Are the Highs Worth the Pain?
And have we made intimacy a reproducible commodity?
The word “situationship” has been in the zeitgeist for quite some time, and recently, I haven’t been able to escape it—even in my academic life. A classmate recently wrote a paper about the phenomenon, and her pitch led to an entire class discussion wherein most of us bonded over the ways we have similarly been hurt by trying to safely fall in love in a commitment-averse world. “Because what is more painful,” she read from her notes, “than loving someone who refuses to call you theirs?” In the mostly female class, a collection of gasps rang out—a passerby would have thought we’d all been wounded. And, though not in the way the strangled sound would suggest, hadn’t we been?
I thought back to all of the conversations I’d had with friends about the talking-stage graveyard: the situationship. All of us, at some point or another, had been hurt by someone who we thought was going to stay at arm’s length, and then somehow wormed their way close enough to break our hearts.
Sometimes, we jumped into these situations without reading the Terms and Conditions. We agreed blindly and leapt, hoping to land on some sort of cushion to soften the blow. Other times, though, we raked through the Terms and Conditions with a fine-toothed comb:
Casual
No feelings
Just hookups
Just fun
If situationships had contracts, these would be in the boilerplate text. And everyone I know, at some point or another, has come to their senses about the legalese of Not Love™ and lawyered up. AKA, consulted with their closest friends about each clause.
Casual—to mean not serious; to not expect a relationship at the end
No feelings—to mean we are not getting invested in one another
Just hookups—to mean we are not going on dates; we are barely even sharing a meal; we are getting a drink, and going back to someone’s place
Just fun—to mean a lighthearted situation; to covertly insinuate a lack of responsibility for any emotional occupational hazards of the arrangement
The lawyers agree—the terms are straightforward. We each sign on the dotted line.
Unfortunately, in the murky land of situationships, there is nothing to be done in the event of a breach of contract. And all too often, I—and most every girl I know—have returned home with a battered heart and a wounded sense of self-trust. Despite following all of the terms to the letter, the undersigned is somehow still not protected against developing real feelings for mass-produced intimacy disguised as one-of-a-kind love stories.
Luckily, these casual situationships also do not come with NDAs. And since we’re all friends here, we can commiserate together.
It usually starts in the same way: meet a guy in some meet-cute-esque way (check✓), have a witty conversation (check✓), and discover a crackling chemistry between us (check✓). This time, though, we made the mistake of sharing a meal and having absolutely no intention of being anything more than friends. (A rookie mistake, I know.)
Fast forward a bit: there we were, nearing roughly what would be the second act of a rom com—performed by both of us under the falsely-secure distance of the term, “casual”—and there were a million thoughts in my head. They always teach you in acting class that the lines you deliver are never about the words—we are all, as humans, communicating more with what we are not saying than what we are. And you know what they say about art and life.
If this is what it would be like for us, I want more of it.
“What’s your favorite color?”
I feel like I can take up more space with you than without you.
“What’s your middle name?”
I haven’t laughed like this with someone in a really long time.
“What’s your comfort movie?”
So many thoughts and feelings and truths that died behind my teeth while the safe, surface-level subjects escaped.
Fast forward a bit more to the dreaded time that the energy shifts—when there’s been a slight change in the air between the two of you, almost imperceptible, but enough to do damage.
“He thinks you’re into him. It’s why he ghosted,” a friend of a friend reported back.
I laughed. A rueful, maniacal laugh.
“Of course I’m into him. And?” I shook my head. “See, if he had just talked to me, I would’ve said just that. I’m not going to not own my feelings. I’m into him, and I knew I was going to have to walk away. I can take care of my own feelings. I didn’t need him to do that for me by ghosting. He just needed to communicate instead of running away.”
A couple years ago, I would have lied. I would have denied that I’d developed feelings and instead acted like the Chill Girl. I would have pretended that I had grown unaffected by someone clandestinely grabbing my hand under a dinner table and telling me not to let go. I would have acted like he should have been embarrassed, not me, for even suggesting I was more invested than he was. But I don’t do that anymore—because I don’t want to go through life making myself immune to the effects of intimacy simply because as a society we’ve become careless with it. I’m not talking about sex. Though sex is, obviously, intimate. I’m talking about the other moments:
The sighs of relief upon melting into a long-awaited hug.
The, “if I order this, can we go halfsies on it?”
The finishing each other’s drinks.
The, “I want you to spend the night”s.
The holding hands all the way home.
The stolen kisses in the darkness of an entryway.
The graze of fingertips extended as long as possible to maintain connection while passing by one another.
The hands snaked around waists to fall asleep.
The snoozing of alarms and, “I’ll make you coffee”s.
I’m talking about the forehead kisses and the middle of the night glasses of water and the hearts in text messages and the, “I know it’s 4:00 AM, but I will drive to wherever you are. I just want to see you”s.
