Gen Z and situationships: The new type of relationship everyone’s doing, but no one wants.

Over the past several months, I haven’t been able to escape Chappell Roan. Over the same period of time, a report from the dating app Hinge found that 56 percent of Gen Z Hinge users said that fear of rejection caused them to stop pursuing a relationship, and 57 percent admitted that they’d held back on confessing their feelings for fear it would be a “turn-off.” This anxiety extends off-app, too. But Gen Z’s particularly high levels of risk aversion makes “What are we?” discussions harder than they have to be, and the normalization of situationships provides a tempting way to opt out of discomfort. “Ya’ll ever notice how stupid and embarrassing and ugly and cringe you get when you like someone?” said one young woman in a TikTok video with 1.5 million views. “It’s like, once you become single and understand how worthy your peace is you just don’t wanna give that up for just anybody.” Too many young people seem to believe that romantic relationships primarily exist as an add-on to an already fully realized life, rather than a union with a flawed person with whom you’re building something greater than the sum of your parts.