The Super Common Gen Z Dating Term That Drives Boomers Crazy

Dating in 2024 is…all over the place. Gen Z is keeping up with their romantic prospects via Excel spreadsheets? Dating apps are losing favor among young people? Speed dating is back?! Even I, a millennial, find it hard to keep up, so you have to imagine how perplexing this all might be for our boomer friends. To find out, I recently chatted with with two boomer women in my family (I’ll call them Mary and Laura), and out of all the dating trends I threw at them, they agreed that one is the most concerning: situationships.

First, a quick primer on situationships, courtesy of Associate Editor Sydney Meister. For a story explaining the phenomenon, Meister tapped NY-based psychologist Dr. David Tzall, who explained, “A situationship is a romantic relationship that lacks clear definitions or commitment. Broadly, it is a no-strings-attached relationship or emotional/sexual bond without a title—partners won’t define their relationship, place it into a category or set clear boundaries.” Meister continues, “To that end, a situationship is different from a booty call, since it tends to breed ‘intense feelings’ and ‘emotional intimacy.’ While a booty call is about sex without emotions, situationships are all about sex and emotions (hold the commitment).”

Now, I’ve seen my fair share of situationships in the wild, so perhaps I’ve become immune to their toxicity, but both Mary (born in 1961) and Laura (born in 1955) were especially frustrated by the concept. (Both agreed a situationship sounds like, pardon my language—their words, not mine, “complete bullshit.”)

Laura, who has been married for nearly 40 years, told me, “I don’t understand younger peoples’ obsession with seeming cool or uninterested,” while dating, she said. She added that her daughter, who’s a millennial, has dated her share of flakey guys that don’t seem all that interested in commitment, and that her advice is always the same: “Never ‘go along with’ what a guy wants if it’s not what you want, just for the sake of not being difficult.”

Mary, for her part, got married in her 20s, divorced in her 40s and continues to casually date. How do you think your casually dating without making much of a commitment is different?, I asked. As it turns out, Mary is doing the whole situationship in pretty much the only healthy way: Over the past decade or so, she and the men she’s dated have been very clear from the jump about being on the same page, re: commitment. “I think after being married and divorced, you get a lot more comfortable being honest about what you want—and don’t want,” she explained. “Maybe it’s because I’m old, but there’s no pressure to go along with a setup you’re not interested in.”

Taking a step back and listening to their concerns (which were similar, if less clinical, than the concerns voiced by the psychologist consulted in Meister’s situationship story), I realized that for all the progress women have made since Mary and Laura were first entering the dating world, there’s still a lot we can learn from our foremothers.