Bollywood figured out the situationship long before we had a word for it. The "friend who is more than a friend," the person who shows up exactly enough to keep you hooked but never commits, the relationship that has all the feelings of a relationship and none of the structure. Here are the films that map that grey zone, sometimes accidentally, sometimes on purpose.
Cocktail (2012): when one person is always the backup option
Cocktail is the most complete situationship film Bollywood has made, and it’s barely discussed as such because the film itself doesn’t realize what it’s doing. Veronica (Deepika Padukone in the early going) is in a full situationship with Gautam for the entire first half of the film. He’s living with her, sleeping with her, letting her take care of him, and not labeling any of it, because the label would mean giving up his optionality.
When Meera (Diana Penty) arrives and Gautam immediately wants to marry her, the dynamic snaps into clarity. He’d been breadcrumbing Veronica with just enough affection to maintain the situation while keeping his actual emotional investment elsewhere. The film doesn’t interrogate this, it celebrates it, which makes it one of the most accidentally honest portrayals of situationship dynamics in Bollywood’s catalog.
Love Aaj Kal (2009): clarity as the thing nobody wants
The 2009 Imtiaz Ali original puts situationship logic front and center. Jai and Meera break up by mutual agreement because they want different things, but they can’t actually stop. They keep coming back. The film treats this as romantic ambiguity. In real life, it’s what happens when two people are emotionally attached and unwilling to have the direct conversation that would either move things forward or end them cleanly.
Imtiaz Ali is obsessed with this dynamic. His characters always know what they want but resist saying it out loud because saying it makes it real and real means risking actual loss. That psychological realism is why his films resonate, even when the characters are frustrating.
Wake Up Sid (2009): emotional dependency before commitment
Wake Up Sid doesn’t present itself as a situationship film, it’s a coming-of-age story, but the central relationship runs on situationship logic for most of its runtime. Sid moves into Aisha’s apartment, relies on her emotionally, occupies her space and her time, and has no actual romantic commitment to offer. Aisha keeps giving because she wants the relationship to be what it isn’t yet.
The film gets credit for eventually having Sid actually grow up and choose. But the middle section is an accurate portrait of the specific exhaustion of being someone’s emotional support structure while they figure out whether you’re the one they want.
Hasee Toh Phasee (2014): the person who scrambles your feelings
Nikhil and Meeta in Hasee Toh Phasee are in a situationship for the wrong reasons: he’s engaged to someone else and she’s completely checked out of normal life. The film’s insight is that you can feel more real with someone you’re not supposed to be with than you do with the person you’ve officially chosen. That feeling, this person makes me feel like myself, but I can’t have them, is the emotional engine of most situationships.
Parineeti Chopra’s Meeta is chaotic and brilliant and the film never asks her to be easier to love. Watching a Bollywood heroine be genuinely difficult without being punished for it is still rarer than it should be.
What these films don’t tell you about situationships
Every one of these films eventually resolves the situationship into a real relationship. Bollywood can’t leave it ambiguous, the industry needs a happy ending. Real situationships don’t always resolve into something real. Sometimes they just... continue, indefinitely, until one person gets tired and leaves. We wrote about how situationships play out specifically in desi culture, and it’s considerably messier than any film version.
If you’re trying to get out of a situationship by getting into something real, apply to be on stage at Garam Masala Dating. A blind date in front of 250 people has a clarifying effect. Nobody is ambiguous on stage. Tickets and applications at garammasaladating.com.
