‘Situationships’ & Other Dating Terminology Parents of Teens Should Know — Straight From a Gen Z-er

I recently had the following exchange with my 15-year-old sister:

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Me: How long have you and [her boyfriend’s name] been dating?

Her: We were in the talking stage for five months before I hard launched him.

If any of this sounds like a NASA briefing to you — stage? Launches? — let me help break it down. I’m only 22, but even since I’ve been in high school, things have changed. Long gone are the days of, “You went on a date? Oh, so you’re dating.”

Now, teens “talk” — i.e. go to the movies, Snapchat each other daily, attend dances as a pair, FaceTime every night before bed, for MONTHS, before calling themselves anything other than friends. Hence, the Talking Stage.

However, there comes a point when all this friendliness seeks some form of legitimization. Enter the Hard Launch. The Hard Launch is typically a picture, usually in the form of an Instagram post, that can only be interpreted one way: “Those two are DEFINITELY together.” If you see a photo of two teens canoodling on a couch? Hard launch. A selfie of two smiling faces, smushed together? Hard launch.

But for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction: enter the Soft Launch. A Soft Launch is a piece of media that leaves room for interpretation. A teen girl enticing her crush to participate in a silly TikTok trend together, and both are finding the other a bit too funny? Soft Launch. A private Snapchat story of him accidentally spilling his frozen yogurt, and her giggling in the background? Soft Launch.

And if this twosome who spend a ton of time together have neither hard launched nor soft launched, we may have the bane of every young person’s dating life on our hands: the dreaded Situationship.

A Situationship is a relationship with no labels. Actually the word “relationship” might be too strong here. It’s more of a … and I hate to define the word with the word … but, a situation . If your teen is listening to Zach Bryan’s “Something in the Orange” on repeat, they may be the victim of a situationship (and entitled to financial compensation). In essence, the situationship is a no-label, low-commitment, casual, but often emotionally stressful arrangement that seems to be GenZ’s answer to all of the hard-line dating rules of the past.

But don’t worry parents, having swung so far in one direction — from formal dating, to talking stages, to well, situationships — things are sure to reach equilibrium soon. And until then, I’m here as a trusty translator (or as the teens would call it, a “snitch”) to help you navigate this all-new dating landscape.

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