What a situationship is

A situationship is a romantic or sexual connection that continues without an agreed definition — regular contact, time together, often exclusivity in practice, and no conversation that names any of it. The word is common enough to have been measured: 39% of US adults say they have been in one (YouGov, 2024), rising to 50% among Americans aged 18 to 34 (YouGov, 2024). It was also one of four finalists for Oxford University Press’s Word of the Year 2023 (Oxford University Press, 2023).

In brief: this section is the long form of one word — what it is, how it differs from the states next to it, and which decisions are actually available once you have named it.

What is the difference between a situationship and the words next to it?

Most of the confusion is a vocabulary problem rather than a relationship problem, so it is worth settling first. The talking stage is the early period when two people are in frequent contact and deciding whether to date; it has a direction and is meant to end. Friends with benefits refers to an arrangement that is defined, just not defined as romantic — a term 89% of US adults had heard of (Pew Research Center, 2020). A situationship is neither: it behaves like dating and is defined like nothing.

A situationship next to the three states it gets mistaken for

A situationship next to the three states it gets mistaken for

State	Defined out loud	Direction	What people actually argue about
Talking stage	No, and both know it	Meant to be temporary	Whether it has stopped moving
Situationship	No, and it continues anyway	None by design	Whether the other person wants more
Friends with benefits	Yes — as not romantic	Stable by agreement	Whether feelings have changed the terms
Relationship	Yes — as romantic	Agreed between the two	The relationship itself, not its name

Does naming it mean ending it?

No, and the pages below split along exactly that line. Naming a situation is not the same as leaving it: some of these pages are about staying and changing the terms, some are about leaving, and one is about how to tell which of the two you are actually looking at. For example, a page on rules and boundaries assumes you are staying; a page on how to end one assumes you are not.

The reason the naming comes first is that the decisions are different depending on the answer. 26% of US adults who are not in a committed relationship say they are looking for either a committed relationship or casual dates (Pew Research Center, 2020), which is a useful reminder that “undefined” is not always a stalling tactic. Sometimes both people genuinely have not decided.

What this section will not do

It will not tell you whether your situationship is good or bad, and it will not grade the person you are in one with. There is also no approved figure for how long a situationship lasts or how often one turns into a relationship — nothing defensible has been measured, so no page here supplies a number, such as the “average length” figures that circulate elsewhere. Every number this site does publish is listed, with its source and question wording, on the statistics page.