Love in the Liminal Space

Once the dried Christmas trees are hauled to the curb and the last of the holiday lights blink out, a familiar malaise sets in.

By February, most of us have already broken at least one New Year’s resolution, the calendar stretches ahead in shades of gray, and the rain arrives with no particular promise other than more of the same.

There is little left to celebrate in this post-holiday lull, save for one relentlessly cheerful exception: Valentine’s Day. With its cupids and crimson cards, the holiday arrives less as an invitation and more as a reminder—of who has been struck by the arrow of reciprocal love, and who is standing just outside its range, aware that this most coveted of resources is not evenly distributed.

For single people, Valentine’s Day rarely comes as a shock. Many approach it with humor, indifference, or deliberate avoidance. Couples, too, can choose to dismiss it or play along. The deeper discomfort often belongs elsewhere—in relationships that lack definition, in bonds that offer intimacy without assurance, and in what has become one of the most pervasive relational arrangements in contemporary culture: the situationship.

These connections function as liminal spaces—neither fully absent nor fully committed—where ambiguity is framed as flexibility, and looseness is mistaken for freedom. On paper, this can sound liberating. In practice, such relationships often fracture under the weight of symbolic moments, when the question, “Where do I stand?” can no longer be deferred.

Valentine’s Day functions less like a celebration and more like an MRI for modern relationships.

Valentine’s Day functions less like a celebration and more like an MRI for modern relationships. It does not create problems so much as reveals what already exists beneath the surface.

For people in situationships, this scan can be particularly uncomfortable. Emotional involvement may be real, but recognition remains optional. The gray zone is often defended as autonomy, yet, psychologically, it usually relies on subtle forms of self-avoidance and, over time, self-erasure. Needs are edited. Expectations go unspoken. Desire is reframed as something one should outgrow rather than honor.

In recent years, a powerful cultural narrative has emerged around not needing another—that independence is proof of emotional maturity, and that wanting to be cherished, chosen, or claimed signals insecurity. Many people learn to speak fluently about self-sufficiency while quietly negotiating a private grief: the conflict between a deep longing for mutual recognition and an equally strong wish for infinite personal space. Situationships thrive in this tension. They allow closeness without containment, intimacy without obligation, and the illusion of connection without the vulnerability of being fully known.

After the holiday lights go out and the days begin to blur into weeks, this period of seasonal hibernation can be reframed as something essential rather than empty. Winter is not a time of visible growth but of quiet consolidation, when roots deepen in subterranean spaces, out of sight. It is perhaps no coincidence that this most liminal month is dedicated to celebrating love. When the noise fades, the gifts have been exchanged, and the performances complete, what remains is what is true. Often, that truth is not romantic spectacle but self-confrontation. February asks us not for declarations of love, but for a clearer analysis of where love actually lives: around us, between us, and within us.

What Valentine’s Day ultimately exposes in this in-between space is not a failure of love, but a failure of structure. Human beings can tolerate uncertainty, but we struggle when it requires us to minimize ourselves to stay connected.

The quiet harm of the situationship is not the absence of guarantees, but the slow internal negotiation that asks one person to want less, expect less, and need less so that the relationship can continue at all. These dynamics become inevitably laborious and draining. Situationships are framed as low-commitment relationships, often at the expense of one person carrying the burden of maintaining the connection.

The way forward is not cynicism, nor is it blind hope. It is discernment. Clarity does not mean forcing outcomes or issuing ultimatums; it means telling the truth about what is being offered and what is being asked in return. A relationship does not need perfect symmetry to be viable, but it does require shared reality. When one person is living inside a bond while the other remains adjacent to it, no amount of patience or self-work can compensate for that misalignment.

Perhaps Valentine’s Day, stripped of its sentimentality, offers a quieter invitation. Not to declare love, but to locate it honestly. To notice where we feel held and where we do not. And to remember that wanting to be chosen is not a regression—it is a deeply human desire, and one that deserves a place to land.

“Tell me what you love, and I will tell you who you are.” — Arsene Houssaye spt