This summer I went on a date with an Australian finance guy. We hit it off instantly. We got on so well that we didn’t look at the time throughout dinner and when we did, it was almost midnight. I couldn’t believe I spent five hours on a date since I never end up liking a guy from a dating app — I usually bolt after thirty minutes. We enjoyed another couple of amazing dates. He was so confident and self assured, and he had the right responses, kind and empathetic ones, to everything I said. He had a ‘I’ll take care of it’ masculine energy that made me feel safe, and relaxed. I liked him a lot and I really wanted to keep seeing him, which shocked my friends who all knew I never connected with guys on apps. It all felt so great. Then I made the mistake of looking him up on social media- and my hopes crumbled.



At first glance, it all looked good. He wasn’t one of those guys whose following list comprises of ninety percent women. There was a good mix of meme pages, comedians, celebrities, male friends etc. But what caught my eye was that he was following a few Instagram influencers, which is normal I guess. But when I clicked on those profiles, they seemed to be of young girls who had written in their bio that they were 18, and one of them was 16! Forget alarm bells, that’s when shit hit the roof. What was a 30 year old man doing following 16 year olds who post pictures of themselves in thongs?!



I felt livid, and so let down. The whole thing seemed so creepy that I couldn’t even consider addressing this with him. It would also be hard to explain that I was checking his instagram, since we hadn’t added each other on social media yet. I felt like all I could do was avoid him. So, the next few times he asked me out on a date, I made excuses.



Finally he gave up and called it off with a parting text. All the anger I had felt, trying to protect myself, made way for the sheer disappointment and sadness I felt at the end of this short lived romance. I cried and cried. I’d created a fantasy in my head that he was really special, that we were special. He being the only guy I liked from an app, and that being central to our so-how-did-you-meet story. It made no sense to be so hurt over someone I had just met, but that’s the thing about situationships - they defy logic.



I asked my friends for reassurance. Did I do the right thing? Should I have given him a chance to explain? Did I dodge a bullet or just lose the love of my life? (Yes, that is a Taylor Swift reference.)



They assured me that it was a massive red flag, but even then I’d find myself trying to make excuses for him. I tried to reason, “maybe he followed those accounts a while back, when he was going through a break up or something?” My friends rolled their eyes, “Honey, I would prefer that he followed them recently and not a while back when they were like 14?” they said. My heart sank. You can always count on your friends.



I posted anonymously on Facebook groups to ask other women for opinions. Half of them congratulated me for dodging a pervert while the other half called me crazy for checking his social media in the first place. Was I wrong? Or was I trying to protect myself?



At least I wasn’t alone in my heartbreak. At the same time, another friend was happily dating a guy for a month, and after sleeping with him, she saw on a Facebook group that another woman had posted a picture of his dating app profile saying that she is going on a first date with him and has anyone else had dated him? So there that went. At least we could be crushed about our situationships together.



The term ‘situationship’ was coined by Carina Hsieh to describe a new relationship status that emerged with the growing popularity of dating apps. More popular with Gen-Z - there was a huge rise in people stating that they were ‘looking for situationships’ in their bios - different to ‘friends with benefits’ in that situationships tend to have an added emotional entanglement. On the internet it came to be defined as LATMS - Life Altering Three Month Situation.



Back in 2021, I found my life altered after breaking up with a guy who was 10 years older than me. I had been seeing him on and off for three months. Taylor Swift wrote an entire ten minute song ‘All Too Well’ about her own three month love affair with Jake Gyllenhall, who coincidentally was a decade older than her. I cried throughout this ten minute version when it was released. My stomach wrenched when I heard the words, “You said if we had been closer in age maybe it would have been fine and that made me want to die.” My ex would say this exact line every time we disagreed on something. Looking back he used this line to check out and not be accountable for his behaviour.



It took me more than a year to get over him. Knowing what I know now, I can see his emotional unavailability sparked a need in me to be wanted by him. His unpredictabilty felt like a high I kept chasing and the more I pushed, the more he pulled away.



After he ended it, I was devastated. I remember feeling like I shouldn’t be allowed to grieve because it wasn’t a long-term relationship. “You weren’t together anyway,” my friends would dismiss it, but I believed I was in love with him. I felt so lonely. I felt like my heart would never recover. Thankfully, it did. After months of essentially gaslighting myself, I finally gave myself the grace to move on from this situationship the same as I would from a long term relationship. I realised that no one gets to decide how long it should take for me to heal, because no one has has lived my exact life, or has my exact story.



So, this Summer when I found myself once again life altered over a man I’d known only for a short time, yeah it hurt, but not for as long. I soon remembered to give myself permission to grieve. I accepted that he wasn’t what I was looking for, and I allowed myself to stand by that. Then I grieved the dashed hopes and dreams, and felt all of the feels, and there were a lot. Even if 3 dates isn’t. Oh, and my friend who was also broken hearted - over the guy who was outed on Facebook - she’s doing really well too.

He gave up and called it off with a parting text. All the anger I had felt, trying to protect myself, made way for the sheer disappointment and sadness I felt at the end of this short lived romance. 

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