Situationships Are the Real Reason We’re Failing at Love

It has only been a few months since I walked away from a two-year relationship. While I was in it, the sentence I heard most frequently was how I had managed to stay with someone for so long “in this day and age.” What was truly bizarre was this: aside from my therapist, not a single person ever asked whether I was actually happy in that relationship. Everyone was hyper-focused on my “success” in sustaining a long-term bond, observing me as though I were some kind of endangered species.

Whenever I’m with my girlfriends, the conversation inevitably circles back to how “horrendous” the dating landscape has become. The advice almost always leads to the same dead end: “Everyone is terrible out there; if you’re even remotely sure about someone, don’t you dare let go.” And then, of course, there are the endless labels: situationship, fuckbuddy, love buddy…

Women in my circle have started saying “I’m in a situationship” with the same normalized resignation people once reserved for “I’m in a relationship.”

It forces us to stop and ask: Why are we — a generation supposedly so allergic to labels — hiding behind these very terms just to keep our emotions under control? When did we become this terrified of love and genuine connection?

Vogue’s viral piece, “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?” pointed directly to this cultural glitch. Who broke us this badly? How did our most primal instinct — to love and be loved — become something embarrassing, or a risk to be avoided at all costs?

Is Love Getting Harder, or Are We?

When we’re single, we don’t get triggered — because we’re “free.” We carry no responsibility toward anyone and, most importantly, no responsibility toward our own emotions. The possibility of someone being hurt because of us doesn’t keep us awake at night. But getting close to someone inevitably means getting closer to yourself.

The moment you open your doors to another person, you come face-to-face with the unhealed ghosts of your past. The wounds of your inner child resurface. When triggered, you may morph into that darker version of yourself that you despise. You mistake singleness — or fleeting encounters — for an escape from that version of yourself. But the truth is: that person is still you.

If you feel anxious in a relationship, that anxiety is part of who you are. That does not make you flawed; it simply creates an opportunity to recognize yourself and evolve. Because relationships are, in many ways, our most authentic growth laboratories.

The person you’re running from isn’t the one sitting across from you — it’s the reflection in the mirror. And yet, that persistent, relentless desire to love and be loved remains. I believe the omnipresent social media mantra — “love yourself first so you won’t need anyone” — has fundamentally misled us. Should we only allow someone into our lives because of a “need”?

I don’t believe the hunger for intimacy is simply a byproduct of a deficiency in our relationship with ourselves. If every relationship on this planet is inherently complex, why do we expect our relationship with ourselves to be perfectly linear?

Human beings need to pour love into someone just as much as they need to receive it. We want to give and take. But because of the attachment issues many of us carry, we convince ourselves we can satisfy this hunger through sex, without ever touching our deeper wounds. We tell ourselves we can find the depth we crave in safe but shallow harbors — situationships, friends with benefits, emotionally diluted connections that promise intimacy without demanding vulnerability.

The “Infinite Choice” Illusion: A Modern Paradox

For the first time in human history, everyone is online and everyone is reachable. Thanks to technology, connecting, meeting, or flirting with someone across the globe takes seconds. But right in the middle of this dating app and social media frenzy sits a massive contradiction: we’ve never had access to so many “potential partners,” yet we’ve never felt this lonely.

When I started digging into why, the realization hit me: The problem isn’t only the sheer number of options. It’s that our brains were never designed to process this speed, volume, and endless exposure. At first, infinite choice feels like luxury. But after a certain point, our minds stop searching for the right person and switch into a negative filter. We stop looking for reasons to stay and start looking for reasons to leave.

This is where economics and psychology begin to clash. Economics tells us that more options should improve our odds of finding the perfect match. Dating apps are built on this exact promise: the illusion of an infinite pool. But psychology tells a different story; something known as choice overload. As options multiply, decision-making becomes harder, and we grow less certain about the choices we actually make. The system traps us in a loop where “the one” always feels one swipe, one DM, or one Instagram story away. Instead of truly seeing the person standing in front of us, we become exhausted hunters, endlessly chasing the next best possibility.

Honestly, I don’t think it has to be this way. Even within this system, we don’t have to fall for the “better option” illusion. The real issue is the system gaslighting us into believing the next swipe will fix everything. For me, the goal isn’t getting lost in the crowd — it’s keeping my own filter sharp enough to recognize who is genuinely there, regardless of all the surrounding noise.

