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“It’s Complicated”: How Black and White Women Innovate with Situationships at Midlife

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How are midlife women reshaping the bounds of intimacy without the pressures of traditional commitment? Our study uncovers how Black and white women, frustrated with conventional relationships, are innovating with ‘situationships’—a blend of casual and committed liaisons—to maintain autonomy and explore romantic and sexual fulfillment.

Image courtesy of interviewee. November 15, 2024

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This video discusses the concept of "situationships," which are relationships that exist between casual liaisons and committed partnerships. Defined in the research as sexual or romantic interactions lasting at least six months without expectations of commitment or public acknowledgment, these relationships are often characterized by ambiguity.

The study involved interviews with 53 American women aged 35 to 55, who reported varied experiences in their situationships. While younger women tend to view these relationships negatively, perceiving them as unproductive in the pursuit of traditional goals like marriage and family, older women often saw them as beneficial, allowing them to engage in sexual and romantic experiences without the emotional risks associated with more serious partnerships.

The participants in the study came from diverse backgrounds, with a mix of races and economic statuses. The findings reveal that women who are economically secure may have different dating priorities than those who are less secure, sometimes leading to a state of celibacy among economically disadvantaged women.

Moreover, the research emphasizes that the term "situationship" is not entirely new; rather, it represents a recognition of diverse relationship forms that have existed for a long time. The study highlights the need for further exploration of women's sexual and romantic lives, particularly those outside conventional relationship structures.

Ultimately, the text underscores that while situationships may be preferred by some women for emotional and practical reasons, there remains a desire for more serious relationships when suitable partners are available. The research points to structural changes needed to support diverse family arrangements and the welfare of women and children in modern society.

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Situationship is a relationship form that sort of sits in

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between a kind of casual liaison

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and a committed relationship.

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In the paper, we define them as a sexual and

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or romantic liaison lasting at least six months, defined

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by a lack of expectation on one side

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or the other, that the relationship will lead

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to a commitment or be publicly acknowledged.

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In other words, it just sort

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of sits there in an undefined space.

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This particular project was based on interviews with women

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who are 35 to 55 years old,

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but a lot of like the, well, the little bit

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of existing scholarship

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and the large amount of social media

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attention has been to younger women.

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And a lot of the mass media type articles are like, how

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to find out if you're in a situationship

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so you can get out of it.

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Situation ships bad, bad, bad.

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And that is because if, if younger women are still hoping

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for marriage, families, kids, sort of the whole package

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being in a situation ship could in fact be experienced

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by some younger women as kind of a waste of time

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or as not leading to that.

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But for the women who were over 35 that we talked to,

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situation ships were experienced somewhat differently.

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Not always entirely positively,

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but much more so in the sense of being able to avoid some

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of the risks of partnering with men, especially men

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who are not, they did not view as particularly desirable

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as life partners and getting at least some of the benefits

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of being in, a sexual romantic relationship.

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So it, it allowed to get some

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of the good while avoiding a lot of the be.

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We did quite lengthy in-depth interviews with 53

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American women who were located at all, lived in all kinds

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of different places in the United States,

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mostly southeast Michigan,

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but some of them were located everywhere,

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and they were like slightly more than half African American

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and the rest were white

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and they were mixed in terms of their economic situation,

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their degree of kind of economic precarity.

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So there was a lot of variation on both class

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and race in the interviews were quite lengthy.

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We talked about their whole sexual romantic relationship,

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history, childhood, what they learned about,

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sex and romance, and then just kind

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of collected their whole narrative.

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And to be clear, also, we, we interviewed people

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who were not in an exclusive relationship.

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That is, they did not understand themselves

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as stably partnered

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or if they had one partner, they were looking for more.

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So we, we selected on people who were open to

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or interested in finding additional partners. So this

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Was not just a, you know, random sample of people

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who were married and the, like, these were people who were,

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who were in fact looking

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and we kind of, we ended up writing this paper in part

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because after we collected the data,

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we were just frankly baffled by what the women were doing.

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We just could not work out what

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initially just kind of whether they were dating,

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whether they were looking,

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whether they were in relationships,

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whether they were singled or single.

