No Labels, No Risk; The Contemporary Dating Crisis
Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash
Most of us know the ache of a situationship. The classic progression in contemporary dating: endless texting, spending all night on FaceTime, and the slow build of connection. Then there's the cute dates and having “casual” sex in the back of a car, which eventually progresses to having “casual” sex in your apartment (locking the cat out, of course). Maybe, during this time, they share a toothbrush and tell you how lovely you look in their pj’s. These moments, though intimate, never quite settle into certainty. It's a familiar part of your 20’s; that two to seven (rough estimation) month relationship that ends when one of you finally says, “I just don't want a relationship right now”.
Like that isn't what we have been doing this whole time.
As you can imagine, I myself have experienced this, and based on my educated guess - being similar reports from my fellow twenty-somethings - this is not a situation that I uniquely find myself in. So the question is: why do people avoid defining relationships, and why is that label so unsettling?
Honestly, I think it comes down to what should be the most obvious yet is often forgotten: that Ambiguity protects people from rejection, heartbreak, and the consequences of vulnerability.
Ambiguity, in modern dating culture, exists not only as a means of confusion but as a strategy, a softly held buffer between desire and risk. By removing definition through labels, we create a space to step back before anything can fully develop. There is safety in not naming something, because what is unnamed can not fail, but exists suspended in emotional reality with little to no structure to claim.
I think it is also important to note that post-COVID progression into an increasingly commodified late-stage capitalist world does not produce an environment particularly tolerant to difference, understanding, or emotional uncertainty. When everything is optimized, categorized, and efficient, we create a space where even something as intimate as well… intimacy is approached that way. While I disagree with the constant criticism of things like dating apps - which, funny enough, I have had great success with - I can see how they can be perceived as reducing people to swipeable impressions. That being said, more often than not, I see this mentality carried into all forms of dating, with snap decisions based on someone's outfit, looks, hometown, etc., made with the same surface-level judgment. While I think it is rational and, dare I say, even important for people to be somewhat surface-level in their judgment (in terms of safety and attraction), I would argue that with this mindset, connections become shallow and scarce. If all we are worrying about is how someone could fit into our aesthetic or who we could get who is better, vulnerability feels like excess data.
“A lot of times we chase people because we’re lonely. We don’t know how to exist without other people around... repeat after me, I don’t chase. I attract.”
Further, emotional labour itself has become hyper-aware. There is a growing sense that to “choose” someone is also to take on risk, expectation, and potential depletion. Even more imminent is the looming doom of lack of reciprocation; it is incredibly valid to fear rejection when one person may invest emotionally, and the other does not. So instead, many people hover in spaces that feel emotionally consumable but not fully binding, like standing in a doorframe for a quick escape. Situationships, casual arrangements, and undefined connections become not just romantic preferences, but coping mechanisms for overstimulation and emotional fatigue.
So in all, Ambiguity keeps people close enough to feel something, but distant enough to remain untouched by its consequences. It creates relationships that are vivid in the moment but confusing in memory, fostering insecurity and the development of commitment issues in those on the receiving end; thus reenforming these cycles.
In that sense, modern dating is not lacking feeling, and one could go further and argue that it doesn't lack intimacy but rather lacks containment. The feeling is there, but it is continuously deferred, redirected, or softened into something safer than commitment and less painful than loss.
