. Nobody has said what it is, and usually one of you wants to. It is past the talking stage and short of a relationship, and it stays there because no one asks.

Updated October 5, 2026

Means

Undefined relationship

First seen

2008 (Merriam-Webster, first known use); common from the mid-2010s

Related terms

Talking stage, Breadcrumbing, Ghosting, Friends with benefits (FWB), Cookie jarring

In Swedish

Situationship

Plenty of people are in one before they know the word for it. The word matters less than telling it apart from its neighbors, because each one calls for a different conversation.

Situationship vs relationship (and vs dating or a talking stage)

A relationship has stated intent: one of you has said where this is going, and the other has answered. A situationship is the same behavior with that step missing. The evenings, the affection and often the sex can be identical, so from the outside the two look alike until someone asks.

• Talking stage: before any label. You are both exploring, and the decision is openly pending.
• Situationship: past the talking stage, with no decision made. You do couple things, such as regular time, affection and often sex, without calling it anything.
• Friends with benefits: agreed. The arrangement is physical, and feelings are off the table because both of you said so.
• Dating, in the sense this page uses: someone asked where this is going, the other answered, and you both use the word. Going on dates alone does not count, and a situationship has those too.

Below the talking stage sits the nanoship: a mutual flicker with nothing planned and nothing expected.

The quickest test is the question itself. In a talking stage, nobody has asked it yet. In a situationship, the moment to ask has come and gone, and nobody did. Of the four, dating and friends with benefits are the two where the conversation happened. The answers differ: yes in dating, “no feelings” in friends with benefits.

Our view: the labels stay vague because vague is convenient. Without a name, either of you can keep other options open without announcing it, and nobody has to say out loud that they want less than the other. That is fine when both of you know it, and less fine when only one of you does.

Situationship vs friends with benefits

As this site defines it, friends with benefits has terms both people have stated: you are friends, you have sex, and romance is not part of the deal. A situationship has no agreed terms. Most of the other differences follow from that. The friends with benefits page covers how often the terms are in fact spelled out.

Where FWB terms exist, they can be broken, and both people can point to when. A situationship has nothing to break, so nobody can point to the moment it went wrong. The two also tend to start in different places. FWB tends to grow out of a friendship that already existed, and a situationship often out of dating that never got a name. What they share is that neither comes with a stated future.

Day to day, the two can look identical, down to the same takeout order. Our view: the difference shows mainly when one person’s feelings change. In FWB, that breaks the agreement, which is the conversation the terms were meant to make possible. In a situationship, it is just Tuesday: nothing was agreed, so nothing is broken, and the feelings have nowhere official to go. The research on how FWB arrangements end is on the friends with benefits page.

Signs you are in one

Together they describe the gap between how you act and what you have agreed.

• You see each other regularly, but plans never go past a week. Next Saturday counts as long-term. If it began in the fall and nothing is booked past February, it may be cuffing season.
• You have met none of their friends or family, and they have met none of yours.
• “What are we” has been avoided for months, either by both of you or very skillfully by one of you.
• You would be upset if they saw someone else, and you have no standing to say so.
• The relationship lives in texts and late nights. It does not show up in either of your calendars, or on either of your feeds beyond the odd soft launch. A hard launch is usually the sign someone has decided.

If the contact is thin and irregular, just enough to keep you interested, that is closer to breadcrumbing. A situationship usually has more contact than that. What it lacks is a name. If one of you is being kept as a backup without knowing it, that is cookie jarring.

What to do about it

1. Decide what you want before the talk. If you want a relationship, know that going in. If you are happy with how things are, you may not need the talk at all, as long as you are fairly sure the other person is happy too.
2. Ask once, plainly. No hints, no tests, no waiting for them to bring it up. Something like: “I like this. I want to know if we are heading somewhere, or if this is what it is.” More scripts, sorted by what you want, are on DTR.
3. Treat “I don’t know” as an answer after a reasonable time (and, if the reason is an ex, see rebound relationship). Early on, it is honest. Months in, it tends to mean “not now,” and “not now” has no end date.
4. Set a time limit. This one is our rule of thumb, not a research finding: if the question has been open for about three months, the silence is the answer.
5. End it in one message or one meeting. A slow fade from a relationship nobody named is still ghosting, just with extra steps. Something like: “I want something defined, and this isn’t it. So I’m going to stop here.” Scripts by stage, and when a call beats a message, are on how to end a situationship, and the afterward is on how to get over a situationship.

If you want the signs above as a score, our situationship check asks ten questions and keeps nothing. If you end up back on the apps afterward, our dating app comparison shows which ones lean serious. If the apps have worn you out, see dating app burnout.

What the research says

Situationships got a research definition only recently. Langlais and colleagues interviewed 28 people and surveyed 261 (Langlais et al., 2024). They defined a situationship as a romantic relationship without clarity or a label, with low commitment and couple-like behaviors. This page is built on that definition.

A follow-up study asked whether situationships are, in fact, situational. It combined 10 interviews with a survey of 109 people in situationships, per the abstract (Langlais et al., 2025). Emotional investment, talking about the future and feeling prioritized were the strongest predictors of how satisfied and committed people were. The lead author has said in an interview that many people form situationships as a potential gateway to a relationship, “sort of like relationship purgatory” (PsyPost, 2025). We read the abstract and that summary, not the full paper. The samples are small, so treat the findings as an indication.

The word is older than the research. Merriam-Webster gives 2008 as its first known use (Merriam-Webster). Language Log found it in print in 2011 and 2014 (Language Log, 2022), and Dictionary.com lists it in its slang dictionary (Dictionary.com).