“So what are we?”
It’s a question many Boston College students find themselves asking as they try to decipher a “situationship.” From dinner dates to hookups, situationships leave a lot open to interpretation.
This brand of casual, if not messy, relationship has taken the dating scene by storm. These days, you’re more likely to find students checking if they got a Snap back than twirling linguine on a night out in the North End.
Traditional “dating” is quickly being replaced by this easier, low-commitment option—and neither students nor faculty are thrilled about it.
Four Years of Difference
Complicated and convoluted dating trends arise as soon as students start their freshman year at BC.
Bo Brainerd, MCAS ’25, experienced these trends firsthand and was not a fan.
“Freshman year, everyone is brand new to everyone,” Brainerd said. “Everyone’s hooking up—it’s giving the college experience. You’re on Snap, you’re on all the dating apps, you’re meeting people out at random parties and bars that you’re getting into.”
Some of the current BC freshmen feel the same way.
Megan Woods, MCAS ’28, and Ellie Poitras, LSEHD ’28, came into freshman year expecting a little bit more from the dating scene.
“I definitely thought it would be a bit better than it is,” Woods said. “We live on Newton, and we’ve heard a lot of people from Newton get married when they meet each other.”
Woods attributes the lack of relationships to students either not being ready to commit or still being caught up on their high school ex. By sophomore year, some BC students start to want more committed relationships.
Yet, many are met with the difficult reality that if they aren’t already in a relationship, they must revert to hooking up with peers.
“So, sophomore year, I was like, ‘Okay, I want a boyfriend,’” Brainerd said. “And then I realized, it’s the same hookup culture, and it’s the same issue, and plus, you have all this cliquiness and all these groups that are adding so many different factors.”
Leo Frail, MCAS ’27, has sworn off situationship culture after giving it a try during his freshman year.
“I don’t like [situationships] very much, tried those out freshman year,” Frail said. “Freshman year, I just knew like first few months people kind of went kind of crazy.”
For Frail, situationships offer little more than a new person on campus to avoid.
“You don’t get the emotional aspect, like someone you can count on,” Frail said. “Usually you just get a campus opp.”
Between junior and senior year, Brainerd said students experience significant growth. Many students will study abroad and meet people outside of BC, making settling down all the more enticing.
“It was literally an extraordinary change,” Brainerd said. “And I guarantee you, it’s because you went abroad. Think about it—you see the world, you see more things outside of yourself.”
Some underclassmen are hoping that a change like this will occur, and soon. One of the problems they pointed to surrounding situationships is the question of exclusivity.
Abby McNeil, MCAS ’28, believes you have to define exclusivity outright—or risk realizing it doesn’t exist.
“You have to establish that they are or they won’t be,” McNeil said.
Nic Moran, MCAS ’27, sees situationships as not just emotionally harmful, but by definition, psychopathic because people use one another for short-term gain.
“Even if both partners are consenting in a situationship, there’s an implicit underlying truth to that kind of organization that you guys are just doing it for the sex,” Moran said.
With this transactional relationship, Moran sees fallout for both parties. Instead, he believes everyone should try out traditional relationships.
“I’m pro-relationship,” Moran said. “I think you should get into a relationship, avoid the short-term hookups, go for meaningful stuff.”
Hookup History
Hookup culture, though, is far from a recent phenomenon on BC’s campus.
Elizabeth Bracher, director of the Courage to Know and Capstone Programs and BC ’91, said her own time at BC contained much of the hookup culture that exists today.
“I don’t think it was all that different from what it is now, from what I hear from my students,” Bracher said. “We used different terms for things, but it was primarily a lot of hooking up, not being honest with your feelings and what you wanted from the relationship.”
Bracher recognized that though hookup culture is popular at BC, there is also a significant group of students who feel pressure to find “the one.”
Bracher attributes this pressure to the values held by the largely Catholic student body.
“I think that the fact that we are a Jesuit Catholic school says something about our Christian values around marriage and family,” Bracher said.
When she asks her students their thoughts, she is typically met with a unanimous response.
“I am never surprised that every semester, when I ask my students, ‘How many of you aspire to be in a marriage or at least a monogamous relationship for the majority of your adulthood?’ Every single student raises their hand,” Bracher said.
