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Love in the Age of Ghosting and Situationships

A generation navigating intimacy without commitment, where fleeting connections, digital silence, and emotional ambiguity redefine what it means to love

Nilim Kashyap Barthakur

I still remember a night when a close friend of mine sat quietly in a corner, staring at his phone as if it owed him an explanation. The last message he had sent was still there, unread. Hours turned into days, and days into silence. No fight, no goodbye, no closure. Just absence. He looked at me and asked a question I did not have an answer to. “How can someone be there every day and then suddenly disappear like I never existed?” That night, I realised this is what love looks like for many of us today.

We are living in a time where love has new names, new rules, and often, no rules at all. We call it ghosting when someone vanishes without a word. We call it a situationship when we are emotionally involved but afraid to define it. We call it benching when someone keeps us as an option while exploring others. Sometimes, we do not even realise we are part of these patterns until we are already hurt. It feels like we are constantly trying to understand where we stand in someone’s life, while they are busy deciding if we are worth staying for.

But it was not always like this, was it?

Think about the stories our parents or grandparents tell, sometimes casually, sometimes with a smile they try to hide. Their love was not perfect, but it was steady. They did not have endless options or the luxury of leaving at the first sign of discomfort. They stayed. They argued, they adjusted, they learned from each other slowly. Love for them was not about finding the perfect person. It was about choosing someone and building a life, even when things were not easy. And somewhere between their world and ours, something changed.

Love is not a sudden spark that fades with time, nor is it merely the excitement of being wanted. Love, in its truest and most classic sense, is a quiet, enduring commitment between two imperfect souls who choose each other again and again, even on days when it is not easy. It is the patience to understand, the strength to forgive, and the willingness to grow together without losing oneself.

Today, we have choices everywhere. A swipe can introduce us to someone new. A message can start something exciting. But the same ease also makes it easier to walk away. We are always aware that there might be someone better, someone more interesting, someone who fits us perfectly without effort. And in this constant search, we forget something important. No one comes perfect. No relationship is effortless. What we call flaws today could have been the very things we learned to understand yesterday.

Sometimes I wonder if our parents had treated love the way we do now, always looking for better options, always ready to leave, would we even have the families we grew up in? Would stability even exist, or would everything feel as temporary as it does today?

And the truth is, this way of loving is costing us more than we admit.

I have seen people lose sleep over a text that never came. I have seen confident individuals question their worth because someone chose not to stay. I have seen friends pretend they are fine while silently dealing with anxiety, heartbreak, and loneliness. Love, which should have been a source of comfort, has become a reason for overthinking. Social media makes it worse. We scroll through perfect pictures, smiling couples, and grand gestures, and somewhere deep inside, we start to feel like we are missing out, like we are not enough.

In the middle of all this, there is another struggle that many of us carry quietly. The fear of being judged for loving at all. In many families, love is still seen as something you do not talk about openly. It is dismissed, discouraged, or treated like a distraction. So we grow up hiding our feelings, learning about love from half-experiences and broken examples, trying to figure it out on our own. We stand between two worlds, one that tells us to explore love freely, and another that tells us to avoid it altogether. And in that confusion, we often end up hurting ourselves.

But maybe the problem is not love itself. Maybe it is how we have started approaching it.

We have become impatient with something that was never meant to be rushed. We expect clarity without giving time. We expect perfection without accepting flaws. We want someone to understand us completely, but we hesitate to adjust even a little for them. The idea of adjusting has somehow become a weakness when in reality, it was once the strongest part of any relationship. Adjusting does not mean losing yourself. It means choosing to grow with someone instead of giving up on them at the first sign of difficulty.

I am not saying we should stay in relationships that hurt us or ignore our self-respect. But somewhere between holding on to the wrong person and leaving too quickly, there is a balance we are forgetting.

And if you are someone who has been left without answers, someone who has felt replaced or not enough, I want you to hear this like I would say it to a friend sitting in front of me. If they left, they were not meant to stay. It does not mean you were not worthy. It means they were not capable of valuing you the way you deserved. The right person will not confuse you. They will not make you question where you stand. They will come into your life with clarity, not chaos.

Until that happens, focus on yourself. Build your dreams, your career, your confidence. The love you are searching for should never be the only thing that defines you. When you grow, when you become stronger and more secure within yourself, everything else begins to fall into place.

Heartbreak feels heavy, I know. It makes you question everything, even yourself. But it also teaches you. It shows you what you need, what you deserve, and what you should never settle for again. And one day, when you look back, you will realise that the person who walked away did not take your happiness with them. They only made space for something better.

Maybe we have not completely forgotten how to love. Maybe we have just lost our way a little. And maybe, just maybe, all we need is to remember that love was never about perfection or endless options. It was always about choosing, staying, and growing together.

And when the right love finds you, it will not feel like a question you have to answer every day. It will feel like home.

 Thank you…….

Mahabahu.com is an Online Magazine with collection of premium Assamese and English articles and posts with cultural base and modern thinking.  You can send your articles to editor@mahabahu.com / editor@mahabahoo.com (For Assamese article, Unicode font is necessary) Images from different sources.