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Because, because their situations were well situation chip.

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And we didn't have the language for that

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until we started listening to the interviews.

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And it was actually the interviewees themselves that sort

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of gave us the language.

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We inductively through the interviews,

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started hearing them talk about

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what they were doing as situation chip.

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Not all of them, in fact, relatively few of them,

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but a lot of them were using terms like, you know,

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just like, well, it's sort of like a relationship, but not,

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or this is my, you know, some of them said, you know,

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sort of, just sort of side, side thing

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or they just, they struggled to define it,

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but some of them use the term situationship.

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I don't actually think it's quite as new

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as the term would suggest in the sense

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that I think people have been engaging in quite complicated

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and uncategorized types of like sexual

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and romantic liaisons for a long time.

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But I do think over the kind of larger span of kind

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of history and in the United States and in other, you know,

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and actually we've been hearing that this is true in the,

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this this is happening in the UK

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and other places around the world.

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I, I talked to a British journalist a a while back.

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It was like, wait, this is happening here.

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But I think that because a marriage is no longer compulsory

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in many societies

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and there's more opportunity for, women especially

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to live autonomous lives

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and be economically secure outside of marriage,

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there just is more space for things to kind of, that are,

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that are kind of not in a con in a conventional

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structure to, to emerge.

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But yes, this, the term has definitely become more prevalent

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in the media in the last, in the last few years,

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and not as much as we would have maybe expected actually.

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So there was both white

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and black women were engaging in ships,

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and both the women who were more economically secure

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and the ones who were more precarious women

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who were highly economically precarious,

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were slightly more likely than other women that we talked

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to, to be celibate, that is doing absolutely nothing at all.

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Like it seemed like there was a little, there was a sense

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of like having to be sort of, at least some degree

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of economic security was required to be able

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to get into the mix at all.

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And white women, and particularly on the younger end

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of the age continuum that we talked to, were more likely

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Slightly only slightly to be conventionally dating

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that is out on a kind of Bumble or OkCupid

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and going on sort of conventional dates.

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And women sort of who were older

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and black women were less likely to be doing that.

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And, and black women ever

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so slightly more than white women were in fact currently

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involved in situation Chip.

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But actually the differences weren't as pronounced

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as we might've thought they would.

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I think that the differences sort of emerge out of patterns

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of privilege and disadvantage in the sense that there's,

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I mean, we kind of started the project interested in sort

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of inequalities of like intersectional inequalities of love

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and romance, and this notion that class race, gender, age,

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sort of conventional sort of body views

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of attractiveness would mean

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that people would have more access to love sex intimacy,

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particularly in more conventional forms.

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And we did find that to be the case that,

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that there are definitely distinct patterns in terms of

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who has, who has access to the more socially valued

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or higher status ways of doing love, sex intimacy,

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and who has access to love sex intimacy at all.

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We found for the, the women who were sort of most

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economically disadvantaged that they were ended up celibate,

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they couldn't, they were struggling to access any form

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of love, sex, intimacy.

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Um, so yeah, so that was, and Ed,

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and also this form, the situation ships itself like a many

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of the, kind of the women would have said that

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everything else being equal, if they thought

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that they could find a man who was,

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a decent guy, would treat them well, was respectful, was

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employed, was kind of going to be able

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to pull his own weight

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and was genuinely available

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for a fully committed life partnership type of relationship

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that they would have preferred that,

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but that that was not on the table.

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So that they, so that the kind of options that were,

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that in other words, a situationship was much better than

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celibacy, but not as good potentially as marriage,

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but marriage was not on offer.

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We were only looking at, women who were open to sexual

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and romantic relationships with men.

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So the women who were queer identified were sort of bisexual

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or kind of questioning

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or kind of not fully identifying as lesbian.

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Like, I am not having any, anything to do with men.

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It would be really, really interesting for future research

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to engage more thoroughly across the kind of gender

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and sexual identity spectrum in terms of kind

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of virginity of relationship forms.

