If you want your love for someone to remain in the static gray area or unrequited, anime has the guide for you! The steps within this handbook will ensure you too can remain in the perpetual will-they-won’t-they zone! You too can remain indecisive and string romantic interests along, creating a space for perpetual confused connection. And if you are a romantic interest, you will learn how to behave so your situationship doesn’t come to any conclusion!
These steps won’t work for every type of situationship. Some may even be dangerous if your romantic interest is a tsundere or yandere! These steps can be done in any order. Use caution, however, with some of these steps! If you approach some steps with too much decisiveness, you may find your situationship losing its ambiguity and becoming a full romantic relationship!
The publisher of this handbook claims no responsibility or liability if following these steps land you into a romantic relationship. Results and situations vary.
This handbook’s techniques center on ambiguity, uncertainty, and confusion. For your situationship to remain static or unrequited, your romantic interest, hereafter referred to as YRI, needs to remain uncertain and confused about the type of relationship you have. The area between friend and lover offers the best location to achieve this. This handbook doesn’t focus on friendship techniques. See this handbook’s companion volume The Anime Handbook for Friendships for more information. The key is to keep YRI guessing about your feelings and about their own.
Stare
Staring at YRI is a basic technique to show your interest while keeping YRI feeling unsettled. Staring techniques vary, but they come in two main methodologies. The first allows YRI to notice you. This allows them to know you are watching out for them. The second involves YRI never seeing you but sensing that someone is always looking at them. The shivers down their spine and feeling off-balance lends to the confusion. Both techniques require you to annunciate the onomatopoeia for the act of staring: jii (じーっ). You should repeat this sound for the duration of your staring.
One of the most common and effective versions of the first technique is watching from around a corner. You will want to ensure YRI sees or hears you staring. This allows them to see your interest and how you watch out for them, but unable to draw conclusions as to why. Are you concerned for them? Are you stalking them? The corner method also works for the second technique, but you must now allow YRI to see or hear you. That ruins the unsettling feeling that develops over time. Using telescopes also works for this. Taking recordings and photos of YRI works for both techniques. For the first technique, set a photo of YRI as your phone’s background and have them see this. This works best if this is a friendship photo.
If you pursue the second technique, once the spine shivers are at their maximum, you will want to change to the first technique. This lends comfort to YRI and helps you establish more rapport while keeping them off balance.
Be the Childhood Friend
If you are a childhood friend, you automatically have an advantage. It’s rare for childhood friends to graduate into a romantic interest. Childhood friends have many advantages, particularly with trust. But if you aren’t careful and push your interest too hard, you can lose your childhood friend status and become a lover. It’s rare, but it happens!
Never Give Up!
Even when YRI dates or marries, don’t give up on them! You want to remain seemingly available to them as a possibility for if their relationship fails. If you are a childhood friend, you have the advantage of remaining in the life of YRI. If you are not a childhood friend, you run the risk of being shut out, so you will have to continually work to not be forgotten.
Confess and Flirt and Back Off
This method is a high risk. Kokuhaku can tip your situationship into a romantic relationship if your confession is accepted by YRI. But if you handle your kokuhaku and flirting well, this is the most powerful method for keeping YRI confused. The best approach is to make kokuhaku and flirting a long-running joke. Confess and flirt, when YRI takes the bait, back off, laugh in an exaggerated way,and say something like “I can’t believe you keep falling for it!” Study Himari Inuzuka’s behavior. She’s a master of this method.
This method can work when you both fight demons. Confess and joke about it while covered in demon blood or some other enemy you both struggle together against. The poor timing will muddy the kokuhaku and your friendship or professional relationship.YRI will consider the kokuhaku as a part of your injuries or the remaining rush of the battle, but YRI won’t completely dismiss it. Perfect for ambiguity!
Be Dense
When YRI offers a kokuhaku or flirts, laugh it off or not notice it. After all, no one has an interest in you romantically! It’s all friendship and everything else is in your head! Even if YRI tells you “I love you,” they cannot possibly mean it beyond friendship or “I like you as a person.” Be dense and misunderstand their side of the situationship no matter how clearly YRI lays out their perspective.
