Human behavior has always been fascinating to me. It’s likely the reason I gravitated toward the study of psychology and an eventual career as a counselor. I wanted to know what made people the way they are, what influenced the choices they made, and how people change (or don’t).
When I observe a strange behavior, I don’t just make a bunch of assumptions about it. I reflect on it. I research it. And sometimes, like today, I call it out for what it is — and what it isn’t.
Having a Contingency Plan for Relationships
Recently, a man I know created a post on social media about how much he loves and admires his partner. It was an effusive post about their relationship that just struck me as categorically false. Why? Because he’s been in my DMs through the majority of that relationship. While I’ve never encouraged this in any way, I have been given the impression that I am someone he would be with if I was open to it — this man who publicly proclaims he is “so in love” with his partner.
It’s not the first time I’ve been seen as someone’s contingency plan.
For years, I felt like that was where men naturally slotted me. A good option if the better option fell through. I never waited around to be that backup plan, but it still stung knowing that’s how they saw me.
None of them would have made good partners for me, but my issue here isn’t that they didn’t see me as the leading lady in their lives. My issue is the tendency to continue to reach out to other potential partners while in an established, committed relationship. Continuing to nurture other romantic possibilities while in a relationship isn’t micro-cheating. It’s just plain cheating — whether or not anything physical happens and whether or not the other person participates.
Part of the motivation likely stems from self-esteem issues.
Reaching out to someone we’re attracted to might stroke the ego, but it also harms the current relationship. Instead of investing in the partner we have, we turn to someone else. It might make us feel better in the short term, but it’s a habit that leads to long-term damage.
We learn to rely on that outside validation to feel good about ourselves. When that’s how we’re sourcing our self-esteem, any relationship problems or challenges might feel like an attack rather than an attempt at maintaining the relationship. It becomes easier to try to start over again than to develop the necessary relational skills to overcome tough times.
It also gives us the impression that “the grass is greener” elsewhere.
It’s easy to idealize someone we admire from afar. It’s a lot harder to invest in the partner we have when the relationship faces challenges. We might prefer to live in the fantasy rather than the reality
I’ve been in relationships with men who did this. I could see one former partner develop a crush on someone else right before my eyes. It was in the way he spoke about her in passing. It sounded a lot like how he used to talk about me before I became a real, flawed person in a real, flawed relationship. It was painful to know that he was developing feelings for someone else instead of investing in our relationship.
Other partners have done this, too. Sometimes, we can tell this is the case when they quickly jump into the next relationship before we’ve even had time to process the breakup. We know they had someone waiting in the wings because the timing was just so fast. The grass is greener where we water it, but instead of investing in the relationship, many people will look outside of it to start again.
Sometimes, people are just looking for an out.
They’re done with their current relationship, but they don’t want to run the risk of being alone. They want to make sure they have other options before letting go of the sure thing they have already. They’re hoping someone else will make the decision easier for them by being available. This way, they never have to be alone, never have to process the grief and discomfort of a relationship ending, and never have to make a big leap without first finding a soft place to land.
I don’t know what’s worse — being the one in the relationship with the cheater who always needs a backup plan to stroke his ego and assure him he’ll never be alone or being the one that men in relationships reach out to because the idea of you is better than the idea of her — until, of course, the idea of you becomes the real you and the cycle repeats. In both cases, it’s discouraging to know that so many people think it’s acceptable to have a contingency partner waiting in the wings in case the first choice doesn’t work out.
Keeping a backup option isn’t micro-cheating, and this is why.
Our current partners likely don’t know we’re doing this. The element of deceit is indicative of infidelity — even if nothing physical has happened or will happen during the committed relationship. Covering up the behavior is a clue that what we’re doing is wrong.
It’s also an emotional infidelity to keep turning to other people — the potential romantic kind — when we feel dissatisfied in our current relationships. There’s little I hate more than a man who’s expressed interest in me complaining at length about his current partner. I’m not sympathetic to the struggle simply because it would be more effective to talk it out in couples counseling rather than trying to source a fallback option. I’m not the safety net, and I would never be interested in a man who saw me that way.
There’s nothing micro about cheating in the first place.
This habit of reaching out to get those ego strokes from someone who is not the partner is an indicator that someone isn’t being loyal or loving in their relationship. They’re too busy trying to source the next partner to focus on repairing the relationship with the current one.
The truth is that they don’t respect anyone — not themselves, not their current partner, and not the potential one. How can they when they don’t see anything problematic about this behavior? Life doesn’t come with guarantees. Love sure as hell doesn’t. Lining up one backup plan after another will not prevent us from feeling the hard things in life. All it does is multiply the hurt that we’re feeling and pass it on to others.
An Alternative to the Contingency Plan
There’s an alternative to the contingency plan for every relationship. We can learn to build stronger relational skills. We can remember that no partner is going to be perfect and have a little grace for the imperfection of others. We can learn to more effectively communicate, compromise, and resolve conflict. We can figure out how to be happy in the humdrum, everyday reality without needing the high of a new infatuation. We can learn to appreciate our partners and to keep expressing that gratitude as a way of building security, commitment, and love within the relationship.
When things get tough, we can reach out to a couples counselor rather than reaching out to an ex or a potential future partner. We can talk it out in our relationship or with a trusted friend rather than seeking the comfort of someone we find attractive in a romantic way. We can learn to ask for what we need from the person we’re partnering instead of trying to get those needs met outside the relationship.
We have to be willing to invest in the relationship we have rather than looking for a new one when things get tough. But we also have to be willing to admit when we’re trying to force the fit. Sometimes, relationships weren’t healthy in the first place or just aren’t a good match for our lives now. Instead of trying to find a future partner, we can focus on being honest enough to end the relationship that’s not working before looking for a new one. That means we have to be willing to risk being alone because it’s kinder than staying in a relationship where we’re constantly looking for an escape to make it easier to leave.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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Photo credit: Eddy Billard on Unsplash