Brainerd agrees that most students crave monogamy, but said she also thinks it is the character of most BC students that plays into this phenomenon, not just religion.
“I think we’re all perfectionists,” Brainerd said. “We don’t like to take huge risks. We’re not a very risk-oriented school. We’re a lot more reserved.”
The Dating Assignment
Around fifteen years ago, Kerry Cronin, associate professor of the practice of philosophy and assistant director of the Perspectives Program, took note of the strange norms at BC while teaching a Capstone course for seniors.
When she asked them about dating at BC, many of them had little to no experience.
“This group of seniors said to me, ‘Oh we’re not dating anybody. We haven’t dated anybody at BC,’” Cronin said.
She was shocked—and decided to do something about it.
“I asked them to do a lot of things,” Cronin said. “I asked them to read Dostoevsky. I asked them to read poetry. And then to go also to go on a date.”
This was the first of many times Cronin would request her students to ask someone on a date for an assignment.
In the first go-around, she didn’t make it a requirement—and quickly realized that a little push was needed. Despite the almost incessant discussion of it, only one student out of the 15 in the class completed the assignment.
Although many did not fulfill the task, Cronin found that students were excited about trying “low-stakes dating.”
“Low stakes dating—dating where you’re just asking a romantic question of somebody,” Cronin said. “You’re not looking for 2.5 kids and a house in the Hamptons.”
After noticing the stir the dating assignment produced, Bracher decided to implement it into her section of Courage to Know.
Cronin and Bracher both set some ground rules for the task.
“The date assignment is that they have to ask somebody out in person—they can’t DM them, they can’t text them,” Bracher said. “They have to ask them in person to go on a legitimate date that they make the plans for, they pay for.”
If a student is in a relationship, it doesn’t mean they’re off the hook for the assignment.
Bracher addressed these students by adding that anyone in a committed relationship can fulfill the assignment by going on a date with their partner and talking about the state of their relationship.
“If you’re going to be in a relationship, grow up and be a part of the relationship,” Bracher said. “Have an adult relationship, and if you want to get out of the hurt feelings and the BC lookaways, you’ve got to be able to talk about your feelings.”
Cronin has a similar viewpoint and said she urges students to take charge of their emotions and put themselves out there.
“‘Do you have the social courage to kind of express interest in somebody?’” Cronin said. “And just spend an hour with them asking who they are and trying to tell another person who you are.”
Cronin hoped her assignment would instill this confidence in students.
Cronin and Bracher both attribute some of this difficulty to the challenges associated with COVID-19, which they believe manifested an unwillingness to deal with difficult emotions.
Specifically, Bracher points to the fact that since COVID, dating apps have taken over college campuses, increasing casual relationships and students’ online presence.
“BC students really didn’t seem to be starting to use dating apps until COVID,” Bracher said. “And then COVID pushed us all online for everything, right? So, why doesn’t it make sense that it would push us online for dating apps?”
Complicated Definitions
Cronin sees BC students as occupying one of three groups: those involved in hookup culture, the people dating, and those who are “opting out.”
But what exactly is a hookup?
In her Courage to Know class, Bracher starts off each semester by asking her students this exact question.
“And they laugh at me at first,” Bracher said. “And I’m like, ‘Well, what is it?’ And we come to an agreed-upon opinion that it’s everything from kissing to sex, and everything in between, which means it could be relatively nothing or everything.”
The more elusive term is a situationship.
According to Cronin, a situationship is a mix of opting out and hooking up. Students who opt out are completely uninvolved in the dating scene or view it as something they’re not interested in at the moment.
Situationships skip over some aspects of dating, Cronin said.
“You’re opting out of the discernment of a relationship,” Cronin said. “In a situationship, there’s no goalposts, right? I mean, its very name is ambiguous.”
As a result of this ambiguity, many students have different interpretations of what a situationship is.
Aidan Cassidy, MCAS ’28 agrees with Cronin’s definition of a situationship as something of a strange, in-between entity.
“I think it’s like a weird kind of talking stage, between a talking stage and a solid relationship,” Cassidy said.
McNeil gave a complex but slightly different definition.
