Forewarning, if you are over the age of 40, a few of these concepts may send you into some sort of psychosis. If you’d like to blame someone for destroying how my generation grapples with intimacy, please turn to the technocrats responsible for the wealth gap. They can take the onus for nearly all of our issues, fiscal and frisky alike. 

Sex! Ah! How scary. The word itself sounds salacious as it slips off your tongue. Pair it with alliteration and sensual imagery and all of a sudden you’re sweating reading the Daily Egyptian. 

Sex today seems more stigmatized than ever before – and in two completely opposite directions. Half of the world will tell you to stay chaste while the other will ask you to subscribe to their OnlyFans. But no matter what either says, one thing is for certain: sex is on their minds. 

It’s everything, everywhere, all of the time – especially online. Your Instagram feed is likely full of weaponized therapy speech about attachment styles, theories on why they won’t text you back and shitposts about situationships. 

Gen Z and our mush-brain, short-circuited attention spans have been pummeled by an overload of boobs and brainrot since we were 12, and the platforms from which we cannot remove ourselves are fully aware of that and have been capitalizing on it for ages. 

Romance in the roaring 20s

Sex rules. Every institution, system and person in a position of power will tell you that. 

Like money, sex is a currency. Always has been. Always will be. Coitus and coin are interchangeable pieces within our ever-evolving social power structures, and just as late stage capitalism drives us to a grotesque division between the rich and poor, the gap between sex-havers and the sexless has grown immensely during the 21st century. 

Economic studies show that wealth disparity in the West is worse than it’s ever been, and the same goes for sexual relations – people are not having as much sex as they used to – just as people have less buying power than they used to. 

To the common man, the dollar is losing its value, and so is his penis.

That being said, there is a dichotomy (buzzword). The sexual bourgeoisie is having more and more sex. The conventionally attractive, the genetically privileged and the well-hung are hoarding the huzz, just as the 1% are hoarding the wealth. Thus, the gap widens, and those that fall below the poverty line have dry phones and even drier sheets. 

However, if you find yourself amid the sexual proletariat, fret not, you aren’t alone – you have friends everywhere – just look in the bottom left corner of that Instagram reel. 

No matter where you fall within the sexual or socio-economic spectrum, we’re all consuming the same slop online, participating in the propagation of a digitally derived culture that runs on money and sex. A culture that we create with our words, labels and definitions collectively, through the networks and on the platforms responsible for the development of our dwindling attention spans, lustful tendencies and lack of empathy.

It is those building blocks of our culture – words, labels and definitions – that reside in the liminal space that we call social media that lead to online trends, taboos and sexual stigmas that then materialize into real life and have created a generation that’s deathly afraid of connection despite being more connected than ever before. 

Love language

The idea that there are five “love languages” is ridiculous. The term was coined in a pseudoscience book that some guy wrote because his wife stopped having sex with him. To think that there are only five ways to express your love for someone is absurd, so do not entertain that man who tells you his love language is “physical touch.” 

It is incredibly ironic that a generation obsessed with fluidity, spectrums and the eradication of labels somewhat subscribed to the idea of love languages in the first place. To us, love language can mean many things. Like the way you speak when you’re in love, or how apt you are at convincing people to go home with you, i.e rizz. Or, as I would prefer, love language refers to the words, labels and definitions that we use to describe the sex lives of 20 somethings in the big 2026. 

In a world of nonchalance, avoidance and people afraid of commitment, confinement and intimacy, we’ve gotten pretty creative in evolving our sexual vocabularies. 

Enter: the situationship. What an incredible name for a romcom. Urban Dictionary defines it as an intimate and/or sexual relationship where two people aren’t single – but aren’t dating. Both people are committed and have real emotions for each other, but it’s not official and there’s no label.

A situationship is not to be confused with a sneaky link – which can lead to a situationship – but is a much less frequent, casual hookup that occurs with little communication and very little emotion. 

Let’s use an allegory to make sense of this heinous, harrowing and ultimately heartbreaking concept.  

James Gandolfini once said that playing Tony Soprano for so long left seeds of Tony inside him and that even though he knew he was acting, his body started to blur the line.

This checks out. It is proven that the subconscious mind cannot tell whether or not you are playing pretend. Your brain cannot fully understand sarcasm or irony. It does not know the difference between an imagined event and a real memory. 

So if actors, even though they are fully aware of the fact that they are performing, subconsciously fall victim to embodying aspects of the character that they are portraying, then you LARPing a relationship is doomed. 

If you plan on playing the role of boyfriend – no matter what she calls you – your body isn’t going to be on board with that. If you are having sex, consistently communicating, going on dates and spending ample amounts of time together, then your brain is to believe that is your wife – not your situationship. 

