Your Significant Other May Be 'Cushioning' And You Wouldn't Even Know It

Years ago, writer Sara C. felt palpable chemistry with a coworker. She had been married for 14 years at the time, but her friendship with the man was flirtatious and she started to fixate on it. They communicated regularly and had coffee dates. Then they slept together.

But a line was crossed even before the physical relationship began: Sara had invested in a figment of a relationship until it became a real one, to the detriment of her marriage.

“My affair definitely started out as an emotional affair,” said Sara, whose last name has been withheld to protect her privacy. “I think many people in steady relationships sometimes stagnate or get into tiffs that remain unresolved.”

“Whether it’s boredom or complacency or unresolved frustration, I’m not sure,” she added. “But it makes them see other people in a different light and can elevate the human connection.”

Those lingering connections are sometimes called backburner relationships. A “backburner” is “a person to whom one is not presently committed, and with whom one maintains some degree of communication, in order to keep or establish the possibility of future romantic and/or sexual involvement,” according to a 2014 study in Computers in Human Behavior.

The concept has also been called “cushioning” ― as in, “I have a Plan B ready to cushion the blow if Meg and I don’t work out.”

It’s more than just a “what-if” situation, though. Backburner relationships require relatively frequent communication, Jayson Dibble, the 2014 study’s lead author and an assistant professor of communication at Hope College, told The Atlantic at the time.

These affairs of the heart ― and of the imagination ― make sense from an evolutionary standpoint: If the goal is to have as many options as