I’ll start with the disclaimer people seem to require now: I’m not a prude. I’m not anti-sex, anti-fun, or anti-casual. I’m not clutching pearls over people doing what works for them. What I am questioning is why we’ve decided that emotional ambiguity deserves the same attention or respect as honesty.

Casual relationships have always existed. So have monogamous ones. Both are clear, even when they’re messy. Situationships, on the other hand, thrive on vagueness. They are the gray area we’ve turned into a lifestyle, the classic non-answer disguised as a solution to modern dating.

Somewhere along the way, we stopped calling this what it is.

A casual relationship is upfront. Two people agree on the terms, the expectations are named, and no one is pretending they’re confused about what’s happening. Inevitably, one person usually catches stronger feelings, but that’s a topic for another day. A committed relationship is also clear, even when it’s imperfect. Now, situationships live in the middle, where one person is quietly hoping for more and the other is enjoying the benefits of not having to officially decide. That imbalance isn’t accidental. It’s the entire structure.

What really tipped this from personal annoyance into cultural concern was seeing situationships casually referenced in mainstream advertising. A recent Walmart commercial, of all things, slipped the word into its storyline like it was a charming, relatable phase of adulthood. And that’s when it clicked: we’re no longer just experiencing these dynamics, we’re endorsing them.

When something makes it into national advertising, it’s being framed as normal. Aspirational, even. But there is nothing aspirational about spending months or years pretending you don’t care while hoping someone else eventually will.

Of course this didn’t come out of nowhere. We live in a world optimized for speed. Fast food, fast fashion, fast opinions, fast intimacy. Dating apps train us to believe people are endlessly replaceable. Add social media brain rot to the mix, and suddenly sustained attention, emotional consistency, and accountability feel like unreasonable demands.

In that context, it makes sense that people struggle to commit, not just to a person, but to clarity. Ambiguity becomes the path of least resistance. You get intimacy without responsibility, companionship without obligation, and validation without vulnerability.

But just because something is understandable doesn’t mean it should be the norm.

Situationships are often framed as low-stakes, but the emotional cost is rarely evenly distributed. Someone is always doing more emotional labor. Someone is always waiting for the conversation that never quite happens. Someone is always told, implicitly or explicitly, to “just go with the flow,” even when the flow is eroding their self-respect.

We’ve also somehow decided that wanting clarity is embarrassing. Labels are treated like emotional handcuffs, as though asking “what are we doing?” is code for demanding a ring, a mortgage, and a joint checking account. In reality, labels don’t restrict people. Avoidance does. Clarity doesn’t trap you. It simply tells you whether you should stay.

This isn’t about shaming people who find themselves in situationships. Most of us have been there. It’s about questioning why we’ve elevated them from something that happens into something we shrug at, accept, and now even market.

You can want casual. You can want commitment. You can want something unconventional. All of that is fine. What shouldn’t be normalized is recruiting someone else into your uncertainty while benefiting from their emotional availability. Confusion is not a relationship style.

Just because situationships are common doesn’t mean they’re healthy. They’re common because they’re convenient. Because they allow people to avoid discomfort, accountability, and tough conversations while still receiving intimacy. But convenience has never been a compelling argument for much of anything, let alone emotional standards.

We all deserve relationships, of any structure, that are intentional, honest, and mutual. Half-hearted connections shouldn’t be framed as the best we can do in a modern world.

Wanting more than ambiguity doesn’t make you old-fashioned or demanding. It makes you human.