Of course, everyone is different, and all of these situations are circumstantial. Maybe some of you are really good at truly keeping it casual. Maybe you have sex, dap each other up and don’t speak until the next booty call. And maybe you’re not heartless, you’re just a professional. Maybe you can genuinely keep it as “just sex,” but I highly, highly doubt it.

These situations are at the forefront of our online love language, scored by Jeff Buckley and Whiskey Meyers on just about every other Instagram reel that I see.

The question is often begged as to whether or not it can ever truly be casual, and both Buckley and Penn Badgley say no – it absolutely cannot. 

I’d have to agree. The situationship, conceptually, is a miserable business. Developing loving feelings for someone is a volatile game. The moment you sign up to play that game and with each round that you go, the closer you will grow into developing real, serious feelings for each other. 

If you start to miss them, want to see them outside of the bedroom and start envisioning what the color of your children’s eyes will look like – then you’re cooked.

The problem is that, because situationships are inherently full of ambiguity and toxicity, and because you’ve entered into this situation with the intent of it being strictly business, you’re unlikely to flag these thoughts and feelings in the moment, and if you do, you’ll be terrified to do anything about it. It’s often only until retrospective analysis post “breakup” that you realize how cooked you really were. And, to make matters worse, Instagram will be there to feed you the most unhealthy, heartbreaking slop while you replay those scenes over and over again in your head.

Like the forehead kiss of doom: a tell-tale sign that a broken heart is on the horizon. This act, often occurring post sex, pre-departure or while watching “Friends” on the couch, is emblematic of something that is no longer casual, and likely nearing its end. 

While I wouldn’t wish it upon my worst enemy, there are plenty of things to be learned while torturing yourself with a situationship. Many, like those that can’t break free from the talking stage or that find themselves getting ghosted all the time, are never afforded the favor of a broken heart. 

Human connection, romantic or otherwise, under whatever label you’d like, is a privilege no matter what. To have a broken heart is to have the opportunity for it to grow back bigger. The heart is a muscular organ, and as gym bros would have us believe, a muscle must first tear before it can get stronger. 

Drugs, toxins and chemicals

But going to the heartbreak gym is hard. Taking that leap into love feels irrational. It feels similar to deciding whether or not to do a drug. Will the high be worth the pain? Will I be able to quit?

There is a reason why it is so common for artists to compare love and sex to drugs and euphoria. It is scientific. It is chemical. It is – when at its best – addictive. And just as there are different levels of potency to the drugs you use, there are different levels of love too.

Oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin are the chemicals that drive intimate connection, and although it’s a difficult pill to swallow, sex, love and relationships have more chemistry when they are toxic. 

You all know it to be true, you can feel it in your bones, and the science agrees with you. Sex is more fun when it’s risky. The feeling that you aren’t supposed to be doing something – especially among our generation – only makes you want to do it more. It’s more intense when it’s rough. It’s more rewarding after you argue and it feels better when you kind of hate them. 

This, although not the sole reason, is partly why people cheat, and why once they cheat, they are more likely to do it again. Because deviancy, especially when erotic, is addictive – like a drug. 

The pop-culture trope that “bad guys” or “bad girls” fare better at getting laid is not nonsense. That is very much a real thing, and it’s exactly why nonchalance has actually worked for decades. Although our brains seek stability in most aspects of our lives, the chemicals and hormones that make us horny love ambiguity and toxicity. See: Stacey’s Mom, The Fluorescent Adolescent. 

Does he like you? Well, he won’t really say. However, he will have sex with you, and that’s really fun, so maybe if you keep doing that, he will! 

But he didn’t 🙁 and that’s okay, you never put a label on your relationship. You weren’t even dating and so you didn’t even break up, and so you’re fine!

Wrong.

Science says that it makes sense that it is harder to heal from a six-month situationship in comparison to a two-year relationship – your chemical connection was simply stronger. 

Because your situationship brain was in a constant state of limbo, the toxicity and the chemicals surrounding your connection were incredibly amplified. Connection is strengthened through hardship, and I’d bet that situationship was much harder than any relationship full of complacency and comfort. 

Why are you so infatuated with your sneaky link? Because it’s sneaky! The more times you link, the stronger your chemical bond grows – no matter how good of an actor you think you are. 

Why will your best friend not leave the loser dude she’s with? Because she’s addicted to him. Literally. 

As great as it feels to be high, science is clear in stating that it’s unhealthy. Quitting isn’t easy, whether it be cigarettes or situationships. Unfortunately, despite also being unhealthy, science says that the easiest way to quit is to start something new. So to those of you that bop around from person to person, you’ve got it figured out – at least in the short term. Distracting yourself with more drugs to drown out the memories of your past usage will work – but the likelihood that you recover from them in the long term is slim. 

