With the latest season of Love Island just around the corner, we’re all looking forward to a summer of love triangles and on-screen flings, grafting, and situationships.
But which towns and cities are set to follow suit, and where can you find the UK’s situationship hotspots? We decided to find out, by ranking each location according to three key metrics: the number of singles, the rate of related social media posts, and the rate of related Google searches!
Reading on, discover more about what situationships really are, and which city tops the list as the situationship capital of the UK!
What is a situationship?
According to the dictionary definition, a situationship is a romantic relationship where the couple aren’t official partners – there’s no proper commitment, and it’s not especially serious! Notably, they’ve become increasingly popular in recent years, perhaps as a result of being so commonplace on shows like Love Island.
In fact, the term was even nominated for word of the year in 2023 – and it’s seen a staggering 230% increase in Google searches since May 2022. Situationships are the new norm, and they’re here to stay!
Where are situationships most common?
Now you know exactly how to identify what a situationship is and why they’ve grown in popularity, where in the UK are you most likely to enter one?
1. Manchester
Taking top spot as the UK’s situationship capital – by quite some way, in fact – we have the north-west city of Manchester, which scores a remarkable 9.07 out of 10 across our index. This comes as 55.8% of the city’s population is believed to be single, behind only London (57.4%) and Cambridge (56.5%) across the UK.
Of the 305,500+ Manchester-based singles, 1-in-13 have discussed their situationship on social media (23,070) and 7,680 have turned to Google for answers – the third-highest rate (2.51%) of any UK city’s single population, behind Bournemouth (4.78%) and Edinburgh (2.82%).
2. London
Next up, London records an overall situationship score of 6.95 out of 10, largely thanks to its enormous single population (57.4%). On top of this, London recorded over 156,500 situationship-centric social media posts over the last 12 months, which equates to around 1-in-every-30 singles. Meanwhile, there were 100,000+ situationship-type Google searches from Londoners last year, which makes up around 2.09% of the single population.
3. Reading
Ranking third, Reading is the UK’s third-most prominent situationship hotspot, scoring a not-insignificant 6.66 out of 10 on our index. Though the town is home to fewer than 75,000 singles, a whopping 1-in-12 of those have spoken about situationship experiences on social media, while 1,680 not-quite-in-a-relationship singles turned to Google for an answer to their love life. That’s a higher rate than in London!
4. Brighton
Brighton is fourth on our situationship index, with a score of 6.38 out of 10, helped along by a reported 52.2% of locals enjoying single life. Of those 1,680 used Google last year to learn more about their will-they-won’t-they relationship status – from asking ‘am I in a situationship?’ to wondering ‘how to end a situationship?’ and looking for a ‘situationship after breakup’. Meanwhile, a further 1-in-30 of singles living in Brighton and Hove have talked about their situationship on socials over the last 12 months.
5. Liverpool
Finally, rounding out our top five situationship hotspots, we have Liverpool, scoring 6.18. This largely comes from Liverpool ranking behind only a handful of UK locations when it comes to the rate of singles in the city (53.4%), while 7,180 single Merseysiders engaged in social media conversations about being in a situationship last year. Similarly, 6,240 situationship-related Google searches have been made in Liverpool since May 2023.
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Which towns and cities just miss out?
Ranking sixth overall, and just missing out on a spot among Britain’s five-most situationship-inclined locations, we have the south west city of Bristol, which scores 5.74 on our index. Following, in seventh, Newcastle scores 5.75, while the UK’s second-most populated city Birmingham (5.44) places eighth – largely due to having the third-highest rate of social media posts by singles in situationships.
Meanwhile, Lincoln and Glasgow complete our list of the ten UK situationship hotspots, with respective index scores of 5.9 and 4.79, with Lincoln incidentally also just sneaking into the list of the top ten towns and cities by the percentage of singles.
So, there we have it; the UK’s top situationship hotspots, based on the number of local singles, social media data, and Google searches. Of course, as we enter situationship season, this could all change! In the meantime, explore more from our team of lifestyle experts over on the Which Bingo blog – or if you’re feeling luckier than your love life, why not check out our picks of the best new bingo sites.
Methodology
This ranking shows the UK’s situationship hotspots. To create this, WhichBingo.co.uk considered three equally weighted metrics.
These included:
- Relationship Status of the City
- The percentage of single people living in the city above the age of 18.
- Situationship Based Social Media Posts
- The number of social media posts discussing situationships over the last 12 months in that location (weighted based on population figures over 18 years old).
- Data collected though Brandwatch.
- Google Searches for Situationships
- The number of Google searches for ‘situationship’ keywords in that location.
- Searches for over 500 keywords were analysed over the last 12 months, such as: “how to end a situationship”, “how to get over a situationship”, “am I in a situationship”, “situationship advice” and many more (weighted based on population figures over 18 years old).
To create the index, the above metrics were considered, all of which were weighted equally and adjusted for populations. The final score was then given out of 10.
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