Rejection Mindset: The Allure of Saying No

Deep down, we are all driven by something very simple: the desire to love, to be loved, and to be accepted. Every choice we make, whether good or bad, revolves around this axis. But the tragedy is that as our screen time increases and our pool of options expands, we do not actually begin making better choices. In fact, our perspective simply becomes darker.

A study by Pronk & Denissen (2019) captures this perfectly. The more profiles people are exposed to online, the more ruthless they become. According to the research, the “acceptance rate” for potential partners drops by roughly 27 to 29 percent as the process continues. Your chances of liking the first few profiles may be relatively high, but by the time you reach the 50th profile, the negative filter has taken over completely.

And this leads us to an ironic, almost unbearable conclusion. In an infinite sea of choices, we end up utterly alone, unable to choose anyone. We sit at night watching “happy ever after” stories on our screens, desperately wondering why we cannot have that, while our thumbs continue scrolling through Instagram, chasing the next “maybe.” Our most fundamental need, the need for connection, is slowly being smothered by the rejection cycle we have built for ourselves.

The Cycle of Dissatisfaction and Pessimism: Mind Games of the Algorithm

When we have been single for a long time and still cannot find what we are looking for in this limitless pool of options, our minds instinctively search for someone to blame. Either there is something wrong with me, or society is completely broken. But what if the problem is neither? What if the real issue lies in the systems we have entrusted with our emotions?

There is a subtle psychological game happening here. Often, right after a breakup, when we first return to social media or dating apps, everyone suddenly seems more attractive. We tell ourselves, “My sensors are back on,” or “I didn’t realize there were so many people out there.” But it is an illusion. In reality, after taking a break from the algorithm, your brain is simply more vulnerable to that sudden rush of visual dopamine. After a few months of singleness, staring at the same screens and cycling through the same faces, even those glittering profiles begin to lose their charm. Eventually, they all start looking the same.

The most dangerous part is this: as we begin finding others less attractive, we quietly start believing that we are becoming less attractive too, as though our “market value” is somehow declining. This does not only damage our self-esteem. It begins lowering our standards in relationships. We start accepting compromises we would normally never tolerate, simply to keep that digital validation mechanism alive. At that point, the situationships we do not even believe in become little more than temporary drugs, quick fixes for the need to feel liked, chosen, and desired in ways social media no longer satisfies. 

Ultimately, we enter a labyrinth of lower satisfaction, weakened self-esteem, and heightened fear of rejection.The question, “Will I ever find the love of my life?” stops being a question and becomes an inevitable conclusion shaped by the cycle itself. And perhaps what we lose most in this pessimism loop is not simply hope in others, but belief in ourselves. 

Perhaps the core problem is not that we are closed off to meeting people, or that we have forgotten how to love “well.” Maybe the deeper issue is the fundamental mismatch between the nature of love and the system we are trying to force it into. We, as hopeless romantics, are attempting to gather the courage to stand against a mechanical order that was never built for intimacy.

Because truly getting to know someone requires patience that transcends speed, volume, and algorithms. It requires the willingness to choose that person again, every single day. Loyalty is precisely that. Not allowing your attention to fracture every time a “better option” notification appears on your screen. When your focus is split across five different stories at once, it becomes nearly impossible to hear the right voice through all the noise. Love has always required courage. The only difference is that the deep connections we romanticize today possessed a kind of courage that had not yet been worn down by the system. That is where we are being hit the hardest.

Still, as someone who fiercely protects their belief in true love, I know we can rise above both this system and the defense mechanisms our brains impose on us. Our problem today is dismissing before understanding. Walking away before truly knowing. That, to me, is the most tragic part. In a world of billions, we are condemned to profound loneliness simply because we can no longer risk truly knowing another person. What we need is not more options. We need fewer “no’s” and a little more raw courage.

As someone who has left a two-year story behind, I refuse to subscribe to the “bad market” narrative, a phrase fundamentally incompatible with the nature of love in the first place. I do not believe the dating scene is inherently broken. Rather than getting trapped inside the wrong story, I would rather remain in my own space, allowing my mind and soul to rest. After all, sometimes the best move is not blending into the shallow crowd. Sometimes it is stepping back long enough to remember who you actually are.

And out here, things are not nearly as bad as they seem.