Swiping Right and Situationships: Why Dating in Your Twenties Sucks

The worst date I have ever been on was with a man named Riley. It happened nearly one year ago, and it took place at a bar in Brisbane where the toilets are papered in the raunchy, graffitied, waxed-bald vaginas of playboy magazine models. Though Riley’s name in this piece is not real, that bar is 100% authentic, right down to the nipples that stared at me from the bathroom walls while I washed my hands.

It was not the adult magazines, however, nor the existence of this bar in the darkened crook of a you’re-totally-gonna-get-kidnapped alleyway, that made this date my worst ever. Rather, it was the conversation Riley and I had over flat beers in a red-lit booth.

This was not our first date. We had been seeing one another for about 2 months at this point and had attended in our courtship a range of dinner spots, a movie theatre, and even the Ekka. I had come to the point where romantic feelings were in play—a dangerous thing.

So, I felt it was a natural evolution at this point to ask Riley, ‘where is this headed?’

To which he responded: ‘I’m just looking for something casual.’

Crying in a cubicle surrounded by pussy pics was not my finest moment. The phrase, I’m just looking for something casual, is one that, as someone dating in her twenties, I was not completely unprepared for. I hear it a lot. In fact, I hear it so often that despite having accumulated a decent catalogue of dates in my twenty-three years of life, I still have never managed to bag myself an official, committed relationship. Isn’t the pagan-esque ritual of dating performed with the ultimate hope and intention of securing a relationship? Of being in love? I thought so.

Now, it could easily be argued that I am boring to talk to and make bad coffee and this is why I have never had a boyfriend. However, my experiences are not isolated. All those I speak to about this—my friends and coworkers, ex-uni peers, strangers who I converse with spiritually through online shitposting—are in agreement: love in your twenties is a hellscape of failed potential and dates that go nowhere and love that never gets off the ground. It is bending yourself into the uncaring, low-commitment shaped figure demanded by modern dating. There is a prevailing cultural attitude prevalent among young adults that favours the easy love and emotional-kiddy-pool-depth of casual relationships. To me, there are 2 core factors that have contributed greatly to this modern distaste of romantic commitment: online dating, and the birth of the situationship.

While online dating originated in the form of rudimentary chat rooms, then developed into the pool of cheating spouses, divorcees, and love-obsessed teens of the 90s, it has since evolved. Today, online dating is a unique courting art and a niche online culture complete with its own inside jokes, tropes, cues, and cliches. There are unwritten, universal understandings among its users: 6’2 on a dating profile really means 5’9; having good music taste will always get you matches; if you want a hookup, download Tinder. The stereotypes surrounding online dating are made fun of on other internet platforms—TikTokers who joke about cringey profiles that include the classic ‘Unusual Skills’ prompt response of ‘getting my hoodie back after you borrow it’, or Instagram memes that mock the red flag photos of men posing for pictures with a dead fish. It is a digital neighbourhood dominant over modern romance.

And studies reflect this! A recent survey conducted by the ABC found that the majority of Australians meet their romantic partners online, while supporting evidence cites that approximately half of Australians between 18-49 use dating apps or websites. Clearly, online dating is the match-making method of choice, and though obviously popular among all ages, evidence points to it being overwhelmingly so among young people with one study reporting that 82% of Tinder users in 2022 were between the ages of 18-34. Thus, for those of us in our twenties, where the dominant form of romance has evolved into swiping right and text strings, online dating is not only an attractive choice, but almost a necessity for finding love.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this. In fact, there are many benefits to online dating over traditional in-person meet-cutes: you have the freedom of choice, ease of use, convenience, and the ability to judge a guy’s pubey mustache from the comfort of last night’s unwashed, wine-stained pjs. Despite these benefits, however, it doesn’t take an expert to realise online dating presents equal challenges—especially for young people in their twenties who, due to a lack of experience, might still be forming their perceptions of love.

As a teenager, I grew up watching romance dramas and reading books where sex was depicted as the pinnacle of connection, whether between a married couple or two strangers at a bar. This was not because the act of fucking or the euphoria of an orgasm created some sort of invisible bond between people, but rather it was the aftermath—the entanglement of limbs beneath white sheets, someone’s heartbeat beneath your head, resting on their chest—that created a sense of intimacy. Whether these characters stayed together or parted ways the next day didn’t really matter. For the most part, everyone communicated what they wanted and was treated like they mattered.

As an adult, however, the standard is depressingly lower. I am far too familiar with dates who lie or mislead me about wanting a relationship. Aftercare is a mythical creature. Being offered a coffee the morning after a hookup is like finding the holy grail. That’s if you even make it to the next morning. Having to suddenly Uber home at 3am in a dress you can’t fully zip up is a humbling, somewhat dehumanising experience. Being ghosted by someone who was inside you a couple of days earlier is equally humiliating.