No, sex is the least intimate part of “casual.” The most lethal facet of a situationship doesn’t require either party to be undressed.
It is painfully ironic that an anagram of “casual” is “causal.” If you look too quickly, your eye just might be tricked into thinking the former is the latter. A situationship, though, is causal. A hand finding mine in the middle of the night is going to cause my heart to beat with hope. Being spun around in the kitchen is going to cause my head to get too dizzy to keep the feelings at bay. Tenderly swiping a stray eyelash from my cheek is going to cause my wish on it to be of a future where I can have more of… whatever this is that we refuse to label, explore, or acknowledge is real.
And then, without warning, the line goes cold. A relationship cannot survive forever paralyzed in a situationship. The connection reaches rigor mortis; the autopsy reads, “Too close.” Nobody attends the funeral.
We all yearn so desperately for genuine connection, yet have grown so averse to building it with just one person. We want the roof over our heads—the semblance of a house to keep us safe from the elements—without the security of a foundation to make sure it doesn’t blow away the next time the wind changes.
“Psychologically, your brain doesn’t know the difference between relationship actions and relationship actions with no label,” one of my closest friends sagely reminded me after I had ended a nearly-year-long situationship.
“If it’s casual, it needs to be kept to the bar and to the bedroom,” one of my other closest friends vehemently declared after a guy who wanted nothing serious went into full Boyfriend Mode™.
They were both right.
“He’s going out with another girl this week, too. Planning to take her back to his place,” the Grapevine reported. It was only four days since the hand-holding and the waist-snaking and the coffee-brewing. The rom com script we’d been in the middle of acting out never reached act three, and my skin hadn’t yet been scrubbed enough to lose the feeling of finding warmth in someone else’s touch.
When you’re writing and reach a roadblock, they teach you to go back a few paragraphs. I pictured him doing that to our drafted love story.
Sub my hand under the table for hers. Keep the setting of a nighttime walk back home, but hug her in the darkness instead. Yes, the sweet nothings seemed to work—we can keep those as well. But take out the specific dialogue about the feel of our kiss and swap it for compliments about her mousy brown hair. Strike the lights. Snooze the alarm. Laugh in the dark. Brew the coffee. Keep the playbook but replace the cover art. Intimacy, recycled. Or, rather, reproduced.
Because that’s what happens in a world where intimacy is so easily curated and, therefore, watered down: it becomes a reproducible commodity.
What once was special and genuine has become a series of accoutrements to accompany “casual,” like the free samples that come with an online purchase. The markers of progress in a relationship—the unspoken clues that someone may be falling for you—have turned into empty actions to make liberated sex with no strings attached seem not as empty. Intimacy is turned over like tables at a restaurant—repeated in quick succession without regard for the person it is directed towards. And, yes, when the smoke and mirrors go away, preparing to create the mirage for someone else, the feelings left by them are real. We may have turned intimacy into a chain franchise, but our bodies don’t know the difference.
So why do we do it?
“It’s the age-old question,” a friend said on the phone to me. “It’s the Taylor Swift question. Is the high worth the pain? Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn’t.”
I thought about the times I’d had to contend with that question—the times I’d been left gutted, gasping for air, trying desperately to convince my body that no, we’re not dying, we’re just readjusting to the loss of what we thought had become ours.
I thought about the times I had been made to feel like the real feelings I developed for someone, based on how they treated me, was a failure of self-control on my end, rather than a gross negligence of honesty on theirs.
I thought about the times the lines had been blurred, the contract breached, the term “casual” slapped on actions that were very much, not, casual.
The question should not be whether the highs are worth the pain. I think, instead, it ought to be, “Do the highs get us closer to no pain?”
If you asked me how many of my situationships I’ve regretted, I’d say they’re pretty evenly split. The highs are always great for a story. They’re great for a temporary feeling. And, yes, sometimes the pain is worth it, I suppose. But there are times when it feels like they aren’t—when you get misled in the illusion, lose track of what’s stock intimacy versus the real stuff, and emerge from it feeling like if you had known this was how it would be, you never would’ve signed on. And in those moments, that’s when the question needs to change.
The highs aren’t always going to be worth the pain, but they’re always going to get us closer to the high that doesn’t come with it. I believe that. Some people might say that the solution is to be less open—to become hardened to the intimacy that people show to us in order to not get duped. I shake my head at that. I’d much rather remain soft and affected by someone reaching for me in the night and taking care of me come morning. That’s what’s normal. That’s what’s natural. That’s what’s… human. Even if the current world we live in would have us thinking otherwise.
It’s important, friends, to believe, wholeheartedly, that the highs with the pain get us closer to the highs without it. Because one of these days, the intimacy that someone shows us isn’t going to be a reproducible hand-me-down that’s been recycled from person to person on their roster. It will be unique and it will be honest—and, personally, I want to remain open enough to it that when it comes my way, I haven’t become too jaded to let it in.