Let’s Take Inventory: Are You in a Backup Relationship?
By Jenna Birch
John Dolan
Has a guy ever told you, “I can’t date you… right now,” or strung you along in a weird gray area of the friend zone where sparks (and late-night texts) fly constantly? Or how about this: have you ever kept in contact with a man you thought you could see yourself dating down the road if your relationship ever ended—if you finally lived in the same state or once his career life was locked in? Meet the backburner relationship.
“What originally inspired me to think about this is when you meet somebody at a club and trade numbers, you might go through your contacts [later] and say ‘Oh I remember that guy. I might zing him a note and see how he’s doing … It was inspired by my old days in grad school,” says researcher Jayson Dibble, an assistant professor of communication at Hope College. But here’s the difference between the “woulda, coulda, shouldas” and “what ifs” of your little black book and your backburners: communication. You’re keeping in touch. Maybe not regularly, but enough to facilitate some kind of relationship.
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The psychology here is pretty complex, leading to this strange backburner bond. Looking at one side of things, keeping your options open allows for the evolutionary advantage of spreading your seed or finding the best mate. On the other side, commitment has its own set of benefits, like better chance of offspring survival. So, what you get is this quasi-platonic relationship with your old lab partner from grad school with romantic potential that you never got to explore because one of you was always in a relationship.
The researchers polled 374 undergrad students about their backburners to study common habits like how they keep in touch with them and how often. Forty-five percent of participants said they liked to text their backburners, while 37 percent hit them up on Facebook chat. Another 13 percent of got old-school and actually kept in touch with phone calls. Even more Skyped, emailed or tweeted their backburner flames. However, interestingly, there was no difference between the habits of people in relationships versus single folks. “We were really puzzled by why we didn’t find a relationship between commitment and backburners,” Dibble says, who guesses the online landscape just makes it all.too.easy to keep in touch with these ladies and gents.
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Guys, I’ll be the first to admit I’ve totally been in this state of confusion before. Why is he keeping in touch every so often? What is going on here?! Yet, it happens so easily, like you could emerge 2 years later and realize you’ve been in a backup relationship longer than you’ve been in a real one.
It’s not like backburner relationships are new, per se, just that they are much, much easier to maintain now that you can secretly and casually IM your backup dude, shoot off an email or type out a few texts to keep them on the line. Which can be tricky, not to mention soooo sticky if you’re in a relationship. So I’ll just say this: watch who you invest in. And if you’re interested in pursuing something with a backburner, even some day, you might want to check and see if your current relationship is one you want to continue.
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