How I Learned to Embrace the Thrilling Uncertainty of Situationships

I sat on the wooden stool and tried to get comfy. The sun went down and the sky turned so pink and blue it looked like one of those bubblegum bottle candies and everyone started taking pictures of it. He got his phone out and I thought, lol, but it turned out he was just sending an illustration of a fish skeleton that he was planning to get as a tattoo to his group chat. It wouldn’t have mattered if he was taking a picture of the sunset, but I also liked that he wasn’t the sort of person who would do that. He spoke about pollen for ages and asked me if it was boring and before I could answer he told me that his friend said that when guys are talking about something a girl has no interest in on dates she always hears the Simpsons soundtrack in her head. He asked whether that just happened to me. And he was right, I had zoned out, I was looking at him thinking, You’re a bit weird, but not in a bad way—in the way that makes me like people.

The date was good, because of him and because of me, but also because of other things, like the uncertainty of the encounter, its ease, most of which was due to the fact he doesn’t want something serious and neither do I.

Like, I actually don’t.

I’m only saying this twice because sometimes, as a woman, it can feel like there’s no way you could mean this. To the point where, even though I feel this to be the case, I doubt those feelings and wonder if they’re only happening because I want to seem cool.

But anyway, all I mean is it’s nice not dating for something. It takes the pressure off. When you’re trying to find The One, you end up looking at whoever you’re seeing and constantly asking, Is it him or not?, in a way that makes you violently pendulum-swing between infatuation and repulsion. When I was dating in a serious way I remember this guy saying something about how everyone’s entitled to their own opinions and I thought, Oh no, he definitely believes in some objectionable stuff. But then he’d tell me something cute or funny that would make me go right back the other way, like when he explained to me that he reckons people have three layers and how he’s soft, hard, soft and he reckoned I’d be soft, soft, soft, and I thought, This is the kind of dumb game I’d come up with, maybe he’s for me? I volleyed between those two standpoints until the day we stopped seeing each other.