Siena: Hey Claremont, good to be back. In “5Cs After Dark,” Ari and I are taking a new approach: personal anecdotes you want to hear! If you have a dating horror story or an issue on your mind, send us an anonymous text on Signal, an encrypted messaging app, at +1 (774) 608-6018.
This week’s topic is summer situationship psychosis: The delusion that, come autumn, everything will work out with your summer fling. Raise your hand if you’ve been in a situationship recently! Oh, is that a hand? Go ahead, Ari.
Ari: Ha. Okay. This past summer, like every summer, I fell into the trap of the classic summer situationship. I don’t know if it’s a personality flaw or a skill, but I’m a pro at getting my heart broken on the accelerated timeline of a short-term romance.
This summer, I was transplanted to Manhattan with new roommates and a magazine internship. Then, in a stroke of luck, I landed a second job and a boyfriend in the same go. I threw myself into the role of capital g-Girlfriend, ignoring the suspicion that we were doomed. We did the nice dinners and late-night bar crawls; we met each other’s friends and traveled upstate to my childhood home.
When it ended, I felt a physical punch of nausea that sent me running to the bathroom. Weeks later, the sense of loss still hounded me. What is it about summer flings that hurt so badly?
Siena: I feel you. I was in my own summer situationship psychosis that still makes me stare at the ceiling. Ari, your story is textbook: the deadline, delusion — and let me guess, the crash and burn?
Ari: Absolutely. Long distance, lifestyle differences, “you deserve better”— the usual suspects. He even cut my key to his place in half, giving me a piece with the suggestion that maybe, someday, we’d put it back together again. I was blind to the facts: I was in a summer situationship. No matter how hard I tried to make it real, I had found the perfect cocktail of a three-month timeline and high emotional stakes until I realized how clouded my judgment had become.
When strong emotions and an accelerated timeline mix, it hurts. That’s how you make declarations like “let’s stay together forever” to people you barely know.
Siena: My summer situationship psychosis was similar. I’d asked the dreaded “What are we?” question and gotten a “let’s talk about it before you leave.” I received a deadline, the opposite of the answer I had expected.
All summer, I had collected evidence that we were real. Between the hours tangled together in bed and the tiny details about me he remembered days later, I started developing feelings. I rehearsed answers to questions he had never asked. In my head, it was a sweet summer romance.
Except summer only lasts 90 days. I just kept thinking that, somehow, before September, we would be on the same page and everything would make sense. But it didn’t, and September came anyway, and suddenly, all the meaning I had assigned to the summer had nowhere to go. The late nights were just late nights, and the future I had spent three weeks imagining had existed almost entirely in my head.
Ari: The fluidity of the inevitable termination makes it interesting: It’s never a fully closed door because you were never together to begin with, so it remains open just enough to keep you wondering.
Siena: Exactly. And I’ll add that his “let’s talk about it later” actually meant “maybe,” which of course means “no.” I mistook being wanted for being chosen. I knew deep down I was being played, but I stayed hooked because his almost-love felt better than leaving.
I kept finding reasons to stay: It was summer, we were having fun and there was still time. The ambiguity became part of the romance, and there was something intoxicating about not knowing what would happen next
I kept finding reasons to stay: It was summer, we were having fun and there was still time. The ambiguity became part of the romance, and there was something intoxicating about not knowing what would happen next. I enjoyed lying beside someone and imagining that maybe this was the night things would finally change, until I had to actually confront the truth that summer was over.
That’s my psychosis. I convinced myself that if I waited long enough, “maybe” would become “yes.”
Ari: I know people for whom “maybe” worked out. But for most, it doesn’t. That’s the stickler: It’s the loss of potential that’s so poignant, the wistful “what-ifs” that grab and don’t let go.
Siena: I spent August in blue striped sheets, tortured by anxiety about the end. In the aftermath, psychosis or not, I am left wondering: Am I mourning him, or am I mourning the imaginary house with the imaginary dog and the imaginary version of myself who was loved so much by someone? One person always wants more, and that’s what sucks.
Ari: Cheers to that. Some advice: Whatever you do, don’t text them just because you’re sad and lonely. If timing works out, maybe you’ll cross paths again. More likely, you won’t. While you wait for the hurt to lessen, listen to house music. Go hiking, join frisbee. Have goofy themed events. Eventually, you’ll look back and laugh, because really, what even was that? Nothing is ever that serious.
Siena: And if you’re currently in a situationship — summer ones notwithstanding — ask yourself: Is this tenderness or intention? Proximity or commitment? Are you wanted or chosen? If you can’t answer, you might have situationship psychosis, just like me.
Ari: The only cure is time, distance and maybe a new hobby or two.
Siena: Or a column. That’s why we’re here.
Siena Giacoma PZ ’27 and Arianna Kaplan SC ’27 have dated like it’s a competitive sport and lost every season. They cordially invite you to read conversations that should probably remain between them, but will instead exist on the internet forever.
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