I got married twice in my 20s. Now I'm in love with my midlife situationship | Natasha Ginnivan

"We were just two midlifers in our 50s who met back in 2020 using a popular dating app. Bored, lonely and emerging from lockdown we jumped at the chance for an outing. We had our first date at a trendy, dimly-lit Japanese restaurant and bar in Sydney's Surry Hills. By our second lychee martini, we became aware of some mutual connections that we knew and discovered that we had actually grown up in the same place. There was an immediate feeling of familiarity and a shared sense of humour that clicked without effort."

"You could say we've been dating ever since but, in modern parlance, I'm inclined to call it more of a situationship than a full-blown relationship because it's not an all-in arrangement. I don't think that is too uncommon these days partnership norms have shifted over the past decade and some reports suggest that there's even some kind of relationship recession out there. The Oxford dictionary now describes a situationship as a romantic relationship in which the couple are not official partners."

"The word, situationship, has been on the rise since the early noughties to denote insecurity in a connection. However, I think the reason this label is a fit for our arrangement is that despite being committed partners we run separate households and keep our finances separate. I have my place in the mountains and he has his in the city. If there were a metaphor to describe a vehicle for riding through life, ours might be a vintage motorbike with a sidecar"

Two people in their 50s met on a dating app in 2020 after lockdown and quickly connected over shared history and humour. Their early outings in Sydney included a dimly-lit Japanese restaurant, lychee martinis, and later antique-trawling for 1970s crockery. The relationship evolved slowly into a romantic connection that is not fully committed and is described as a situationship. They keep separate households and finances, one living in the mountains and one in the city. The term has risen since the early 2000s and reflects shifting partnership norms and relationship uncertainty.

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