The reassuring news is that I’m not alone in obsessing over an undefined relationship. I’ve spoken with friends who say they, too, found it harder to get over the end of a situationship than a ‘proper’ breakup. But why is that?

Joanna Harrison, a couples therapist and the author of Five Arguments All Couples (Need To) Have, believes this is all down to the uncertainty that characterised the situationship. “There is something you have not been able to make sense of about this man,” she tells me. “Perhaps why you were attracted to him in the first place. Or something more unconscious that you can’t quite ‘put to bed’.”

Harrison notes that our attraction to someone is often less about them as an individual and more about leaning into familiar patterns. In my case, for example, she wonders “if there was something about this situationship that drew you in because it was familiar to you from your previous experience of relationships where you haven’t been treated with respect”. She explains: “Maybe there was something that you were trying to repeat – either because it’s so familiar to have people disappearing on you and that is your ‘norm’ or perhaps because there is part of you that wanted to put yourself in a situation where you could be with someone familiar to you from your background and then ‘improve’ on how things have been with you in previous relationships.” This isn’t something I’d considered before, but it adds up. The relationship before I met R was one defined by my partner cheating on me multiple times. The feeling of a lack of respect is definitely familiar.

“I love my boyfriend… so why am I still thinking about a situationship that ended nearly a decade ago?”