Why Are We Giving Boyfriend Benefits to Men Who Aren't Our Boyfriends?
More than friends, less than a relationship.
I couldn't help but wonder: when did we become so afraid of relationships that we started creating unofficial versions of them instead?
Modern dating has a funny way of rejecting labels while quietly recreating everything they represent. We insist we're keeping things casual, yet somehow we're speaking every day. We claim not to want commitment, but still expect consistency. We don't want a boyfriend, but we're spending hours on FaceTime discussing our childhood trauma, future goals and workplace drama.
Somewhere between the good morning texts and the late-night phone calls, a new category of relationship was born.
The situationship.
Not quite a friendship. Not quite a relationship. Just enough emotional intimacy to feel significant, but not enough commitment to provide any real security.
And if we're being honest, most of us know exactly what one looks like.
It's the person you automatically update when something exciting happens. The person whose opinion matters a little more than it should. The person who knows how your job interview went, what your biggest insecurity is and why you're annoyed with your manager this week. It's the person whose coffee order you know by heart, yet somehow you have no idea where you stand with them.
That's the strange contradiction of modern dating.
We have become a generation of people willing to share our location before defining the relationship.
The Boyfriend Benefits Starter Pack
The boyfriend benefits package usually begins innocently enough.
A good morning text here. A check-in message there.
Then suddenly you're discussing your fears, sharing your day in real time and spending three hours on the phone talking about absolutely nothing. Or perhaps more accurately, talking about everything.
One day they're just another contact in your phone. A few months later they're the first person you think about messaging when something funny happens. They become part of your routine so gradually that you barely notice it's happening.
That's the thing nobody talks about.
The emotional intimacy often arrives long before the commitment does.
We've become a generation of people willing to provide relationship-level access before we've established relationship-level intentions. And honestly, sometimes I think we deserve an award for how quickly we volunteer ourselves for emotional labour.
The modern situationship often includes all the things we traditionally associated with a relationship: consistency, affection, companionship, support and intimacy. The only thing missing is the actual relationship.
It's a little like ordering a handbag and receiving everything except the straps. Technically, it's still there. But something important is missing.
The Situationship Paradox
What's fascinating is that most people don't actually want less.
They want safety.
They want connection.
They want affection.
They want someone who chooses them.
Yet somewhere along the way, asking for those things became deeply uncool.
Modern dating has convinced us that clarity is embarrassing. We're terrified of appearing needy, terrified of seeming attached and terrified of asking a simple question like, "What are we?"
So instead, we settle into ambiguity.
We tell ourselves we're happy seeing where things go.
We tell ourselves labels don't matter.
We tell ourselves we're completely relaxed about the whole situation.
Meanwhile we're spending four hours analysing a text message with our friends and rereading a message that simply said "hey" as though we're decoding national security documents.
The performance of being unbothered has become exhausting.
In many ways, modern dating isn't casual at all. It's deeply emotional. We've just become uncomfortable admitting it.
Somehow spending five nights a week talking to the same person feels less serious than asking where the relationship is going.
Make that make sense.
The Uncomfortable Truth
Now, before we blame men for everything, I think it's only fair we have a difficult conversation.
Because nobody is forcing us to answer the FaceTime call.
Nobody is forcing us to become someone's unpaid therapist.
Nobody is forcing us to provide girlfriend-level energy to somebody who has never expressed boyfriend-level intentions.
Ouch.
I know.
Trust me, I've had this conversation with myself too.
Sometimes we accept ambiguity because certainty feels riskier. If we ask the question, we might not like the answer. If we define the relationship, we might discover there isn't one.
So we stay in the grey area because the grey area allows us to keep hoping.
Hope is a powerful thing.
Sometimes powerful enough to keep us invested in situations that no longer make sense.
The truth is, many of us aren't confused about what we want.
We're confused about whether we're allowed to ask for it.
The Real Cost Of Casual
The biggest problem with situationships isn't that they lack labels.
It's that they often create relationship-level expectations without relationship-level security.
People love saying:
"But you're not together."
Technically, that's true.
But feelings don't operate on technicalities.
You don't spend months building emotional intimacy with someone and then magically switch your feelings off because no official title exists. At least most people don't.
That's why situationships can hurt in ways that are difficult to explain.
You're not mourning a relationship.
You're mourning what the relationship could have been.
You're grieving potential.
You're grieving possibility.
You're grieving a connection that felt significant even if it never became official.
And sometimes that's the hardest thing of all.
Not losing what you had.
Losing what you thought it might become.
Maybe That's The Real Problem
Perhaps the issue isn't that people want boyfriend benefits. After all, who wouldn't want consistency, affection, attention and emotional support?
Perhaps the real issue is that we've become comfortable accepting relationship substitutes.
We've convinced ourselves that consistency is enough. That daily phone calls are enough. That emotional intimacy is enough. That "seeing where things go" is enough.
Until one day we realise we've built something that looks remarkably like a relationship, except nobody is willing to call it one.
And maybe that's why situationships are so frustrating. Not because they're casual, but because they're often anything but.
They're emotional.
They're intimate.
They're significant.
The only thing they're not is clear.
Somewhere along the way, modern dating convinced us that asking for clarity was desperate. That wanting commitment was embarrassing. That having standards was somehow less attractive than pretending not to care.
So we became masters of ambiguity.
We learnt how to spend every day talking to someone without asking where things were going. We learnt how to share our feelings without defining them. We learnt how to act like girlfriends while pretending we wanted nothing more.
The performance is exhausting.
Because if we're being honest, most people don't actually want less.
They want certainty.
They want honesty.
They want someone who chooses them on purpose.
Perhaps that's why so many situationships eventually fall apart. Not because somebody wanted too much, but because somebody got tired of pretending they wanted less.
And just like that, I couldn't help but wonder: if asking for clarity feels more frightening than staying confused, have we made modern dating far more complicated than it ever needed to be?
This is so well written. The handbag without the straps analogy is perfect. And you're right that nobody is forcing us to pick up the FaceTime call. But I think what makes it so complicated is that men are often perfectly happy with the arrangement precisely because we do pick up. The situationship works for them as long as we keep showing up with girlfriend energy. It only becomes a problem when we ask the question they've been carefully avoiding or we start treating it the same way as them.