Is it ever really casual?
On reciprocity and the imbalance of expectation in situationships
There’s a particular kind of audacity that lives rent-free in the situationship era, and I need to talk about it.
Men say they want something “casual.” But what a lot of them actually want is a relationship — just stripped of accountability. Consistency without commitment. Emotional support without responsibility. Loyalty without clarity. Access without reciprocity. All the warmth, softness, and attention that comes with a real relationship, while maintaining just enough distance to avoid being accountable to another person.
They want to feel chosen without fully choosing someone back.
And women are finally starting to notice the contradiction.
The most revealing part of this dynamic isn’t how it starts. We all can grasp how it works. It’s how quickly it shifts the moment a woman actually responds accordingly.
The second she stops over-performing softness. The second she stops centering him emotionally, stops acting like a girlfriend in a connection he explicitly labelled as casual — suddenly she’s “guarded.” “Cold.” “Hard to read.” “Not invested enough.”
But invested in what, exactly?
I’ve had men tell me they wanted something casual, only to later complain that I didn’t seem emotionally invested enough. And I remember thinking — how could I be? What are you actually offering me beyond chemistry and access? What are you showing me that would make me want to give you more than what you asked for?
You set the standard. You drew the map and handed it to me. I followed it. And now you’re standing there, arms crossed, wondering why I’m not building a home in a place you told me was temporary.
I’m sorry — what?
Here’s what I’ve noticed: men do not like it when you act like the fuckboy.
The moment you match their energy — pull back, keep it light, stop leading with softness — suddenly you’re the problem. And that reaction tells you everything about what was actually being expected all along.
Because what they wanted was a one-sided relationship. The kind where you’re warm and they’re withholding. Where you’re invested and they’re unbothered. Where you carry the emotional weight while they get to feel desired without doing the work of being desirable.
The second they experience what women have been navigating for years — emotional uncertainty, inconsistent effort, the quiet ache of feeling more invested than the other person — suddenly it’s not enough.
In other words: they discover they don’t actually enjoy being treated casually either.
And on the other side of this — because there are always two sides — women have been running this experiment for centuries and the results are smacking us all in the face.
We are taught that love is proven through giving, patience and emotional endurance. Through being nurturing enough, accommodating enough, and forgiving enough. Many of us carry the emotional baton almost automatically — checking in, softening conflict, creating intimacy, holding space — because we were taught that’s just what love looks like in practice.
And that effort is so often met with coldness, avoidance, cheating and sometimes mockery. A love that is received like it’s owed and never returned in kind.
Yet somehow we’re still expected to show up warmly in situations that offer very little back.
And the most fucked up part? There is a kind of man who is most comfortable when the love is unequal — when he’s the one being adored, chosen, waited on. It flatters something in him that should probably be in discussed in therapy.
But the moment the temperature shifts? The moment you stop chasing and start receiving? He doesn’t like it. He pulls toward you. He suddenly has feelings. He wants to know why you seem different lately.
And I just want to ask — with all the warmth and genuine curiosity in my body — why did you think we liked it?
Most people don’t truly want detachment. What they want is intimacy with protection from risk. The rewards of closeness without the vulnerability of fully participating in it.
But relationships cannot survive on asymmetry forever. Eventually one person realises they are carrying the emotional weight while the other simply benefits from it.
And increasingly, women are deciding they no longer want to audition for commitment by providing relationship benefits to people who have already told them they do not intend to build one.
The standard you set is the standard you get. That’s not bitterness dressed up in a nice paragraph. It’s just the most honest thing I know.
You cannot keep setting the thermostat to cold and then complain that nobody’s warm.
