What would motivate a suitor to keep someone on the hook perhaps honesty professing love all the while involved in another, long term relationship?
The July/Aug edition of Psychology Today magazine highlights (i.e. two or more lovers in reserve).
The feature noted that although we may love our exclusive partner, we can still think about other romantic possibilities – people we keep in a mental box that might as well be labeled “Open in case of current relationship’s demise.” In Cebuano, it’s called “spare tire” thinking.
No matter how content we are, we still seek a sense of security by creating a web of potential future romantic alliances.
That’s why people are hardly shocked to hear that a sizable percentage of men trawling online dating sites are married.
This propensity to survey our mating options even when exclusive couple can give rise to all sorts of quandaries and misunderstanding, Josua Duntley, an assistant professor of psychology at Stockton College in New Jersey, uses the term “backup mates” to describe the PLAN-B partners.
Duntley has surveyed college students on their tendency to keenly monitor the availability and social circumstances of other potential paramours.
In a presentation at the Human Behavior and Evolutionary Psychology Conference, Duntley argued that backup partners are not merely short-term mates-someone with whom to have a fling.
The backup mate is in a separate category: a man or a woman who is viable as a serious partner in his or her own right. Men reported getting more upset when a desirable backup mate found another partner than when a short-term mate did so.
The Plan-B partner, or backup mate, highlights a problem that both sexes struggle with throughout their reproductive lives, regardless of whether one is single or coupled. People need to accurately market value at all times, in order to find a suitable partner or maintain an optimal relationship.
Our quest for love insurance takes many forms. When in a relationship, we may casually flirt with someone to whom we’re only mildly attractive, just to assess whether we’ve still got the stuff.
But more often, the goal of a flirtation is to determine whether the other person is a viable partner, should the primary train go off track.
What to do with a Plan-B relationship:
- Throw yourself into primary relationship.
- Cast a vote of confidence in your relationship by publicity proclaiming it. You don’t have to jump on Ophra’s couch like Tom Cruise, but public pronouncements carry social power.
- Desire for a perfect mate may keep you assessing prospects- but don’t confuse this inclination with a lack of basic satisfaction with your extant mate.
- Smile, relax, and actively love your mate as he or she is. Those who act lovingly start feeling more love.
If you’re left waiting in the wings:
- If you’re the mate-in-a-box, limit the amount of time you’re willing to wait-and sick to your deadline for a resolution. Enlist a friend to monitor your progress.
- Accept the short time hassles of moving on, and embrace the options you have been forgoing.
- Throw down an ultimatum: only a showdown will get things moving.
- If within your period, says, three months the person does not make you their primary mate, focus on new opportunities.