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What we would probably expect to see

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and what would be consistent with what we found is that, is

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that, is that willingness to be, expansive in, you know,

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one dimension around sexuality might be associated

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with being willing to be expansive on another, in the sense

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that the women who that we talked to who were some amount

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of non heterosexually identified were,

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were I think some somewhat more open to, you know, sort

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of more unconventional relationship forms.

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Yeah. But most of the women that we, we talked to

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actually perceive themselves as, as, as heterosexual

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and mean, we would, I mean, definitely tried in every aspect

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of the way we conducted the research to be kind

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of respectful of ev you know, everyone we talked to,

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to really listen and,

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and in fact the coming up with the situation, chip

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as a term itself was kind of out of our like,

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real conviction that we needed to just really hear

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and kind of reflect back to, you know, in our publication

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and our scholarship, what was, what they were at,

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what people's experiences actually were.

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And, and, particularly the,

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the black women who were interviewed.

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Uh, we matched the kind of interviewee

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and interviewers by race almost most of the times as one

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of the women on the team was an African American woman.

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And what they would often say to her is,

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nobody has asked us, nobody cares.

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Everybody just wants to see, black women's sexuality

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as a problem, but,

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but have not been asking, about pleasure, desire,

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intimacy, like what's, you know, what's working.

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And they were very appreciative of being asked to talk about

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what was, what was like affirmatively like working

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or what their experiences actually were.

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And so, so we did very much try in kind

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of in the representation in the, the final, paper

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to do the best we could to sort of give voice

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to the experiences of the individuals that we talk to.

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We often, the kind of risks to women

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of bad relationships are sometimes not kind

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of fully acknowledged.

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I mean, we know about the really bad consequences of sort

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of intimate partner violence and,

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and the like, which is quite common, but,

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but the ways that women can get, swept into like lots

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of caretaking work that they, that they might not want

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to be doing or that they, they, you know, they kind

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of losing themselves, the kind of merged identities

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and the women that these were, again, women, 35

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to 55 years old,

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and Mo many of them had been

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around the block a time or two.

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They had had previous relationships with men.

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They, some of them had been married, many

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of them had children, and they were a little bit kind

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of just over it a bit.

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They were just, they were like, I can live on my own.

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I can be independent if they had kids.

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They didn't necessarily want to involve men who were kind

234
00:11:51.565 --> 00:11:53.805
of, you know, would be in a stepparent role deeply

235
00:11:53.915 --> 00:11:55.045
into their children's lives.

236
00:11:55.105 --> 00:11:57.685
So some of, some of the autonomy was about,

237
00:11:57.685 --> 00:11:59.885
protecting their children from,

238
00:11:59.885 --> 00:12:01.605
other men being involved in their lives

239
00:12:02.425 --> 00:12:05.925
and staying, having a single identity meant

240
00:12:05.925 --> 00:12:08.045
that when they were out in public, if they, they,

241
00:12:08.265 --> 00:12:12.725
if they did happen to meet Mr. Wright, they they could be,

242
00:12:12.865 --> 00:12:15.765
they could kick the, you know, the, the guy

243
00:12:15.765 --> 00:12:17.645
that they were currently seeing to the curb

244
00:12:18.225 --> 00:12:20.925
and potentially get, get involved in a more,

245
00:12:21.165 --> 00:12:22.605
a committed relationship with someone

246
00:12:22.665 --> 00:12:24.005
who might be a better bet.

247
00:12:24.225 --> 00:12:27.765
So it preserved, it kept options open as well.

248
00:12:28.305 --> 00:12:30.765
In terms of the emotional piece of it,

249
00:12:30.865 --> 00:12:35.285
it is in some ways kind of emotionally protective as well

250
00:12:35.505 --> 00:12:39.285
for some of them in that there's a lot of emotional,

251
00:12:39.285 --> 00:12:42.885
psychological kind of risk when one is like all in

252
00:12:42.885 --> 00:12:45.765
and deeply, deeply in love with someone when is really

253
00:12:46.355 --> 00:12:49.765
like throwing over just a lot of kind of trust

254
00:12:49.945 --> 00:12:52.045
and just kind of a just, you know,

255
00:12:52.235 --> 00:12:54.685
investing a lot emotionally in that person.

