How Sally Rooney's situationships reflect the love struggles of Gen Z women
The Intermezzo and Normal People author is best-selling for a reason. Nicole Benedettini asks experts to weigh in on why Gen Z feels seen by her characters’ relationships
Are you familiar with that sensation of dryness in your mouth at the dentist when they use the saliva ejector? As I was reading Conversations with Friends when I was way younger (see: a teenager who read only novels with ‘Happily ever after’), I felt a similar sense of dryness, on an emotional level.
That dryness didn’t leave space for my mind to dream and wander. I wanted those overly sweet novels that felt like a chocolate cake with too much sugar, but aren’t dangerous for your glycemic and insulin levels. That banality seemed to add colors to a world that sometimes seemed to stay afloat in shades of gray.
Sometime after, I remember binge-watching the acclaimed series Normal People, based on Rooney’s book of the same name. Compared to the scratchy dryness, a milder vibe like the early spring sun took its space on my skin. Still, I didn’t think this author had something relevant to say to me and my generation.
Now, more years have passed, and I discovered the magic of second chances when it comes to books. Never underestimate how being slightly older makes you adopt a different perspective on a work of art.
I don’t even remember what prompted me to write Sally Rooney’s name in my Everand search line. Nevertheless, when I saw that her audiobook Beautiful World, Where Are You was available, I instinctively saved it.
Read more: How to end a situationship over text
I listened to it in that strange period of the year when days get shorter, summer nears its end and fall makes its tender but firm entrance. In that fleeting space filled with melancholia and anticipation, Beautiful World, Where Are You was the music my ears needed. This period of the year is perfect for a book that can be summarised as “raw vulnerability”.
Beautiful World, Where Are You completely shifted my view of Rooney’s work and of the love stories she depicts. Today, I think Sally Rooney’s love stories possess a raw, realistic, and messy quality I have never found in those happy novels I read as a teenager. Yes, they were colorful and brilliant, but they created unrealistic expectations of love.
Why Gen Z women relate to Sally Rooney's love stories
“Rooney does a great job of depicting relationships in a more real way of how people actually experience them in real life, with the highs and lows not always being so exaggerated and the characters feeling like real people,” Shenella Karunaratne, licensed professional counsellor, confirms.
While Sally Rooney, born in 1991, is a millennial, the love stories and the situationships she portrays in her books can reflect the love struggles of Gen Z women. For the older women of this generation, who are now in their 20s, the stories in Beautiful World, Where Are You can hit home.
From the Tinder encounter between Alice and Felix to the long-term friendship that evolves into much more between Eileen and Simon, these stories can make female readers feel understood.
Situationships in Rooney's 'Beautiful World, Where Are You'
The love story between Eileen and Simon can be defined as a peculiar situationship in which characters are clearly in love with each other. Still, there is this immense fear of the unknown.
In the book, Simon tells Eileen he’s not pressuring her about defining their relationship, and that he’s content to “just spend time together and see how things go”. On the other hand, Eileen describes Simon as a “highly competent and good-natured but emotionally inaccessible person”, someone with whom she would love to develop a deeper level of intimacy without finding the key to do it.
How Rooney depicts the complexity of modern relationships
Similar situations are far from uncommon since half of US adults between 18 and 34 years old have been in a situationship. While a situationship can be a valid choice if consciously chosen by both parties, it can become a refuge to experience a love affair without determining its boundaries. This can create misunderstandings and friction, as happens in Rooney’s novel.
According to Jonathan Hartley, a relationship coach: “What's particularly striking is how these situationships really reflect broader anxieties about commitment and connection because in an era of infinite choice and constant uncertainty, defining relationships becomes both more important and more frightening.”
“Rooney’s lack of punctuation between thoughts and dialogue mirrors how today’s young adults actually process relationships – a constant blur of analysis and feeling”
Apart from Simon and Eileen’s relationship, the book features the emerging love story between Alice and Felix, who met on Tinder. Rooney’s choice to include this kind of relationship was not casual, since the current dating world can make building connections seemingly effortless.
You can create your profile in a popular dating app like Tinder or Bumble, match with someone, and chat with them for as long as you want.
At the same time, dating apps gamified dating, and the majority of connections made online are not durable or valuable. Approaching someone through a screen, along with the abundance of potential choices, makes it incredibly easy to avoid commitment.
Even though online dating has changed the rules of the game, vulnerability doesn’t magically disappear from the equation, particularly for young women, as both the characters of Eileen and Alice show.
Hartley says Rooney’s work perfectly encapsulates the current dating world paradox, “young women dissecting their romantic lives with academic precision while still struggling with raw emotional vulnerability”.
While I was listening to the audiobook Beautiful World, Where Are You, I wanted to read some passages to fix them in my mind. Fortunately, I found a free written version of the book online, and I was startled by Rooney’s minimalist and original writing style.
Among her distinctive traits, the one that promptly catches the eye is direct speech. Written without quotation marks, her dialogues give a strange sense of fluidity and confusion at the same time, something that mirrors perfectly the relationships she represents.
Her writing style adds realism to the narration, as Hartley notices: “The lack of punctuation between thoughts and dialogue mirrors how today's young adults actually process relationships – a constant blur of analysis and feeling.”
How Rooney captures the role of technology in Gen Z's dating life
Finally, a compelling aspect of Beautiful World, Where Are You is the ever-present exchanges of phone calls, text messages and emails, which can be vividly played in the reader’s head.
Among these calls, there is a vibrant passage between Eileen and Simon. Here Eileen describes how she thinks his ideal wife is and acts, and this vivid conversation promptly becomes a phone sex scene. This mixture of the fantasy Eileen describes and the authenticity of the character’s bond exemplifies characters struggling with vulnerability and connection.
Text messages and emails have even more relevance in the book. Writing messages gives individuals more control, instead of the real-time reaction of chatting.
Hartley explains that characters crafting mindful text messages and emails reflect how young women are conflicted “between intellectual analysis and actual emotional reality”. These actions give the illusion of controlling narratives, which are not controllable by definition.
I love how books can provide a safe space for people to feel validated. For women in their 20s, Sally Rooney’s novels could be this space, where words on paper feel like lived life.