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When you’re in a committed love relationship, your partner should be your first priority – but not your only priority. Maintaining healthy, mutually supportive friendships with people you don’t have sex with is great for your mental and emotional health, not to mention your relationship.

Some people take that and go a little too far with it. If you feel like your partner is texting an old friend so often that he barely notices you, he may have someone on hold.

What is a backburner relationship?

“Staying” or “putting someone on hold” is exactly what it sounds like: you stay in touch with a friend or ex to interest them in a hypothetical future relationship in case it doesn’t work out with whom you are seeing . (It is also called damping or Bench press.)

There is nothing inherently wrong with doing this in the early stages of a relationship, when you haven’t had The Talk with someone you like (or just trying to play the field a little). But in the context of an engaged, exclusive relationship, lagging behind is incredibly hurtful – even if it never turns out to be a full blown affair.

It’s not hard to see why. In a cosmopolitan article on “upholstery”, Justine Sweet, a licensed mental health consultant in White Plains, NY, explains that the presence of people “just in case” indicates serious uncertainty: “You are already predicting the downfall of your relationship, which should be a red flag to you.” This is a huge disappointment for everyone involved. The person left behind feels betrayed, the person left behind feels like a substitute, and all because the person at the center is deeply insecure and unable – or unwilling – to deal with it.

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How to Navigate a Backburner Situation

The tricky thing about the backburner is that it can be harmless. Maintaining friendships outside of your romantic relationship is healthy, and it usually just looks like that on the outside. In other words, burning back offers more plausible deniability than a physical or emotional affair, making it difficult to confirm any suspicions that it is happening.

If you suspect that your partner is cheating on someone, the only option left is to talk about it. Be direct and specific: Relationship and sex expert Esther Perel recommends avoiding “detective questions”who focus on the “hurtful, bloody details” of the affair rather than the underlying emotional issues. Requiring reading – and then actually reading – your partner’s conversations with your backup is a great way to get hurt on purpose. Asking them to explain why they did it (or why they think they did) and what they gained from it could actually help both of you identify the parts of your relationship that need working.

Don’t expect miracles. No matter how calmly you address the subject or how careful you are to avoid accusations, your partner is likely to become defensive and angry. (In your opinion, they didn’t do anything wrong – it’s not that they cheated, is it?) If saying it doesn’t work, you may have no choice but to end the relationship.

Learn from experience

Whether or not your relationship survives a backburn situation, it won’t be easy to process the experience. Either way, you owe it to yourself to sit down with your partner (or alone) and Hash your own definition of “fraud”. Where is the line – and what happens when someone crosses it? Knowing your limits and communicating clearly is the first step to a healthy, loving relationship.

By the time we all get out and travel again, we may have forgotten how to properly pack all of our items in a suitcase. If you don’t know what to roll and what to fold (or how much underwear to use for a long weekend) then check out our best pack hacks.

First, choose the right container for your clothes. Travel bags and tote bags may be light, but their soft structure makes them difficult to keep at a regular size. You don’t want to clutter a travel bag and find that it is too big to fit in the luggage compartment, so stick with a hard case. Since nothing can stick out, it will always be the size of the FAA regulation.

To maximize storage space, roll up lightweight clothing such as t-shirts, shorts, and underwear. Fill the rolled garments around the perimeter of the suitcase, using them to fill in any gaps. Fill your shoes with socks to hold their shape and place them at the bottom of the suitcase from heel to toe. Once down there, add heavy items like books near the wheels for maximum stability. With the weight in the direction of the wheels, the case can be rolled more easily and wobbles less.

So that you don’t forget any important toiletries, you have packed a set and kept it all year round. Just toss it in your suitcase if necessary, and make sure the toiletry bag is easily accessible in case the TSA wants to check it out.

Finally, remember to carry your heaviest items of clothing so they don’t take up extra space in your pocket. For all of these tips and more, check out the video above.

