There's the story of the kiss on the forehead. And then the little nicknames, the holding hands in the street, the hugs, a "thank you, I love you" dropped carelessly and immediately withdrawn, breakfasts with their parents and whole days spent hanging out in their bedroom. Yet Lou (all sources asked to remain anonymous) was not in a relationship with the boy she was seeing. She never was.
"I tried to talk to him to give a name to the relationship," recalled the 23-year-old, a receptionist for a business. But he told me he couldn't commit, that he wasn't capable of giving me more." And at the same time, he kept telling her that he needed her, that she was the only one he felt comfortable with. So she stayed.
Lou described this relationship she experienced during her first year of university in 2019 as a situationship. At the time in France, this coinage hadn't yet emerged from the internet ramblings of the English-speaking world. A combination of the words "situation" and "relationship," the term refers to an unlabeled sentimental affair. In other words, it refers to a couple that isn't one, a relationship in-between that, by definition, hasn't been put into words. "It's a useful expression to designate a state of intimate relationship that is otherwise difficult to identify as such," explained sociologist Christophe Giraud.
In his book L'amour réaliste. La nouvelle expérience amoureuse des jeunes femmes ("Realistic Love: The New Love Experience Among Young Women"), Giraud uses the term "serious-light agreement" to designate these third-type relationships, which fall into neither the serious, committed, exclusive, stable and loving relationship nor the light, often sexualized relationship, with no feelings or desire to form a couple. Referring to an intermediate relationship that precedes a couple or else a long-term refusal to define feelings, the word situationship can encompass a range of relationships with which the under-30s clearly identify.
On the social media platform TikTok, popular with the very young, hashtags around the term situationship have racked up almost 7 billion views. The common denominator of this experience, which seems to be shared by many 20-somethings, is the lack of projection into the future, the lack of communication and the asymmetry of feelings. In their 2022 track "Coup de vieux" ("Suddenly Old"), French rappers Bigflo and Oli paint a portrait of a generation that "wants a one-night stand that lasts two years." Does the new generation have a problem with commitment?
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