If You’re Thinking About Other People In A Relationship, Listen To This… | Rewind

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There's no shame in a relationship not working out, but it's a shame if it doesn't work out because the whole time you spent your time in it you didn't actually go on. Welcome to the Love Life Podcast. It's me, Matthew Hussey. Enjoy this clip and thank you for being here.

So this was an article in Psychology Today that talked about how backburners are people with whom one maintains contact in the hope of someday pursuing a romantic or sexual encounter. And what it basically said is that roughly like 70 something percent of singles have back burners, but more troubling, basically over half, about like 56% of those in committed relationships have, according to this survey, let's always take these with a pinch of salt, these are limited surveys, etc. But it is in psychology today. About 56% of those in committed relationships reported having a back burner person or relationship. That does seem kind of high, doesn't it? Like 52%? Or do you think that's fairly human that people would have some kind of backup option in mind?

Well, it depends what you call a backup option. I think that it's probably not high if you just define that back burner thing as someone who you just haven't explicitly said, no, there's nothing between us. And you're. They also don't know that you're with someone and you kind of even casually keep the thing Alive by texting, then I. I think that's considered a back burner because you know that there is some underlying attraction there, even if it's not spoken, then it's probably not high. that probably that probably is fairly realistic.

And do we count that as a form of I mean, is that just another shade of infidelity? Is it just a kind of micro cheating, as they might say?

If you're continuing to engage someone and you're in a relationship and you, especially if it turns flirtatious, you don't you you avoid telling them you're in a relationship and in truth if you find yourself going out of your way to not tell those individuals that you're in a relationship, I think that's where you have to suspect yourself is if you're talking to someone who you claim is just a friend but you're not actually making explicit that you are in a relationship. That to me then strays into that territory, especially if it would be organic to do so. If someone says, what have you been up to? And you happen to have been with your boyfriend or girlfriend for the last two weeks, or you've just been on vacation with them and you fail to mention that, then that to me starts to stray into that territory.

Yeah, I think that's right. But you also have these people where they would know you're in a relationship, right? But is there some kind of subtle way where you are both keeping in contact as a like, well, we do have something and maybe we'll see if we're both single again, you know, maybe we'll give each other a call and you're kind of just keeping them there to know, hey, I'm here if you break up with that person.

I, well, yeah, I mean, it is tricky. If you've hooked up before with that person, then it's, firstly, your partner, in my opinion, deserves to know that, oh, this is, I'm maintaining a relationship here, but I have actually been with this person. that then should be something that's that your partner is you're sensitive to with your partner. If it were the other way round and our partner was friends with someone that they had been with and now they're staying friends with them and it's an active friend, it's one thing to be cordial with someone. It's another thing to have an active friendship with someone that you're maintaining, that you're regularly texting them, you're regularly having conversations with them. That's a different thing. and I think it becomes, if you're not careful, people can can turn it into a form of it's like not really committing to the person you're with.

Yeah. And it can almost be a subtle, it can almost be a way of slow self-sabotage because you're inviting another presence to create jealousy, to create conflict and create problems that otherwise wouldn't exist if you weren't maintaining this.

Exactly. And then you have to say, well, how important is it? How worth it is it? What's the reason I'm doing this?

Yeah, I think for some people, I think just the times we live in, it becomes irresistible for people to, I think they start with keeping tabs on their ex and then it might be checking in occasionally and then it might be like saying, commenting and saying hello and, I think it can become this kind of like just keeping tabs like maybe if they're ever single again we'll hit them up or something. It's just there's so many shades of it and it's a thing because I don't want to create paranoia or anything and I think that is a problem with our time where people have so many sources to talk to other people everyone becomes so paranoid of like is someone cheating on me? Is someone on social media flirting with other people? But they just kind of think, well, I just want to keep a hand, a hand in there.

Yeah, I, I'm a big believer that when you're still, when you're still leaving the door open to those different options, you are, you're actually denying the relationship you're in the chance to be all that it can be because you're not actually seeing who you are when you cut off your options and go all in. You're not seeing how the relationship can evolve from a place of true security, true safety, real, real commitment. And there's no shame in a relationship not working out. But it's a shame if it doesn't work out because the whole time you spent your time in it, you didn't actually go all in. that, to me, is, is time. That's kind of time wasted because you're not, you're not going and doing other things. You're not dating other people. You're not, it's not like you are actually going out with any of those people that you're, quote, keeping on the back burner. You're not. But you're also not fully into invested in the situation you're in. You're somewhere in the, in no man's land. Now that I'm thinking about it, when you just talk about the whole back burner thing, that is an indication of our unwillingness to be present with the situation we're in. It's a way of not choosing. And, you know, on our retreat, we talk about how answers are a reward for doing things. We talk about this on day one of the retreat. if you want answers in life, you have to actually go, go and do something. If you want answers about what the right career is, you do actually have to taste some careers. You do actually have to go and try something. You do actually have to immerse yourself in something. And that starts to give you answers. You can't get answers by just sitting there and intellectualizing everything. And I don't think you can get answers from a relationship by being halfway in. You get answers by, if you decide, you know what? I'm, I'm actually going to give this a shot. I'm not talking about on on day three of meeting someone or in week three even. But if you've decided to have a committed relationship with someone, then that's the time to say right now, I don't know if this is going to be forever or not, but right now this is what I'm going to do and I'm going to do it really well and I'm going to see what it can be. I hope you enjoyed that episode. Before you go, feel free to join me for live coaching on your biggest dating questions by going to askmh.com this is where you can sign up for a 14-day free trial to my members club, the Love Life Club. If you want coaching from me, if you want to be in an exclusive group of people that works with me every month on their confidence and their love lives, this is the place where we do it. Go to askmh.com to become a part of it.