“It’s like you’re not dating, but you’re not nothing, but you’re not really talking to other people, but you’re not fully committed to each other,” McNeil said.
Or, to sum it up more succinctly: “It’s just, it’s hell,” McNeil said. “That’s what I would say it is. I would say it’s living f—king hell.”
Brainerd emphasized that this back-and-forth of commitment is not ideal.
“I get so upset because that’s just not what humanity is for. That’s not what humanity is,” Brainerd said. “Our souls, our humanity as individual people, we deserve more than to be defined by when we give it all to someone.”
Though hookup culture is far from new, Cronin said the evolution of situationships occurred after she began teaching.
“Before, I think students would kind of hook up with different people and maybe have a couple regulars in the mix,” Cronin said. “It’s what hookup culture used to be but with the same people.”
Emotional Turmoil
According to Cronin, situationships not only lack a label but also—at least in theory—lack feelings. She doesn’t see this as plausible.
“What hooking up is, it’s a physical or sexual encounter with no perceived emotional content,” Cronin said. “But of course, there is emotional content. Same with situationships, right? Like, to you there is emotional content there, but you’re not supposed to talk about it.”
Brainerd pointed out that romantic relationships help you understand your own emotions better.
“Yes, you kind of get to know yourself through your friends,” Brainerd said. “But you get to know yourself through the emotional vulnerability of a serious relationship or a romantic relationship.”
But Cronin doesn’t see situationships as entirely negative. Although they might not provide all the learning opportunities of a relationship, they do offer a bit of practice.
“They tend to be relationships where it’s like you’re staying in a waiting pool trying to learn how to swim,” Cronin said. “It’s like you’re trying to do some emotional and relationship work and practice some skills, but the tests aren’t really there.”
These tests often take the form of emotional vulnerability, which occurs early in a relationship when one person asks another out.
Hooking up never quite addresses that vulnerability, according to Bracher.
Cronin also sees this as a clear problem.
“You have to learn how to be rejected,” Cronin said. “You have to learn the joy of being accepted. Those are just great life experiences.”
Brainerd sees things a little differently. Instead of working to bring back the traditional in-person dating experience, she created her own dating website—Ophelia.
“We’re trying to revitalize traditional values, not necessarily the traditional experience,” Brainerd said. “But, we’re trying to maintain traditional values with the new updated experience.”
Maybe It’s Time
Cronin said she often notices the confusion many prospective students have about dating culture at BC, especially when it comes to situationships.
“I do think a lot of students come here and find it all very mysterious, all the situationships and navigating all that,” Cronin said.
Navigating these complicated waters can be confusing for students, leading some to completely reject the idea of situationships.
“I hate situationships, they drive me insane,” McNeil said. “I would much rather be in a relationship where I know what’s going on.”
In comparison with other universities in the area, Brainerd believes the dating culture at BC stands out.
“It’s a very particular issue at BC,” Brainerd said. “Going to all these other Boston schools, BC seems very extreme, like there’s no in-between. Northeastern, BU, Harvard—those three are really, really good at dating.”
Bracher believes that now is the time for BC students to start dating.
“If you get out of college and you haven’t gone on a date, it’s going to be harder,” Bracher said. “At least here at BC, you probably know the person by one or two degrees of separation.”
Brainerd echoed Bracher’s message, emphasizing that once we learn to understand the different parts of our identities, relationships naturally fall into place.
“Everyone is capable of getting a boyfriend and entering a relationship right now,” Brainerd said. “It’s whether or not you trust yourself and you know yourself enough to do so and take the leap.”
Cronin has found that students who didn’t take advantage of the BC community, instead resorting to hookup culture, felt the impact of doing so years later.
“I talked to young adults or young BC alums, they would just say, ‘Tell your students they must date while they’re at BC,’” Cronin said. “‘It’s the best opportunity. Now is the time to learn how to date.’”
If you really want to determine who “the one” is, Bracher suggests looking for one thing: whether they value you for who you truly are.
“When I talk to my students, this is what I want for them,” Bracher said. “I want them to be with someone who wants to jump up on a bench in the middle of Boston or in the middle of the quad and say, ‘Look who I’m with. I am so lucky to be with that person.’”
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