The Healing Arc of a Neurodivergent Situationship: Love, Liminality, and Letting Go

Wednesday, May 7, 2025.

It started with vibe checks and late-night texting. No labels. No expectations. Just a lot of “you up?” followed by “sorry I fell asleep.”

You weren’t dating—but you weren’t not.

And when it ended, you didn’t know whether to cry or ghost them back retroactively.

Welcome to the healing arc of a neurodivergent situationship, that most liminal of modern love stories: too undefined to celebrate, too significant to forget.

Situationships are “emotionally intimate but non-committed romantic or sexual relationships,” often maintained without explicit agreements (LeFebvre, 2018). In our ghosting-and-glitter era, they’ve become not just common—they’re almost normative.

And that’s a special problem for ND folks.

You’re not single. You’re not taken. You’re in the emotional equivalent of an airport lounge—soft lighting, temporary snacks, and no guarantee you’re getting on the plane.

The Rise of the Neurodiverse Situationship

Why They Hurt So Much

Because the brain doesn’t distinguish well between committed heartbreak and undefined loss. Research by Fisher et al. (2010) shows that romantic rejection activates the same regions of the brain associated with physical pain and addiction withdrawal.

So even if you never had a label, your nervous system had an attachment. That’s why you’re crying into your hoodie over someone who never met your dog.

Neurodivergence and the Ambiguity Trap

Situationships can feel especially sticky for neurodivergent people.

According to Milton (2012), autistic folks may experience deep affective intensity and struggle with ambiguous social cues—making them more vulnerable to the “almost-but-not-quite” relational trap.

When nothing is clear, everything is up for interpretation. Which is exhausting.

The Healing Arc (Without the Closure Fantasy)

You may never get a breakup speech. You may never get clarity. But you can still have healing.

The healing arc of a situationship looks like:

  • Mourning the relationship that could have been

  • Naming the emotional labor you contributed

  • Reclaiming self-worth without retroactive performance reviews

  • Letting go without rewriting the past as a mistake

As therapist Nedra Glover Tawwab (2021) writes: “You don’t need closure from them. You need clarity for yourself.”

What You Can Take With You

Not every ending is a failure. Some are thresholds. The situationship may not have become a love story, but it became a lesson, a mirror, a ritual of self-retrieval.

Ask yourself:

  • What did I learn about what I need?

  • What boundaries did I ignore or uphold?

  • Where was I trying to prove my worth instead of protect it?

Final Thoughts: Not All Love Needs a Label to Matter

The next time someone says “it wasn’t even a real relationship,” smile and disagree. Situationships are real. So is grief. So is growth.

You can honor what was, without settling for what wasn’t. That’s the healing arc: not bitterness, not delusion—integration.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.

REFERENCES:

Fisher, H. E., Aron, A., & Brown, L. L. (2010). Romantic love: A mammalian brain system for mate choice. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 365(1531), 1001–1012.

LeFebvre, L. E. (2018). "Have you ever been ghosted?": Person-centered approaches to ghosting and relationship dissolution. Western Journal of Communication, 82(4), 394–410.

Milton, D. (2012). On the ontological status of autism: The double empathy problem. Disability & Society, 27(6), 883–887.

Tawwab, N. G. (2021). Set boundaries, find peace: A guide to reclaiming yourself. TarcherPerigee.

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