The Situationship: A Pisces Woman’s Hell

“You just need to detach,” was the phrase told to me, week after week, by one of my dearest friends. “Once you detach, your energy will attract them rather than deter them.” Is it because the subject of my desire knows that I am no longer thinking about them, craving their next text message? Will this elicit their longing for me? But to detach would be to rip my soul from the imaginary life I have built for us. If he were to just comply with my every hope and dream, he would be sure to have a loyal and loving girlfriend in return. But why would the world work in my favor?

Pisces sit somewhere between intuition and fantasy, so yearning is at the core of my Pisces identity. To be a Pisces woman is to have your head in the clouds. My mind is a site of wild imagination, inventing the most absurd multiverses, somehow, still believable to me. My Pisces sun plagues me as I spend every moment of my life building the next moment up in my head. Whether that be a night out with my girls or an average conversation with the man at the deli, there is no moment that I have not romanticized in my brain. I quite literally dream of future interactions and how exactly they will go. The situationship—the months-long back and forth between those who might like each other but are not quite exclusive—is no isolated incident; in fact, it is the worst of them all. 

To add fire to the flame, my moon sits in Gemini. This means I can analyze every text a man sends, know in my soul that I deserve better, and still truly believe that he will change for me. In the same breath, my Virgo rising means that every moment is carefully dissected and studied. My Gemini moon and Virgo rising take in and analyze the data. But it all gets misconstrued when Pisces writes the lab report, heart first, eyes closed. All the data makes sense, but the conclusion just isn’t adding up. My soul is at an eternal war with itself, struggling between lusting and knowing better. This lethal trio makes me the situationship’s ideal victim: an overthinking, emotional yearner. 

The minute I get the inkling that a man may like me, my brain goes on autopilot, immediately building out the rest of our lives together. How will he ask me to be his girlfriend? What will my friends think of him? What will I post on my story to soft-launch him? These plans are detailed,  down to the amount that he will be visible in the photo. I go back and forth on whether it should be a dinner table with his hand in the frame or a bouquet of roses as he hands them to me, as if I have ever been close to taking either of those photos. 

Instead, the moment this intense, all-consuming romanticization begins, like clockwork, he stops liking me. He stops texting me or reaching out. He stops liking my stories or swiping up. And then begins the downfall. My poor friends know it all too well. But what did I do? Did I say something wrong? Maybe there is something going on in his personal life? Am I not pretty enough for him? The eerie “if he wanted to, he would” echoes through my mind, and I am reminded again that he, in fact, doesn’t like me and it was all a figment of my imagination.

With this comes the infamous crashout. Tears and desperation. Rotting in bed for days on end. Tirelessly waiting for him to text me. How pathetic can I be? 

A man we will call Winnie the Pooh, whom I, of course, met on Hinge, is my latest heartbreak. A tall, skinny and emotionally unavailable soccer player who is just my type. I should have known from the beginning that he was a man whore, but his Instagram following was something I conveniently chose to ignore. We spoke for a few weeks seriously, maybe a few months. He never took me out or even hinted at wanting anything more from me than a fuck buddy. But unfortunately, Winnie was kind. He remembered things I told him and asked me questions about myself. How fucking rare. But after the fateful first link, the all-too-predictable love bombing commenced. He called me pretty and kissed me on the forehead. The dreaded and enraging forehead kiss. Is there anything worse? You could be so convinced you don’t like a man, lying in bed thinking, Thank God I don’t like this one, and once they kiss your forehead, it’s like the whole world explodes. A vision of your future home and your children running around will flash past your eyes and now you’re fucked. At that moment, I was utterly committed to the idea of him. My poor little Pisces brain runs a hundred miles a minute, trying to keep up with all the endless possibilities. The grin after the forehead kiss is almost worse. It’s like they know that this will make you get so attached that you will never forget their stupid face.

