How to Deal With Your Partner’s Unpleasant Relationship
If you are in a serious romantic relationship, your partner should be your top priority, but not the only one . Maintaining healthy, mutually supportive friendships with people you don’t have sex with is very beneficial for your mental and emotional health, not to mention your relationships.
However, some people take this and go too far. If you feel like your partner is texting an old friend so much that they no longer notice you, they may have someone on the sidelines.
What is the relationship in the background?
“Denying” or “pushing someone into the background” is exactly what it feels like: you stay in touch with a friend or ex to keep them interested in a hypothetical future relationship in case something doesn’t work out. whoever you are dating right now. (This is also called cushioning or bench presses .)
Basically, there is nothing wrong with doing this in the early stages of a relationship, when you haven’t talked to someone you like (or are just trying to play a little). But in the context of a committed, exclusive relationship, inaction is incredibly painful, even if it never escalates into a full-blown romance.
It’s not hard to see why. In a Cosmopolitan article on “softening,” Justine Carino , a licensed mental health consultant based in White Plains, NY, explains that keeping people “just in case” indicates serious insecurity: “You are already predicting the breakdown of your relationship, which should be a red flag for you. ” This is a big bummer for everyone involved. The slacker partner feels betrayed, the person in the background feels like a help, and this is because the person in the center is deeply insecure and cannot – or does not want – to deal with it.
How to get out of a bad situation
The challenge with inaction is that it can be harmless. Maintaining friendships outside of romantic relationships is great, and from the outside it usually looks like this. In other words, inaction offers a more plausible denial than a physical or emotional connection, making it difficult to confirm any suspicion that this is happening.
If you suspect that your partner is cheating on someone, your only recourse is to talk about it. Be direct and specific: Relationship and sex expert Esther Perel recommends avoiding “detective” questions that focus on the “hurtful, gory details” of the novel rather than underlying emotional issues. Requiring you to read your partner’s conversations with your backup – and then actually reading them – is a great way to intentionally hurt yourself. Asking them to explain why they did it (or why they think they did it) and what they got out of it can actually help the two of you identify the parts of your relationship to work on.
Do not expect miracles. Regardless of how calmly you bring the topic up or how careful you are to avoid accusations, your partner is more likely to be defensive and upset. (They didn’t think they did anything wrong – they didn’t cheat, did they?) If you can’t get it out, you may have no choice but to end the relationship.
Learn from experience
Whether or not your relationship in the background survives, the experience will not be easy to overcome. In both cases, you must sit down with your partner (or alone) and work out your own definition of “cheating.” Where is the border – and what happens if someone crosses it? Knowing your boundaries and setting them clearly is the first step to a healthy, loving relationship.