Romantic Relationships: Today we are looking for non-committed relationships

TO where are we with love affairs downstream of the shock generated by the pandemic?

The segregation imposed by Covid, you will remember, had produced a flourishing of online contacts, characterized by great prudence and mistrust. The inclination to shut oneself up at homeby making the newspaper and oneself suffice, had put the development of the relationships that arose on the platforms into a crisis.

Fortunately, today this trend seems to have been reversed: the desire to see each other, touch each other, share is back.

But new forms of relationships are taking hold. To suggest it is the annual report of Tinder, a well-known dating appwhich identifies as a growing trend what it defines as “situationship”, that is something in between an official relationship and a friendship, in short, a love relationship free from definitions or rules. Which could be considered as the other side, the romantic one, of the “friendship with benefit” (friendship with sexual implications).

Mentions of this status on Tinder increased by 49 percent in 2022. One in ten users claims to be looking for a “situationship” as a formula for better living a relationship.

The phenomenon was described in the weekly Timein an article by sexologist Myisha Battle, entitled Situations are the future of dating. It’s not a bad thing.

To prefer this status would be the younger ones, eager to meet their own kind without too much pressure. Therefore, all long-term discourses are banned, the sharing of houses and things and above all questions such as “but what are we now?”. A modality, according to Battle, which Frit would allow the couple to focus more on the present and the emotions that on the future and planning.

I may be Jurassic compared to the Tinder universe, but by applying the old and dear categories that have always allowed us women to navigate the vagueness of partners, it seems to me that this trend signals the definitive victory of the male relational modelof a liberal nature, on ours, more inclined to a “regulated market”.

The “grey areas” are not for everyone, warns the sexologist. Especially when they risk being forever.

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All articles by Antonella Baccaro

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