And just like that, all allusions to love stopped. He slowly reduced contact, reaching out only once every few days to exchange small talk. Nothing like before we hooked up, he no longer cared what my favorite movie was or who I wanted to be when I grew up. Am I that simple? I tell myself every time that their tactics and manipulation won’t sway me, or that I know no man has true intentions with me. I know that no matter what he says to the contrary, I shouldn’t believe him. I have already convinced myself that I am undeserving of love, so why would I think that this random man who DMed me on Instagram would be any different? He obviously just wanted me for my body like they all do. Stupid, stupid, stupid. 

The sad thing is that I am pretty confident. I know that I am smart, I know that I am funny, and I know that I am a good friend. In fact, I am even pretty confident in my appearance. I go to the gym and work hard to stay in shape. But somehow, the moment a man enters my life, everything I know about myself goes out the window. It’s like I transform into a beggar on the street yelling at every passerby to give me a crumb. 

My friend once used an absurd analogy with me, telling me that being mistreated by a man is like giving a Birkin to a person who doesn’t care about designer. Would this person know how to care for such a rare and valuable item? Does this person even know how much work it takes to acquire an Hermes bag? No. This metaphor assumes that I, the woman, am a high-quality product like a Birkin, and a man is a person who thinks buying designer is useless, mistreating me despite my quality. What she was trying to say is that when I lower my standards and allow a man to dictate my confidence, I lose value. I am no longer a pristine Birkin, but a tattered bag left on the street. Still made of high-quality materials and meant to be in the hands of the rich and powerful, but smudged and scratched, lying on the street and waiting for the next man to give me a new list of excuses. 

Winnie treated me like a tattered Birkin. When he would talk to me, he would remind me of how pretty I was or even of how undeserving of my attention he was. He knew my worth, I showed it to him plain and simple. But he didn’t know what to do with it, so he threw a bunch of half-hearted compliments at me. And I stayed. And I believed. Like I always do. Until finally, he faded away, but not for lack of trying. I ghosted him, for I knew that if I didn’t, he would do it to me. He truly became a figment of my imagination. 

Of course, I took to the apps to track down my next abuser. Someone to validate the feeling Winnie left behind. Hinge is my biggest vice. I am addicted. Matching, talking briefly, and then exchanging Instagrams. It got so bad that my friends made me delete the app. I begged them to let me keep it, but they told me I had to detach and stop waiting for men to give me validation. The only reason I haven’t redownloaded it is because they have placed bets on me. How humiliating. Would it really hurt to redownload? Just for one final scroll? Just to see? I have already resolved to re-enter my dating app addiction after finals. It’s like a reward. 

Since deleting Hinge, nothing has changed. I have found other ways of making men see me. Unfortunately for my Instagram followers, this has been a slew of story thirst traps. Even my dad asked what was wrong. A friend of a friend mentioned that they “didn’t need to see all that.” I have officially given myself the ick, only for the ever-so-brief spark of joy that I feel when a man I don’t even care about likes my story and the pit in my stomach when he doesn’t. 

I’ve begged my witchy friend to give me Tarot readings but they all sound the same. “Your knight in shining armor is coming but you have to be patient and detach from negativity,” they often urge me. Focus on yourself and he will be attracted to that energy. But I just don’t believe it. I can’t. I want to, I want to be worthy of this love that I so desperately desire. To be treated like that rare Birkin that I know I can be. To be treated by a man the way that my friends treat me. To be adored just as I am in my Pisces fantasies. To detach from fantasies and let reality take its course.

I don’t know if I’ll ever fully detach. Maybe I’ll always be the girl crying over a forehead kiss from a man who doesn’t remember my favorite movie. But I’m also the girl who knows her worth. Who feels everything, even when it hurts. Who turns heartbreak into essays and yearning into power. Who knows if I will ever find that knight in shining armor? He might remain a figment of my imagination. But maybe that is for the best. Maybe I’m not a tattered Birkin, but a hopeless romantic waiting for the right person who knows how to treat something this rare.