A situationship gives name to a hard-to-define stage of dating that experts say has skyrocketed in popularity among Gen Z. “Right now, this solves some kind of need for sex, intimacy, companionship – whatever it is – but this does not have necessarily a long-term time horizon,” says Elizabeth Armstrong, a sociology professor at the University of Michigan, US, whose research centres on sexuality and situationships, specifically. People are increasingly embracing the relationship classification: the term has hit an all-time high in Google search traffic this year, after starting to gain notable traction late in 2020. There’s a worldwide interest in