“September Theory” Sparks a Relationship Debate: Why Is Clarity Harder Than Love?

By Tahani Elghazaly

Suddenly, September has a theory about love.

The “September Theory,” now circulating across social media, suggests that relationships formed during the easy days of summer reach a crossroads as fall begins: either they become part of real life, or they disappear along with the vacations and long summer evenings.

Despite its catchy, TikTok-ready name, there is no scientific theory giving September some mysterious power to bring people together or pull them apart. It is a social-media idea that has gone viral because it touches on something recognizably human: when ordinary life resumes, relationships are forced back into reality.

And I don't think this is really about September at all.

We are living through a strange period in human relationships. Someone can talk to you every day, ask about the smallest details of your life, share mornings and evenings with you, and perhaps know things about you that even some of your closest friends don't know.

Yet that same person can retreat when confronted with one remarkably simple question:

What are we?

We have invented situationship for relationships that remain somewhere between friendship and commitment. We have ghosting for disappearing without explanation and breadcrumbing for offering just enough attention to keep another person waiting.

Every few months, another term appears.

Sometimes I wonder whether relationships themselves have really changed, or whether we have simply become better at inventing sophisticated names for something earlier generations might have described much more simply:

a lack of clarity.

Perhaps that is why I find the September Theory interesting — not because I believe in it, but because it accidentally raises a much better question:

What remains of a relationship when the circumstances that made it easy disappear?

It is easy to enjoy people during vacations, trips and exciting beginnings, when responsibilities are temporarily pushed aside and conversations can stretch late into the night.

The real test begins when schedules return.

Work. School. Bills. Exhaustion. Illness. Family obligations. Days when there simply isn't enough time.

That is when we begin to discover who genuinely wants to make room for us in their life — and who simply wanted us to fill an empty space in it.

And I'm not talking only about romantic relationships.

We have friendships that survive for years on the sentence, “We really have to get together,” while the meeting never happens.

We have relatives whose lives we now acknowledge with a “like.”

We know what people ate, where they travelled and what they celebrated because we see their photographs every day, yet sometimes we have no idea whether they are actually okay.

We may be the most connected generation in history.

Perhaps that is exactly why we need to ask:

Is connection the same thing as a relationship?

I don't think it is.

A relationship isn't measured by the number of messages exchanged, how quickly someone replies, or the red heart beneath a photograph.

To me, a relationship means giving another human being a place in your life where they don't have to prove every day that they deserve to be there.

It means being able to say: I'm angry. I'm tired. I need you. I was wrong. Forgive me.

And it also means having enough respect to say, “This relationship no longer works for me,” rather than slowly disappearing and leaving another person to spend months trying to understand what happened.

Perhaps the biggest change in modern relationships isn't love itself.

It is how easy we have made it to avoid uncomfortable conversations.

Screens have made entering someone's life incredibly easy — and leaving it even easier.

One button can block someone.

One message can remain unanswered.

A conversation that lasted for years can end with two little read receipts.

But behind that screen is still a human being.

That is what I worry we are forgetting amid this expanding dictionary of modern relationships.

I belong to a generation that lived a significant part of its life before emotions moved online. Then I watched the phone gradually take its place between people until, sometimes, it almost became a third participant in the relationship.

I don't romanticize the past simply because it was the past. There were unhealthy relationships then, too. There was silence, social pressure and plenty of things people should have said but didn't.

Still, there is one thing worth carrying forward:

A relationship is a human responsibility — even when we decide to end it.

So if September wants to become the month when we reconsider our relationships, that's fine with me.

But not because TikTok says the person who survives your summer will accompany you into winter.

Rather, because all of us occasionally need to look around and ask:

Whose lives are we truly present in?

Who receives hearts and emojis from us instead of our time?

Who is waiting for an honest answer while we keep them suspended somewhere between closeness and distance?

And perhaps the hardest question:

Is there someone we love whom we have started treating as though they will always be there?

If there is anything worth taking from a passing trend called the September Theory, perhaps it is this:

Don't postpone real relationships until another season.

People don't always need more love from us.

Sometimes they simply need more clarity.