And there it was. Unannounced, but unmistakeable.
It may look like a voice note, it’s actually The Schtipping Point…
“…I've just been letting us sink in a lot over like the past week that you've been away. And like ultimately you're an incredibly ambitious person, you know, you have like an incredible, like, you know, perspective on life and like we get along really well, but I just feel like, I guess, some of your goals and like some of your priorities I think that you have at the moment just don't like really align with mine, and I guess like when you were telling me about you know, like the things that you wanna do and stuff… I just couldn't really like see where I was gonna like kind of come into that as well…
Keep an eye out for The Schtipping Point around one month.
How do I know this?
Well, the pattern repeats until you learn the lesson.
By this point you’ve done:
drinks
dinner
home-cooked-dinner
wanna come over
lattes before work-days
and perhaps a prematurely intimate act that sends mixed signals like:
the-dubious-airport-drop-off.
The acts get bigger.
The labels get fuzzier.
And the emotional weight gets mismatched.
And after 30 days, more or less, the situationship, tips.
The Schtipping Point is the moment when the imagined future can no longer justify the present.
It strikes when someone, The Schtipper, makes the executive decision to end things with The Schtippee.
It bubbles like an experiment: where The Schtipper collects data, a panel behind one-way glass analyse for values, goals, and future alignment - and the subject rarely sees the findings, but deeply feels the hypothesis.
It tremors as a drop in heart reacts and erupts as “I just can’t see myself fitting into your life”.
When The Schtipping Point arrives, it takes a seat at the bar and orders you a Molotov cocktail of head noise.
It’s a vote for efficiency over efficacy - an avoidant white flag dressed up as decisiveness.
Alas, The Schtipping Point is a shared responsibility.
So what can we, as sensitive, egotistical, emotional beings, do to smooth or seed The Schtipping Point?
The goal of this column is not to make every situationship work.
It’s to suggest a braver way to let down and live up.
In a world where the state of dating is worthy of voicing, how can we Schtip (verb: to tip a situationship) with courage, not cowardice?
Accept or do not - this is just my 2 cents as a 31-year-old male with field notes to suggest a healthy relationship is built on partnership.
One where two people choose to combine their worlds.
Which means that unless you find a carbon copy of yourself, or fulfilment in a custom-GPT, that kind of connection requires one thing:
Discussion.
Therefore, if your intention is to date to relate and you find yourself skipping in the undefined-fields-of-fun, spiralling in chemistry…
But your assumptions suggest these two lives won’t align…
Before you trigger The Schtipping Point…
Perhaps it’s worth:
Chatting about it.
Revolutionary, right?
Yet Collins awarded its 2015 word of the year to:
Ghosting.
For those so bold to chat-before-you-schtip, perhaps you are rewarded with life-changing information hidden behind your curtain call that may alter the course of history because you simply dared to ask.
But whether love is to be salvaged like forgiveness rising from the ashes-of-almost, the true gift to humanity in the ‘chatB4schtip’ emerges on the canvas both parties are compelled to paint upon: one in which they articulate an intentional life.
For what might it take for two factions to join on a shared mission?
Such deliberate action not only crystallises their view of the person whom which they dare to hop and skip The Schtip, but perhaps, in this author’s opinion, spits them back onto land a more actualised self.
A few more wouldn’t hurt.
Worst case, your parting makes sense.
Heaven forbid, you carry on as friends.
But at what point is a Mammal in captivity owed a text? A voice note? A conversation? Do Schtippers owe you WHY? And if so, WHEN? I ask on behalf of type-As lying cold and naked in ambiguity.
As a seasoned field researcher in the-art-of-nearly-but-not-quite…
I don’t write this as Tom Hanks marooned on the-island-of-what-could-have-been.
More a reminder to self: if you want what every 23-year-old podcaster in a rectangle frame is preaching as gospel - “the most important decision of your life” - maybe have the conversation before you get schtipped, and hope is lost beyond discussion.
**Checks field notes**
Now, unless my data is skewed, having asked a few Schtippers post-peer-review about their experience on HOW and WHY they Schtip…
It seems the only thing that mongers fear more than discussing the potential of an emotional joint venture is delivering The Schtip itself.
Seemingly, due to countless overreactions that condition Schtippers to expect juvenile displays in response to, The Schtip.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but are us men are less likely to do the Schtipping?
Such is the view from my observatory.
Could it be the lack of biological clock?
The loneliness epidemic?
Or a refusal to captain our own voyage such that any direction is north?
Is Post-Traumatic-Schtip-Disorder, inflicted by smoke-screened mirror-selfie-mistros, fuelling a generation of Schtippers?
Premature, distant and unwilling to make it work?
Who knows. Yet even when we sense The Schtip is coming - nay, necessary… pleasure delays pain because ‘hey, my housemates are out tonight’.
Which begs the question: when does it become not too much to ask a fragile assembly of bones and insecurity to answer life’s existential question: what do you want?
Is accepting the responsibility to sorteth ones shiteth outeth the lead domino to raise romance like Lazurus from the tomb-of-transgressions?
Would it therefore be hypocritical of us Schtipees to rage at Schtippers for a destination we set sail towards when we failed to draw our own map to a promised land?
Is a generational Fear of Schtipping (formalised as Schphobia) the hairline crack in the dam wall of delayed tips, eventually scribed in the constitution as: divorce?
But in a world suffocated by self-help, which method, which blueprint, is THE worthy palette to paint such vision?
Can someone just give me the answers?
And why did I just land on religion?
Have you got it? Good.
These are the big questions we as a community of swipers, sliders and real-lifers must answer should we wish to restore the state of dating and bask in a life of belonging.
We tell ourselves it’s a clean cut.
But we don’t cut, we tear.
And what’s left are two bodies, walking the world with frayed edges and unfinished sentences.
So a call-to-arms for those steering two hearts with one hand on the wheel!
Before you predict the fate of a shared future that causes you to jump for HMAS Tip, or drift into mutiny because you never dared to chart a course together.
Pull up a map.
Look your co-captain in the eye and ask:
Where might we be going?
Can we get there together?
Should we remain as islands?
Or dare to become a country?
Because as sensitive, egotistical, and emotional beings…
Our future depends on the courage, to smooth, or seed, The Schtipping Point.
*This piece was written in consultation with The Schtipper.
Together, and strictly in the name of science, we devised: The Schtip or Schtick Test…
Subscribe for part-two.