256
00:12:55.065 --> 00:12:59.805
And so they were also engaging in a kind of a bounded,

257
00:13:00.035 --> 00:13:03.645
some of them sort of bounded investment emotionally as well.

258
00:13:04.305 --> 00:13:07.605
So, you know, seeking, comfort, sex,

259
00:13:07.815 --> 00:13:09.765
friendship, companionship.

260
00:13:10.425 --> 00:13:14.085
But some of them were just a little bit leery about going

261
00:13:14.155 --> 00:13:18.485
like, buying into the whole romantic kind of like,

262
00:13:18.625 --> 00:13:20.645
you know, happily ever after.

263
00:13:21.115 --> 00:13:24.645
Love is all, like love will conquer all they were.

264
00:13:24.865 --> 00:13:28.485
That's, and that having women kind of push back on romance,

265
00:13:28.765 --> 00:13:32.285
I mean, we're just, we're fed these kind of romantic scripts

266
00:13:32.285 --> 00:13:35.045
and all of these, you know, there's romance novels

267
00:13:35.045 --> 00:13:36.325
and romantic comedies

268
00:13:36.325 --> 00:13:38.205
and all of this with this notion that sort

269
00:13:38.205 --> 00:13:41.085
of romance is like the thing to put at the center of life

270
00:13:41.145 --> 00:13:42.405
and that will conquer everything.

271
00:13:42.735 --> 00:13:45.725
These women were actually kind of pushing back on that.

272
00:13:45.795 --> 00:13:48.165
They were, they were sort of challenging that in kind

273
00:13:48.165 --> 00:13:50.325
of an interesting way, in ways

274
00:13:50.325 --> 00:13:52.765
that I think were pr probably more radical than they,

275
00:13:52.765 --> 00:13:54.445
than they understood,

276
00:13:55.425 --> 00:13:58.125
as they did not actually understand themselves as, as kind

277
00:13:58.125 --> 00:14:02.885
of as particularly, you know, kind of radical

278
00:14:03.145 --> 00:14:04.685
or transgressive folks.

279
00:14:04.755 --> 00:14:06.605
They were just like living their best life

280
00:14:06.825 --> 00:14:08.965
and doing what they needed to do to protect themselves.

281
00:14:09.285 --> 00:14:12.325
I mean, I think one, one thing that you know,

282
00:14:12.405 --> 00:14:15.605
I would argue is that, sort of access

283
00:14:15.665 --> 00:14:19.445
to economic security ability to support children,

284
00:14:19.675 --> 00:14:24.205
shouldn't be contingent upon, marital status

285
00:14:24.345 --> 00:14:26.925
or relationship form that the children's welfare

286
00:14:27.385 --> 00:14:30.685
and just general, that the kind of that welfare benefits

287
00:14:30.785 --> 00:14:35.205
or kind of the basic security should not flow through having

288
00:14:35.225 --> 00:14:37.725
to have organize one's family structure in any

289
00:14:37.725 --> 00:14:38.805
particular way.

290
00:14:39.545 --> 00:14:43.805
But I mean, this is connected to this whole larger set of,

291
00:14:43.865 --> 00:14:47.565
issues that is flowing through I think discussions in,

292
00:14:47.585 --> 00:14:49.685
in the US and, and around the globe.

293
00:14:49.885 --> 00:14:53.805
I mean, certainly and, Japan, Korea, China,

294
00:14:54.055 --> 00:14:56.445
other places about sort of fertility decline

295
00:14:56.705 --> 00:15:00.925
and the, the sort of the movement away from kind

296
00:15:00.925 --> 00:15:02.525
of conventional family structures.

297
00:15:02.625 --> 00:15:05.965
And I think kind of what this, how this paper connects to

298
00:15:05.965 --> 00:15:10.725
that is that if governments are invested in

299
00:15:11.245 --> 00:15:13.445
maintaining fertility, they,

300
00:15:14.665 --> 00:15:18.725
and they want to do so in a way that is supportive of women

301
00:15:18.865 --> 00:15:21.485
and kind of women's autonomy, they probably need

302
00:15:21.485 --> 00:15:25.165
to make a lot more serious structural changes than they are

303
00:15:25.165 --> 00:15:28.205
have currently been known that they are willing to do.

