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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.