People have become a matter of convenience—how close they live to you, where you both work, what surface level interests you share. And given that most of the people you match with online will have no connection to your life outside of the internet—no common friends, shared job, or pottery class where you might bump into them—it becomes that much easier to view romantic connections as brief opportunities for self-serving gratification. In a society where you can swipe on potential partners as easily as you order takeout for dinner, you will inevitably come to view those people with the same fondness, and disposableness, as your late-night halal snack pack.

It’s no wonder then, that dating in your twenties can feel like banging your head against a wall. You are, on all sides, surrounded by a culture of dating that encourages you to view people casually, and it is here that we see the inexorable birth of a connection all too common amid people in their twenties: the dreaded situationship.

For those out of the loop, a ‘situationship' is a new term for what is basically, in all conceivable aspects, a romantic relationship, but without the label of being an official couple. These situationships can vary in intensity, but often entail the intimacy—physical, sexual, and emotional—of a committed couple, include the intertwining of lives, meeting of each other's friends or family, participation in coupley activities or events like Valentines Day, and the investment of time, money, and feelings that a relationship carries. However, a situationship comes with the loose boundaries and freedoms of being single. There is no security, no promise of fidelity, or of a future together. It is a relationship built on a brittle, fearful trapdoor.

I hate situationships. Plainly. Deeply. Aggressively. This is a hatred born from experience—multiple experiences, most averaging a few months, with one particular situationship taking up nearly a year of my time and emotional investment. It’s difficult to explain what it feels like when you’re knee deep in this type of pseudo-love—because it does feel like love. There is a strange middle ground where the excitement and insecurity of dating meets with the routine and intimacy of a relationship. And when things end—which they almost always do—the breakup feels like losing a real partner.

While situationships are not a phenomenon exclusive to people in their twenties, studies show they are particularly prevalent among emerging young adults, replacing the prospect of a relationship with a cheap knockoff. For an age group so vulnerable, still learning the ropes of adulthood, it does not bode well for any healthy attachment to love as we mature. In fact, insecure attachment styles tend to be more common among people in their twenties, with those who are avoidant of attachment consisting in large part of people between 18-24 years old.

It is entirely likely that this lean toward casual, less secure relationships is simply something that comes with the confusion of youth. Your twenties are a time of monumental change—in this period of your life you will probably move out of home for the first time, experience your first career-driven job, and both lose and make new friends. This could explain in part why settling into a committed relationship at this age is less likely, and why a situationship might be more attractive to daters in their twenties. But if dating in your twenties is already a barely controlled fire of lust and low-commitment, then lighting that fire in the context of modern online dating culture is like lighting it in a room where the walls are made of gasoline. Thus, given the fear of connection, the changeability, and the ease with which online dating allows us to sidestep romantic security, it is no wonder situationships have become so normalised among young people. Everything compounds, leaving us where we are now: with bad dating manners, a disregard for potential partners, and a reluctance to commit.  For those seeking long-term relationships and emotional attachment, dating in your twenties sucks.

So, is that it? Should we just give up on love while we’re young and settle for a dissatisfying root in our long-term, low-commitment situationship’s bed? Is it even possible in our current climate to find the type of love that says, boldly and unashamedly, ‘yes, I choose you’?

Despite the seemingly dire state of things, the situationship is not a certain fate. I have omitted the stories about my friends who are dating in their twenties—my friends who are also dating in their twenties. I have not told you about my old uni mate who met her long-term boyfriend on her first, and only, Tinder date; my best friend, who wants to marry her high school sweetheart; or my sister, who is bravely navigating the emotional heights of her first ever relationship. I have not spoken about the books and songs and poems and films and tv shows and art that remind me why I want to be loved, and prove people will always believe in the possibility of it.  I have not spoken on watching TV and realizing that something right is not necessarily something easy, when Fleabag reminds me that “love isn’t something that weak people do”.

Sometimes, when I find myself doubting in love, I remember that love isn’t for the weak, and that so long as people speak about it, make art about it, love exists. I think it’s best to remind myself that while dating in my twenties, at times, may feel like a sucky, hopeless wasteland of casual sex and DMs, it won’t be like this forever. If I look for love, then others do too. There are billions of people in the world. People who brush their teeth at the same time I do, and cook beef stew with the same splash of red wine I add, and dogear the pages of their books with the same crease in the corner, pressed down with a thumb. People who yearn like I do for a love so gentle, so abundant, that I can finally breathe.

Edit (7 months after I wrote this piece): At last, I’ve found it—I love you Pat.

Jemma Green is an emerging writer and editor based in Magandjin/Brisbane. Published in both Australian and international zines, she’s worked with QWC and served as head content writer and a copyeditor at ScratchThat Magazine. She has a BFA in Creative Writing from QUT and is a postgraduate student at UQ. Currently, she is the Social Media Manager for Jacaranda Journal and writes nonfiction exploring human connections.