Everybody has a take on the DTR talk, the situationship and moving in together, and the take usually comes with a percentage that has no address. So we went looking for the addresses. Below is every dating, commitment and living-together figure we could trace to a primary source, each linked where it appears, then the popular claims we refused to repeat. It is all public data from government agencies, research centers and published studies. None of it comes from our own members or app, and no public dataset we found measures how gamers specifically define the relationship.
Who is single, and what are they looking for
A Pew Research Center survey fielded in July 2022 found that 3 in 10 US adults are single, meaning not married, living with a partner or in a committed relationship. The share depends heavily on age: 47% of adults under 30 were single, against 21% of those 30 to 49.
Being single is not the same as looking. In the same survey, 57% of singles said they were not looking for a relationship or casual dates. Among singles who were looking, 51% were open to either a committed relationship or casual dates, 31% wanted only a committed relationship and 17% wanted only casual dating. The looking-singles group is small, so treat those as rough proportions. The takeaway: the person across from you may want something different from what you assume.
A separate survey from BYU’s Wheatley Institute and the Institute for Family Studies found that 78% of its 5,275 unmarried adults aged 22 to 35 named forming serious relationships as something they want from dating. It publishes no margin of error, so read it as a direction, not a precise rate.
Where couples come from
Pew reported in 2023 that 30% of US adults had ever used a dating site or app, and 9% had in the past year. Among adults with a partner, 1 in 10 met their current partner through a dating site or app. Those are 2022 numbers.
Living together: slide or decide
The newest data point in this post is Pew’s August 2026 analysis of a long-running federal survey. For adults aged 38 to 43, 77% had lived with an unmarried romantic partner, and 37% had done so with two or more partners. Of those who had ever cohabited, 67% married a partner they had lived with and 28% had not married. The median cohabiting relationship lasted 18 months, counting ones still going. This is one birth cohort, not all adults.
Does drifting into a shared lease matter? Researchers have proposed that it can. A 2006 paper on “sliding versus deciding” argues that moving in can add inertia that carries some couples forward without a clear decision. It is theory, not a measured causal result. A later survey of 1,050 married adults found those who cohabited before engagement reported somewhat lower marital satisfaction on average, with small differences, from self-reports in one sample. Neither tested an early DTR talk.
Marriage, households and the legal paperwork
- The median age at first marriage in 2025 was 30.8 for men and 28.4 for women, up from 23.5 and 21.1 in 1975, according to the US Census Bureau.
- 29% of US households in 2025 were one-person households, up from 20% in 1975.
- There were 2,128,446 marriages in 2024, a rate of 6.3 per 1,000 people, in the CDC’s provisional count. The same report lists 662,950 divorces and annulments, 2.3 per 1,000, but only for 45 reporting states and D.C., so it is not a national rate.
- Asked how important it is for a couple planning a lifetime together to legally marry, 37% said very important and 24% said not at all in Gallup’s May 2026 poll of 1,001 adults (margin of error plus or minus 4 points).
What mismatched commitment looks like in the research
One study followed 315 unmarried couples, and about a third (111 couples) were asymmetrically committed, with one partner clearly more committed than the other. Both partners in those couples reported worse adjustment and more conflict than partners in balanced couples. These couples were further along than a talking stage, many living together or raising kids, and it is correlational.
Here is the plain version of what we could not find. No peer-reviewed study we read shows that having a DTR talk causes better relationship outcomes, and none identifies an ideal timing for it. No study we read shows that situationships harm well-being. Clarity and mismatch have been studied in committed couples; the early-dating version is largely unmeasured. The Wheatley and IFS report says outright that its survey did not differentiate dating types or track how casual dating becomes committed.
Numbers we refused
- “X% of Gen Z have been in a situationship.” The figures conflict and the definitions do not match. The only one with a named method is a January 2024 YouGov poll of 1,110 US adults that put it at 39% of adults and 50% of ages 18 to 34. It reports no margin of error, and we could not see the definition respondents were given. Another survey, published by a consumer comparison website, reports a far higher share under a different definition. A term with no standard meaning cannot yield a standard rate, so we are not quoting a prevalence for it. Other versions traced to aggregator pages with no named survey.
- Dating-company polls and “year in review” trend claims. The ones we found gave no method and measure the company’s own product, so we excluded them.
- “How many dates before the DTR talk.” We found no named-method public source for DTR timing or “talking stage” norms at all. Anyone quoting one is guessing.
- Anything about situationships and mental health. The research here is thin and mostly small samples, including a qualitative study of 14 young Australians with no prevalence data. We will not turn that into a headline.
One last thing
Public data describes groups. The only way to learn what the person you are seeing wants is to ask. “Not ready to label it” is a valid answer. So is “no.” Pressuring someone into a label is not okay. If a conversation about where things stand involves pressure, fear or someone getting angry when you set a limit, love is respect is available at 1-866-331-9474 or by texting LOVEIS to 22522. In immediate danger, call 911. A relationship label is not a treatment for anxiety, and persistent worry that is getting in the way of daily life is a conversation for a health care provider.
For the practical side, start with the gamer’s guide to defining the relationship or the scripts in how to have the DTR talk. And if you are looking for a player two who also likes to say what they mean, the LFGdating app is full of gamers, and you can sign up here.