304
00:15:28.705 --> 00:15:32.165
And even that may not work well, kind of actually everything

305
00:15:32.165 --> 00:15:33.325
that has been written

306
00:15:33.385 --> 00:15:35.645
and comes out suggests that it's extremely,

307
00:15:35.645 --> 00:15:39.285
extremely difficult to move people, to kind

308
00:15:39.285 --> 00:15:41.085
of have children or move to kind

309
00:15:41.085 --> 00:15:42.725
of conventional family forms if

310
00:15:42.725 --> 00:15:43.965
that's not what they want to do.

311
00:15:44.065 --> 00:15:47.405
But it does suggest that that given this kind of the range

312
00:15:47.465 --> 00:15:49.805
of alternatives that are available now

313
00:15:49.805 --> 00:15:53.565
and the declining stigma associated with being single

314
00:15:53.945 --> 00:15:55.005
or having no children

315
00:15:55.385 --> 00:15:58.805
or having other relationship forms, it does mean

316
00:15:58.805 --> 00:16:02.165
that governments that are invested in fertility need to need

317
00:16:02.165 --> 00:16:05.445
to really probably move a lot more assertively towards

318
00:16:05.455 --> 00:16:08.045
supporting families, sort of, you know,

319
00:16:08.045 --> 00:16:11.125
family leave policies making, just making it easier

320
00:16:11.665 --> 00:16:13.845
for people to have children if they want them.

321
00:16:14.525 --> 00:16:18.925
I think that we actually know surprisingly little about

322
00:16:19.275 --> 00:16:21.445
what, women in midlife are doing sexually,

323
00:16:21.465 --> 00:16:22.965
and actually in some ways what,

324
00:16:23.035 --> 00:16:25.005
what people are doing sexually,

325
00:16:25.315 --> 00:16:29.085
because a lot of sort of demo demographic research

326
00:16:29.995 --> 00:16:32.925
uses categories related to relationships

327
00:16:32.985 --> 00:16:35.085
and sexuality that are outdated

328
00:16:35.945 --> 00:16:40.605
and don't actually allow people in their responses to, to,

329
00:16:41.065 --> 00:16:44.845
to even offer up what they're up to.

330
00:16:45.185 --> 00:16:47.885
And so, so one of the values of this kind of

331
00:16:48.485 --> 00:16:52.885
grounded inductive research here is to collect information

332
00:16:52.885 --> 00:16:55.845
that then can feed back into survey design

333
00:16:55.945 --> 00:16:59.245
and design better questions that then could,

334
00:17:00.215 --> 00:17:03.725
allow demographers to get better, sort

335
00:17:03.725 --> 00:17:06.085
of representative, more representative data on

336
00:17:06.085 --> 00:17:07.165
what people are actually doing.

337
00:17:07.265 --> 00:17:10.125
And that's, I mean, a limitation of this kind of research is

338
00:17:10.125 --> 00:17:11.445
that it cannot be generalized.

339
00:17:11.525 --> 00:17:14.245
I do wanna make sure that the audience is aware

340
00:17:14.245 --> 00:17:18.165
that this was a small, sample of people that we kind

341
00:17:18.165 --> 00:17:20.805
of happen to be able to recruit into this project.

342
00:17:21.025 --> 00:17:24.765
So we, we can't speak from this to what the prevalence

343
00:17:24.865 --> 00:17:28.565
of this practice is in the larger population, kind

344
00:17:28.565 --> 00:17:30.805
of in the US or, you know, certainly nowhere else.

345
00:17:30.985 --> 00:17:35.285
But what we can add is insight into what questions,

346
00:17:36.025 --> 00:17:38.445
individuals who are doing kind

347
00:17:38.445 --> 00:17:41.285
of representative survey research would, would need to ask

348
00:17:41.345 --> 00:17:43.725
to kind of figure out what people, what people were doing.

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