“Love Without Labels”: A Phenomenological Study of Situationships Among College Students in Calamba City

With the rising phenomenon of young adults settling into casual or noncommittal relationships, the researchers were interested in Calamba City college students’ situationship experiences. They aim to seek answers as to how students felt and experienced in situationships, thus they conducted a study shedding light in their experiences. The researchers used sexual script theory (SST) by Gagnon & Simon (1998) as theoretical framework of the study, hence, became the basis in constructing the research questions, as well as the interview guide questions which circles around the following concepts: intra-psychic, cultural, and interpersonal scripts. Intra-psychic scripts focused on the participants’ personal experiences while cultural scripts pointed on social norms based on their respective environments, and interpersonal scripts delved on their interactions with other people in a romantic or sexual way. Applying the hermeneutic phenomenological approach, 6 college students were interviewed about their lived experiences about their current situationships anchoring on the SST’s intra-psychic, cultural, and interpersonal scripts. The researchers discovered that young adults feel uncertain towards their situationship partners and the current state of their relationship; the absence of labels, despite the presence of intimacy, often seen in committed relationships caused emotional conflicts in the situationship. The results gathered overall implied complex feelings tied in undefined and boundary-lacking relationships. Further research is recommended in exploring the nature and peoples’ viewpoints in situationships to fully understand this phenomenon.