Woman in her 50s describes a midlife 'situationship' after meeting on a dating app

A woman in her 50s says she met a man in 2020 via a popular dating app and had their first date at a trendy, dimly lit Japanese restaurant and bar in Sydney’s Surry Hills. By their second lychee martini they discovered mutual connections and that they had grown up in the same place, and after five outings—including antique-trawling for 70s crockery—their bond developed into a romantic connection.

She describes their arrangement as a “situationship” rather than a full-blown relationship because it is not an “all-in” arrangement. The Oxford dictionary, she notes, describes a situationship as “a romantic relationship in which the couple are not official partners” and gives the example “I’m trying to turn our situationship into something more serious”; she identifies with the definition but not the example.

The term, she says, is usually linked to non-commitment, has been on the rise since the early noughties, and some reports suggest there is a kind of “relationship recession”. The pair run separate households and keep finances separate: she has a place in the mountains and he has one in the city.

They travel together and separately, celebrate Christmas apart but come together for New Year’s Eve, birthdays and beach holidays, and maintain personal routines—small signals such as the plastic tub of her clothes at his place reinforced for her that they are more like “committed companions” than interdependent partners.

Key Topics

Culture, Situationship, Surry Hills, Sydney, Dating App, Esther Perel