There’s a new relationship status haunting our group chats, living rent-free in our Notes app, and thriving quietly between late-night overthinking spirals: the delusionship. It’s not quite a situationship, not quite a crush — and definitely not a relationship.
A delusionship, at its core, is a romantic connection that exists almost entirely in your head — an imagined intimacy with someone who may barely know you, or whose real-life actions don’t match the story you’ve written for them.
And yet, for something so unreal, it feels intensely real.
A fantasy dressed as fate
Unlike traditional heartbreak, delusionships rarely begin with anything concrete. Maybe it’s someone you matched with but never met. Maybe it’s a barista who smiled once. Maybe it’s a person you’ve built a whole future with… after two conversations and a shared Spotify artist.
The key ingredient isn’t interaction — it’s projection.
We fill in the gaps with idealised traits, imagined conversations, and hypothetical timelines.
A crush becomes a narrative; a narrative becomes a relationship. Except it isn’t. As psychologists note, a delusionship is essentially “a relationship that only exists in one person’s head.”
But here’s the twist: we usually know that.
Why we’re all a little “delulu”
If delusionships are so detached from reality, why are they so common — and so addictive?
Because they give us something real, relationships often can’t be controlled.
In a delusionship, there’s no rejection unless you script it. No awkward silences. No incompatibility. You get the dopamine hit of romance without the vulnerability of actually being known. Fantasising about a perfect outcome can even trigger the brain’s reward system, briefly easing loneliness or anxiety.
In other words, it’s emotional escapism — but make it romantic.
There’s also something culturally specific happening. Dating today is saturated with ambiguity: ghosting, breadcrumbing, endless talking stages. When reality feels uncertain, fantasy becomes a coping mechanism. A delusionship lets you complete the story when the other person won’t.
TikTok didn’t invent it — it just named it
While the term itself exploded on TikTok (racking up millions of views), the behaviour is anything but new.
We’ve always imagined futures with people we barely know. We’ve always read into texts, replayed interactions, and constructed meaning out of crumbs. The difference now is language — and visibility.
Calling it a “delusionship” does two things at once:
- It acknowledges the absurdity
- It normalises the experience
There’s humour in it. Irony. A kind of collective wink that says: I know this is ridiculous… but I’m still going to indulge it.
The fine line between harmless and harmful
Not all delusionships are toxic. In fact, many are fleeting, even comforting — a creative exercise in desire. A way to explore what you want without risking anything real.
But they can tip into something heavier.
When fantasy starts replacing reality — when you ignore clear disinterest, or close yourself off to real connections — the delusion stops being playful and starts becoming limiting. Experts warn that over-investing in imagined relationships can pull you away from genuine intimacy and self-awareness.
The danger isn’t the fantasy itself. It’s believing it over the evidence in front of you.
So why do we love them?
Because delusionships are safe.
They let us feel chosen without actually choosing us. Loved without being known. Desired without risking rejection. They offer the illusion of inevitability — this could be something — without the discomfort of finding out if it actually is.
And maybe, in a dating culture that often feels transactional, confusing, and emotionally precarious, that illusion is exactly what makes them so appealing.
A delusionship is hope, dressed up as certainty.
Even if, deep down, we know it’s fiction.
Written by VavaViolet Magazine’s Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Sophie Blackman.
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