Key points

Situationships are significantly less satisfying and of lower quality than exclusive romantic relationships.

The sunk cost fallacy is a tendency to keep investing in something because we’ve already put so much into it.

We’re more likely to stay in a relationship, even an unclear one, if its pros seem to outweigh its cons.

Have you ever been in a relationship that never quite went anywhere, but somehow managed to persist? Perhaps you did couple-like things—went on dates, spent quality time together, practiced intimacy—but never took the time or effort to actually define your relationship with a label, or let alone as exclusive.

These are what, today, are known as “ situationships .” In a March 2024 study , lead researcher Michael R. Langlais defined and characterized the

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