Whining & Dining: Will You Be My Exclusive Talking Stage?

WHINING & DINING | STYLE

Written by Elle Daji (she/her) | @ellemnopow | Contributing Writer

So, you’re kissing someone semi-regularly. Going out to dinner, running errands, op-shopping and having the occasional boogie. On paper, they are perfect; in real life, they’re even better. You’ve met each other’s friends and whānau. There is an omniscient visceral heart beating out of your chest infatuation, and it doesn’t seem to go away. You find yourself gushing to your friends about how much you like them. But you’re not together. 

You feel delusional, and you probably are. You often think, how can you be so attached to someone who won’t make that all-important commitment? Do you want to see other people? You may not, but do they? Do they love you? Can they love you? I have a headache, and it’s not just the wine I drank last night.

Such was the most recent romantic entanglement, or should I say situationship, of my gorgeous friend, Olivia. The issue between the two stemmed from Olivia making like a bird and migrating to another country. Famously, doing long-distance during chapter 1 of a relationship is never a good idea. And so, they did this little dance, if you can call tripping each other up dancing. Warren would oscillate between referring to her as his girlfriend and himself as single. Olivia would be pulled into the feelings of being a girlfriend while he would tell her he wasn’t looking for anything serious. The most horrific plot point is that, just before they took the train to meet his family, he mentioned he was seeing someone else. If it were me, the story would have ended in a way analogous to Anna Karenina. Olivia should have been put in hospital for the sheer amount of emotional whiplash Warren gave her.

The situationship, the relationship type of our generation, despite supposedly hating it. Something that may send you into a period of mania where you have the impulse to cut all your hair off, relate to Gone Girl a little too much, sporadically throw your phone across the room and scream into the void that is your car, while strangers look on in fascinated disbelief. How oddly specific. I fear that part of me loves these symptoms. The raunchy drama that picks me out of my mundane university-loaded days. But it’s tiring. Catch-up sessions with friends are dedicated to the discretion of a three-word text received at 1 am. Unfortunately, our collective emotional well-being is dependent on some guy we met on Hinge. The girls are confused, and we are sick of it.

However, there seems to be a wee bit of confusion among the scholars (the bFM news team). When searching for the definition of a situationship, we could not come up with a conclusive answer. The best but elusive interpretations include: ‘terrible ghastly things full of yearning and despair’ and ‘dating into the nether.’ More concretely, they are romantic relationships with no defined boundaries over an extended period. The conclusive opinions on approaching them were cries of ‘absolutely not,’ ‘don’t do it,’ and ‘if I hated myself, I would.’ If the best and only advice I was given was, just don’t, how can we help our friends caught in the throes of a diabolical love interest?

In my limited experience, limerence is a large culprit for situationships. The intrusive thoughts that cloud your mind when someone isn’t giving you what you desire. If you’re looking to get out of a situationship, I think it helps to ground yourself in the reality of the person you’re with. What is the objective sense of the relationship as it exists in the world, and is that enough for you? What are your boundaries for what you want in a relationship, and how can you communicate them? Furthermore, what are you looking for in a person and a relationship? If it hasn’t worked thus far, maybe this person doesn’t fit these criteria.

And now I have an angry mob of people screaming, ‘We know!’ This advice has been verbosely exchanged between friends at least once every two weeks. None of it has ever been taken. This self-awareness should be used to your advantage. The resignation that we all seem to lose our collective common sense in relationships is a useful tool. You can then use that knowledge to make better choices. Sometimes, you will make romantic decisions that are self-destructive. This just means that once you feel the consequences of those mistakes, you can learn and try to take the healthier path the next time.

Falling in love for all its delicious and soapy messiness often results in a whole lot of anguish due to our inability to set clear boundaries for ourselves or communicate our needs. Sometimes, we sacrifice these requirements to keep someone in our lives who doesn’t actually contribute positively to it. We might not even be aware of it. Personally, I found it helpful to learn to love what I have in my life as it stands. When I focus on how I’m fulfilled as I am, I don’t feel the need to destroy it with unattainable romantic connections. Admittedly, this doesn’t always keep the psychosis-inducing individuals at bay. If all else fails, remember the wise words of my girl Willow, ‘they make you horny, but that’s the wrong five-letter word starting with H and ending with Y.’