Avoid YRI
This method ties together well with Be Dense and Stare. Avoiding YRI makes them second guess their read on your situationship, particularly when you are dense. This method works best when YRI is taking the initiative. Avoidance stymies their momentum and allows the situationship to remain static. The amount of time you should avoid YRI depends on how hard they push to create a romantic relationship. In extreme scenarios, you should go off into the mountains for summer break.
Never Corner or Force YRI to Stop Being Wishy-Washy
If YRI is as wishy-washy as you, excellent! You never want to corner or force such a person to stop being wishy-washy. A static, ambiguous situationship works best when you and YRI remain uncertain and confused about your feelings toward each other. Sitting down to have a serious discussion about your relationship, defining where both of you stand, is a no-no. Never do this or allow YRI to rope you into such a conversation!
Have YRI Be a Non-blood Sibling. The More Siblings the Better!
If you live with similar-age, biologically unrelated siblings, you have a similar advantage as being childhood friends. This works especially when you suddenly learn you are not truly related. The confusion among sibling love, friendship, and romantic feelings allows for the best static, unrequited romantic relationships. The methods within this handbook work well in this sort of situationship. This scenario and harems have the same dynamics. Because of the number of possible YRI involved, feelings remain uncertain among everyone. While you eat together, make sure you avoid difficult discussions that aim to remove the ambiguity!
Make Bento and Dinners for YRI
Making bento and dinners for YRI is a great way to spend time together, especially if you comment about how you like to spend time together as a family. This method works well with childhood friends, non-blood siblings, and harems. Bento and dinners are often seen as signals of affection, but making a comment about family or friendship can confuse YRI about your intention.
Make Sure Kisses are Accidental
Never kiss YRI except by accidentally falling on top of them, being pressed together by a crush of people, or some other accidental lip press. Make sure any shared kisses can be disavowed in a plausible way, but the act will keep you and YRI confused. If either of you can accidentally cope a feel, even better! This step is almost required for all situationships.
Never Show Sexual Interest
Even when you have an accident kiss or feel, never show sexual interest toward YRI. Make certain your jii are not on YRI’s naughty bits unless your particular interest may perceive this as confusing. Sexual interest can damage situationships, particularly if YRI deems you a pervert. This can reduce your credibility with some interests and move you out of the possible interest zone. However, a few interests may consider expressions of sexual interest as confusing. This is a high risk area that requires discernment, which if you are following this handbook, you will not have. Please review the Be Dense method. Showing sexual interest can also damage your ability to kiss and cop feels accidentally. Plausible deniability becomes more difficult.
Don’t Learn How to Compliment
If YRI selects a swimsuit, hair style, or some other outfit in an effort to appeal to you, don’t give them a straight compliment. Act shy, hedge with “I guess” and similar phrases, when you offer a compliment. You don’t want to avoid complimenting because avoidance can hurt your ability to remain in the static, gray situationship area. This is a particular risk when YRI has other possible interests.
Worry About What Others Think
Worry about YRI’s reputation in relation to your own if others believe you are in a relationship. The opinions of your classmates and others matter more than your personal interactions. Make sure to express your concern about the opinions of others to YRI. Deny any possible romantic relationship your classmates may ask about. This works best in front of YRI. Do this in a way that leaves doubt in your classmates, such as denying the relationship and then taking YRI by the hand to leave the classroom. This will leave everyone confused.
There are many other, more situational methods for keeping your situationship confused, ambiguous, and static. But these depend on the personality of YRI and your own personality. The methods in this handbook apply to most scenarios and relationships. By following them, you, YRI, your classmates, and any outside viewers can remain confused and guessing about how your situationship may conclude. To further refine your techniques, examine case studies like Himari Inuzuka, Ataru Moroboshi, and others. Study how they fail to achieve the necessary balance, either entering into a romantic relationship or becoming entirely friend zoned. Keeping a relationship ambiguous is a challenge that requires a wishy-washy and fearful personality. You will have an advantage if you are naturally spineless. But by following this handbook, you will have the edge on your competitors!
– Thanx !,- It was fanny …
… Sincerely
Yours.