#233: How to Put an End to Situationships (Once & For All)
On Attachment
Stephanie Rigg
4.9 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 17 February 2026
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Situationships can feel exciting and full of potential, but over time they often become a source of anxiety, confusion, and self-doubt. In this episode, I explore why situationships are so hard to walk away from — particularly for people with anxious attachment — and why clarity can feel more threatening than staying in something uncertain.
We look at how hope, ambiguity, and emotional breadcrumbs keep people invested in connections that aren’t actually meeting their needs, and why “waiting to see what happens” is often a form of self-abandonment rather than patience. I also talk about the nervous-system dynamics at play, and how these situations can keep you stuck in a cycle of overthinking, longing, and self-doubt.
This episode isn’t about forcing commitment or issuing ultimatums. It’s about building the self-trust and self-respect required to stop participating in dynamics that keep you in limbo, and learning how to choose relationships that offer consistency, clarity, and emotional safety.
Links
Register for my free training on How to Heal Anxious Attachment & Finally Feel Secure in Life & Love
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Prime Video brings the best in entertainment. |
| 0:03.1 | The end of the world continues with season two of the global phenomenon, Fallout, included with Prime. |
| 0:09.6 | I defer to you about what to do in this situation. |
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| 0:15.8 | Buy or rent, Wicked for Good Now. |
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| 0:20.1 | There's no going back. Whatever you're into, |
| 0:22.9 | it's right here. Prime Video, click or tap the banner to find out more. |
| 0:29.9 | Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's episode, we are talking about |
| 0:36.4 | how to put an end to situation ships once and for all. |
| 0:41.7 | So, situation ships are this unfortunate trope of modern dating. |
| 0:48.2 | Maybe they've always been around, but it feels like they are really deeply embedded in modern dating culture. |
| 0:57.7 | A situation ship is that murky, |
| 1:05.0 | undefined, not quite a relationship, but more than just, you know, casually sleeping together. |
| 1:11.6 | Maybe you spend time together regularly. Maybe it's been going on for a long time. But it falls short of that threshold of actually declaring, yes, we are in a committed relationship, we're in an |
| 1:15.9 | exclusive relationship and we're going to really have both feed in in all of the ways that |
| 1:21.6 | tend to follow from being in an actual fully fledged relationship. And I think that while situationships are not the exclusive |
| 1:30.2 | domain of any attachment style, I think they are particularly common in anxious avoidant dynamics |
| 1:36.3 | for reasons we'll talk about today. And so there is certainly an attachment overlay, |
| 1:40.9 | notwithstanding that situation ships themselves have nothing to do really with attachment |
| 1:45.3 | styles. So you can probably tell from the tone of my voice that I'm going to be giving you |
| 1:49.7 | some tough love today, some hard truths. If you are someone who has been in a situation, |
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