Situationship

If you don't know what it is, thats probably a good thing. Consider yourself lucky! It's a "relationship" that isn't actually a relationship. A connection that has no real direction. He or she is your lover, your friend, but not your boyfriend/girlfriend, not your future. They are just a situation. A person that fills your time but isn't suppose to fill your heart.

Sometimes you know your in one, and it's a choice you choose to make with another human. A non-commitment you choose to be apart of for the fun of it. Which I am sure, in some situations, can be a lot of fun. I mean theres no better way to explain the time I spent with this man but fun.

But sometimes it's a surprise when you discover your still being introduced as a friend. That all this time you invested has added up to a title you give lazily to a budding relationship with an acquaintance. But you never talked about it, even if you never thought you had to, you never did so it can't be a surprise to you now right?

The point of it all, your never actually together. Never a couple, even if you've gone on double dates or planned trips together. So the question is, when you break up, do you actually break up?

In my situation, we spent a good part of the year together. Talked almost on a daily basis. Went to movies together, and restaurants. He cooked dinner for me and introduced me to his friends. Yet, when asked if we were together? A couple? No, we're just friends would be his response.

Just friends?!

I wanted to scream from the roof tops, scream in his face. But yelling about it isn't ladylike. It isn't what you do if you want him to commit to you. In the end, it wouldn't of mattered if I screamed. Wouldn't of mattered what or how I said it. We weren't on the same page.

While I was thinking, who spends all this time together, goes out of their way to please someone just to want a friendship? He was thinking we were just having fun. And so he left "I don't want to hurt you" on the table, along with "I don't want to loose you as a friend". A pile of unwanted excuses. 

I can tell you, it feels like a break up. Despite the non-existence of a relationship, of the undefined commitment. Despite the red flags I choose to ignore, the fights we never had. The way we just ended things with a nonchalant discussion, like we weren't building something together. It feels like my heart is split in two. Like you carry around the other half in your pocket, as if it were a pack of old gum.

So if someone was to ask, you broke up with me.

You broke my heart.

But as in every breakup, theres a silver lining. Or if not a lining, a lesson or two. And with that, I'm gonna let you in on two simple and profound tips or tidbits. Two things that my grandmother used to tell me but I seemed to never hear.

We would sit in her living room talking about the world and how things have changed and how they hadn't, over a couple of coffee or tea. How the world of dating is nothing like it had been in the fifties. How the idea of meeting someone over the internet was unfathomable. 

She would tell me the story of how she met my grandfather, and how he courted her day in and day out. His persistence. His eagerness to grasp her attention. She would always mention his reputation as the town player. The suave man, who always had a new lady on his arm.

That was until the day he met my grandmother. She refused to be one of his ladies. Refused to be anything other then a potential wife and mother to his children. And so he proposed only a few months after meeting her and they've been together ever sense. Forty some odd years, but that's not the lesson.

The first lesson in her story isn't that the right man will come, that you'll get married in a few short months or not at all. It's that when a man (or woman) wants you, it's known. He or she will persist. They will tell you they want you, and their actions will reflect that. There won't be any confusion.

The second lesson falls into the same stream of consciousness. Just like someone will tell you they want you, you need to tell the person you choose to date what you want from the very beginning. I'm talking day one! There should be no confusion when you leave the table after your first date. Either this stops here, or you see if you are compatible for whatever it is you want.

If you want a relationship, tell them you do. You're looking for a partner to eventually settle down with, to grow with, tell them. If you just want a hook up? Tell them! Whatever it is, you must speak out now. It saves time, embarrassment, and your self-respect!

Even if you're currently thinking to yourself that you might be in the middle of a situation. There is no time like the present. Tell them. If you mutually decided to be in a casual relationship, but your feelings have changes and you think it could use an upgrade. Say it! If you don't say what you feel, no one will ever know. You'll hold onto it hoping that one day things will just take a turn. But they won't.

So take the reigns and speak up! You should never have to sit in a seat surrounded by pools of confusion. You deserve to know what you have, to get what you want.

The worst thing that can happen is they show you who they are, what their intentions are. They'll give you the information necessary for you to get what you want. Even if it's not with them.

As they say, their are plenty of fish in the sea. So don't stay in a small stale pond just because you think he or she is the only fish that will swim even remotely close to you. There is a fish out there the same shape, a similar shade, headed in the same direction as you are.