The bar, the chair, etc. 

Considering all of the aforementioned, it’s safe to say that the bar is incredibly low. Like, so, SO low. 

We all have a homegirl that may not necessarily be an angel herself, but she’s damn sure better than that man she’s with. These days, all a dude has to do is open the door, buy some flowers and be somewhere around 6 feet tall and he’ll sweep any tired, insecure, desperate woman off her feet. 

Emotional intelligence? Who cares? Communication? A text back within the hour will suffice. If you put forth the bare minimum, you’re likely to score, and that’s because too many people – mostly women – settle. And it’s understandable – the pickin’s are slim. 

With our social feeds being riddled with nonsensical phrases like the “let them theory,” “if he wanted to he would,” and the “three-month rule,” situationships run rampant, yearning is a lost art and love seems to exist only in fiction. 

People are fed up, and so at the first sign of affection, many of them will quickly reduce themselves into being someone’s accessory just because they want to be a girlfriend or just because they’re trying to forget a past fling. In a world full of situationships, many yearn for a label simply to have a label – whether there is chemistry there or not. 

And then slowly but surely, the honeymoon phase ends, his affection plateaus and she’s trapped with someone that won’t evolve because it was all too easy in the first place. But alas, she still drags him to the function and projects her misery onto all of us trying to have a good time. 

Please do not bring your manchild boyfriend to the kickback. I feel bad for you and it’s ruining my night. 

This is seriously an epidemic, and there are a ton of things to blame that I personally have no idea how to combat. 

Maybe people really have to stop sleeping with losers – no matter how good-looking they are. Maybe, just maybe, people (men) could also just … stop being losers? 

Somehow misogyny still seems to be prevalent through things like incel culture and off-brand neo-nazi streamers spewing bullshit about looksmaxxing and body counts. 

Newsflash fellas: baddies have bodies. If you want to play this game at the highest level, you’ve gotta be prepared to play with those that have accolades. Period. 

I think the best course of action is that young men be taught to yearn again; that society steer clear of sexual stigma; that we stop doom scrolling to find relationship advice; and that love and connection be fostered into real life. 

Unfortunately, love is ineffable. It refuses the categories we keep trying to trap it in.

For a generation obsessed with spectrums, labels, definitions and diagnoses, this is deeply inconvenient. We want instructions. We want guarantees. We want something we can screenshot and send to the group chat for confirmation before we risk embarrassment.

But love has never really worked like that. Even as I try to go forward in making sense of it both in this column and in this life, the ways in which I do will be full of paradoxes and hypocrisy. 

Slavoj Žižek says that once you can explain why you love someone, you might not anymore. The moment love becomes perfectly logical, it starts to sound like a transaction, and we already have enough of those.

Love demands growth. I know that for sure. And growth demands tears – which is uncomfortable. Love asks you to stay present while another person changes in front of you. It asks you to accept that you will misunderstand each other and yet it asks you to try anyway.

To be seen by someone – truly seen – is terrifying. It means giving up control of the narrative you built about yourself online. It means stepping outside of the algorithm, of the performance, of the safety of irony.

No label can do that work for you. Not boyfriend. Not situationship. Not a sneaky link. Not “it’s complicated.”

We invented a thousand new phrases to manage risk, to soften rejection, to keep one foot out the door. And still, the feelings arrive. Still, the jealousy. Still, the hope. Still, the ache. You can mute them, intellectualize them, call them chemicals, attachment wounds, trauma responses, etc. – but they’re still yours.

Despite the branding and the advice and the endless discourse, we remain people who want to be chosen. Not optimized – chosen. And just as much as you want to be chosen, you must choose as well. You must raise your bar. You must play a heartbreaking game of musical chairs. 

The internet can teach you how to look desirable. It can teach you how to detach, how to withhold, how to win. It will teach you to speed up. To move fast. 

But love is slow. Always. 

Staying slow, staying amid disagreement and discomfort – that might be the only place that intimacy actually lives. It forces us to remember – not to forget. And that’s why we’re so afraid of it. 

Ironically, a culture that gave us infinite language has somehow left us speechless in front of the people that we want the most.

Love is for those who fight. Love is hard. Anyone who tells you otherwise has not been in love. 

And maybe, in a world that keeps encouraging us to scroll away from each other, choosing to stay close – to love – is the most radical thing we’ve got.

News Editor Jackson Brandhorst can be reached at [email protected] or on Instagram @jacksondothtml

Advertisement