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There are many ways to share music with your friends through Spotify, but the company is Introduction of a new “blend” function It allows users to automatically create a shared playlist that is updated daily based on both listeners’ musical tastes. Blends are available to all free and premium users, and you can invite anyone else to create a blend together. Spotify does the curation process itself, filling the playlist with tracks it believes both listeners will enjoy.

Blend doesn’t just focus on shared favorites, however. All tracks that a person has added to their favorites, added to their library or heard in the past can end up in the playlist.

Screenshot: Brendan Hesse

You’ll see your Taste Match Score when you start a new blend to see how your preferences match those of your friends, but even people with similar tastes can get unexpected – or downright weird – mixed playlists.

To test the function, I made a blend with my partner. According to Spotify, we have a taste match score of 73 percent – which makes it because she and I are die-hard metalheads (we literally met in a mosh pit).

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Still, that slight offset of 27 percent makes for a pretty eclectic mix, with our favorite death metal and hardcore punk bands sharing the limelight with Megan Thee Stallion, Run the Jewels, and video game soundtracks.

Of course, if you have a mix that clashes too much, both users can favor or hide songs from their own blend without affecting the other user’s playlist. But the potential for weird playlists is clearly part of the allure of Blend Mode: seeing your music tastes match with your friends and family, and sharing new music with each other.

How to create a mix with someone on Spotify

1. Open Spotify and select that “Seek” Tab.
2. Scroll down and tap “Made for you.”
3. Choose “Create a mix. “
4. Pick a friend to mix with. If you don’t have any Spotify friends yet, tap “invite” to share the blend link with a phone contact through your messaging, email, or social media app.
5. Your friend needs to accept the invitation to create the mix. You will receive an in-app notification and a push notification as soon as the blend is ready. You can also tap “Share this story” to share the playlist in other social media apps.
6. Your blends can be accessed from the Library tab.

[TechCrunch]

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Even if you’ve never heard of milk paint or chalk paint, you’ve definitely seen them. Other than that the chalk paint we’re referring to here isn’t the dark sort that you can turn any surface into your own blackboard. This is something else.

The milk paint and chalk paint we are talking about are decorative surfaces, more so than traditional paints. Both produce the weathered, antique patina that people love but want right away instead of waiting decades for their furniture to age.

In fact, they are similar in other ways too, which only adds to the confusion. Here’s what to know about the differences between milk paint and chalk paint, and when to use them, courtesy of an article Lee Wallender wrote for The Spruce.

Milk paint vs. chalk paint

Besides the above, there are other similarities between milk paint and chalk paint, according to Wallender. For starters, both are water-based, easy to mix, quick drying with a matte finish, and contain minimal amounts of volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

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In fact, their ingredients are almost identical. In addition to being water-based, both milk and chalk paints are made from minerals, with calcium carbonate as the star of the show, along with guest appearances from other minerals and pigments such as ocher, umber, iron oxide and soot, Wallender explains.

Ultimately, the difference between milk paint and chalk paint lies in a single, organic ingredient: milk protein. When you buy milk paint, it doesn’t look like paint at first because it comes as a dry powder with some dry pigments and you are responsible for adding the water. Chalk paint, on the other hand, is completely inorganic and is usually supplied ready-to-use and mixed.

When should you use milk paint or chalk paint?

For the most part, it all depends on the look you want the paint to achieve. Wallender explains. Milk paint is thinner, so not only can it mix in pigments and act as the paint itself, but it can also serve as a detergent. It also tends to have a finish a little more dull than chalk paint, if that’s important to you.

Milk paint is kind of lumpy too, which is a good thing if you want an aged, streaky finish. And to make the IKEA chair look even older, if you sand a surface that has been used on milk paint, some of it will flake off, which gives the furniture an even more distressed look.

Meanwhile, chalk paint dries with a flat … well, chalky finish. but Wallender points out, it can also be used to “create a modern, smooth, streak-free texture by sanding down multiple layers of fine-grain sandpaper,” so potentially more versatile.