A Solid Guide To Surviving A Situationship
Because resentment is literally just unspoken hurt wearing a fake smile. The longer you swallow things to ‘keep the peace,’ the more your body starts carrying stress your mouth was supposed to release three weeks ago. Your chest will remember what your mouth refused to say.
Also, don’t swallow if not for the wrong person.
I’m kidding, kids.
Don’t ever swallow.
Gosh…. Wait, do you spit or…? Never mind.
9. Inconsistency is already an answer
If someone likes you on Monday, disappears on Tuesday, calls you ‘baby’ on Wednesday, and acts emotionally unavailable on Thursday, then posts a thirst trap by Friday, congratulations—you’re dating a weather forecast.
And babe, if their energy toward you keeps changing depending on their mood, availability, or loneliness, that is not confusion. That is inconsistency.
People who truly want you rarely make you guess where you stand every five business days.
8. Chemistry does not mean compatibility
Just because the tension was insane, the eye contact felt illegal, and kissing them made you forget your passwords, your phone number, and the teachings of the Lord, doesn’t mean you’re actually good for each other long-term.
Sometimes chemistry is just mutual damage finding each other hot.
And the thing about chemistry? Sometimes it explodes. And in the emotional sense of things, it explodes inside.
*wink *wink
7. Hope can keep people trapped in places that are already hurting them
Sometimes you’re not staying because things are good anymore. You’re staying because you keep replaying the versions of them that existed for, like… three beautiful Tuesdays and one emotionally available weekend in June.
Hope is dangerous like that. It can turn breadcrumbs into prophecies.
You start falling in love with potential instead of reality.
And suddenly you’re fighting harder for who they could be than who they consistently showed you.
And I mean it—what they showed you is who they are, not the one you keep putting on the pedestal in your mind.
6. Love is not enough to make someone choose you
You can be kind, patient, understanding, attractive, emotionally available, funny, and willing to communicate—and someone will still look at all the love and say, “I don’t know.” Devastating. Humbling. Character development-ing, unfortunately.
Because sometimes people meet you at the right time in your life but the wrong time in theirs. And no amount of loving harder can force someone into readiness, clarity, or emotional maturity.
You cannot keep auditioning your way into being chosen.
5. Love should feel safe, not confusing
Okay.
I know I’ve been joking a lot, but from here on out, the lessons get a little less funny. Because unfortunately, this is where heartbreak starts costing you things.
If you constantly feel anxious, scared to speak, terrified of losing them, overanalyzing texts like you’re the FBI, and crying after ‘good morning’ messages, and throwing up because they replied with ‘haha’ instead of ‘HAHAHAHASKSKSK,’ that is not butterflies.
That is your nervous system begging for help.
That is your nervous system entering fight-or-flight over a man who probably sleeps peacefully at night.
Good news though: Doctor James Valle is here with a diagnosis.
They are not your one and true love. You are emotionally attached to inconsistency.
Fix your nervous system by doing activities outside of just staring at the ceiling. And one day, you’ll suddenly realize that “mixed signals” become significantly less attractive.
4. The longer you tolerate disrespect, the more normal it starts to feel
At some point, your standards stop lowering dramatically and just quietly move underground. Suddenly you’re accepting behavior that would’ve made your friends create a group chat named, BABE STAND UP!
You start explaining away things that hurt you. Minimizing them. Rationalizing them. Calling emotional neglect ‘they’re just overwhelmed right now.’
Meanwhile your soul is in the corner smoking a cigarette.
So, let me say this clearly: passion is not an excuse for disrespect.
Someone being intense, wounded, traumatized, mysterious, avoidant, brooding, sexy, or emotionally constipated does not give them permission to treat you badly.
And those avoidant men… my God! Do I have time to rant about them? No? Okay, moving on.
3. Your worth is not determined by whether someone chooses you
Some people can look directly at love and still not know what to do with it. That says more about where they are emotionally than it does about your value as a person.
Because rejection has a way of making people feel replaceable, forgettable, “not enough.”
But someone failing to choose you does not erase everything beautiful, lovable, intelligent, soft, funny, or extraordinary about you.
Sometimes, people leave simply because they do not have the capacity to hold what you offer. And that grief is real—but it is NOT PROOF that you are unworthy.
Choose yourself… always. Non-negotiable.
Also, if Beyoncé got cheated on, let’s all collectively calm down about tying our self-worth to another human being’s decision.
2. Your self-respect should matter more than wanting someone to stay
Because eventually, there comes a point where you have to ask yourself a very uncomfortable question: Am I fighting for love… or am I abandoning myself just to avoid losing somebody?
There is a difference between loyalty and self-destruction.
Between patience and self-abandonment.
Learn to love yourself so much that you won’t have to outsource it from someone else.
And one of the hardest lessons you’ll ever learn is that loving someone does not automatically justify losing your peace, your boundaries, your dignity, your sanity, or yourself in the process.
Sometimes the most painful form of love is realizing you have to let go of someone you would’ve kept choosing forever.
Not because you stopped loving them, but because you finally started loving yourself too.
Your self-respect should matter more than wanting someone to stay.
1. You are capable of rebuilding yourself after heartbreak
I realized that one of the hardest things you’ll ever do is heal alone.
But healing alone is better than using others.
Healing alone is better than ignoring the pain.
Healing alone is better than not healing at all.
Right now, it feels like your life ended. I know. Been there. You wake up with pain already waiting for you. Music hurts. Places hurt. Food tastes different. Their absence sits beside you like a ghost.
And for a while, surviving is all you can do.
But healing is strange because it rarely arrives like fireworks. It happens quietly. Slowly. Gradually.
One day you’ll laugh genuinely at something again.
One day you’ll eat normally again.
One day you’ll hear their name and your chest will no longer cave in.
One day you’ll realize you went hours without thinking about them.
And suddenly, you’ll understand that healing was happening the entire time while you were busy trying to survive it.
Take it one day at a time. One breath. One unbearable 10 P.M. at a time. Sit with the pain instead of running from it. Let yourself grieve what you hoped it would become.
Because healing is rarely the moment you stop loving someone.
It’s the moment you stop losing yourself while loving them.
It’s learning that grief can exist without controlling your entire life. That memories can stay without reopening the wound every single day. That your worth was never measured by who stayed or who left.
Real healing is quieter than people expect.
It looks like sleeping peacefully again. Laughing without guilt. Replying to messages. Making plans for yourself. Wanting to live your life again instead of merely surviving it.
And maybe the most beautiful part is this:
The version of you waiting on the other side of heartbreak is often stronger, softer, wiser, and far more whole than the version that entered it.
And maybe that’s why situationships hurt the way they do, because they live in the space between almost and never.
In the end, I survived the situationship, not because it loved me gently, but because I finally learned to love myself enough to walk away from what didn’t.