Love Life with Matthew Hussey - 132: What You Lose With "Backburner Relationships"

Episode Date: September 10, 2021

Some recent research claimed that over 50% of people in committed partnerships have a "backburner relationship". In this episode Matt and Steve talk about: - What defines a backburner relationship? - Why in 2021 has this grown in modern dating culture? - What is the cost of having a backburner relationship? --- Follow Matt @thematthewhussey Follow Stephen @stephenhhussey --- Email us your thoughts at [e-mail] --- If you haven't locked in your place for the next Virtual Retreat this September 24-26, then now is the time.   Claiming your place this month will enter you into an exclusive drawing for the chance to receive one of three free tickets to the Virtual Retreat OR the grand prize of an exclusive 1:1 coaching session with me!   Go to MHVirtualRetreat.com to secure your spot.  

There's no shame in a relationship not working out, but it's a shame if it doesn't work out because the whole time you spent your time in it, you didn't actually go all in. Well, here we are again on the Love Life podcast with me, Matthew Hussey, and mon frere, Stephen Hussey. How are you, Steve? Hello, chums. I'm very well, sir. How are you doing over there in sunny old La La Land? Well, I'm very good,ve i you were a bit stressed before the podcast you before we went live you were a little salty a little stressed i was a bit stressed i was a bit flustered yeah we had tech issues didn't we you couldn't get your camera on me and jameson were just sitting here waiting for you for quite a producer producer problems

yeah let's call it that well i want to read a couple of reviews because we said you know we've Emerson was just sitting here waiting for you for quite a while. Producer problems. Yeah. Let's call it that. Well, I want to read a couple of reviews because we said, you know, we've been reading the reviews. People have been enjoying it. And I just want to give a shout out to some of the people who have left reviews recently. We had Janelle Mister says, well, she says, what song is that? I'm referring to the one at the beginning of the show, I suppose. She says, great show. says, what song is that? I'm referring to the one at the beginning of the show, I suppose. She says, great show.

I really enjoy Matthew's content. And I'm looking forward to the retreat. That's good. Retreat's coming up, Steve. We've got like, how long? This month. Yeah. Well, this is a great time for a word from our sponsors.

Hi, I'm Matthew Hussey. You may remember me from such shows as the one you're listening to right now. We have a retreat coming up in some number of days, depending on what day this episode is released, but it's essentially coming up on the 24th of September and it runs for three days until the 26th. It's going to be all about you, your emotions, your life, what you want the next chapter of your life to be about, what you're trying to do with your time and changing your confidence. It's going to be an amazing event. People sign up all the way through the year for this. And a lot of people wait an entire year to come. If you sign up now, you don't have to wait an entire year. It's going to be this month and

you can go and sign up or book your appointment to talk about it at mhvirtualretreat.com. So back to the review, of course. She says, however, I really want to know what song it is that they're playing in the podcast. It's great. And I want to hear the whole thing. Well, Jameson can tell the story on this. Where did we get the song for the podcast? The song is called Team

Single and the artist is named Riz, straight out of Sacramento, where I'm from, Matt. And the producer is one of my best friends in the world, Chez Gonzalez. An absolute, absolute classic. He must have made this song like eight years ago, could be 10 years ago, and I've loved it ever since. And then we used it for almost all of the Love the Journey episodes because I loved it so much. And it's team single. I mean, that's your wheelhouse right there. Well, if you're deep cuts and you watch the Love the Journey episodes,

then you know that song from the Love the Journey episodes. And here is again on the podcast. Love says, I don't ever miss an episode. I'm in the happiest happiest healthiest relationship with myself and an amazing man so she is no longer team single this podcast is so much more than how to get the guy it has great insights on how to get the life i couldn't agree more if you want to leave a review go to itunes uh on apple you'll have a chance to leave us a review and we love reading them steven any emails come in uh yes we got a couple of lovely emails matt uh so one is

from far away places uh diana who says dear team matthew hussey long time podcast listener first time emailer i absolutely had to write after the conversation about penis size. You guys need to set the record straight. The whole thing about size is so dumb and guys need to know about it. My boyfriends have been on both sides of the spectrum and frankly, the smaller ones were so much better. I had one boyfriend who was so big he literally literally like could not have sex with most people, including me.

And another boyfriend I loved more than anything, who nonetheless was super well endowed and thought that his size made up for, let's say, a lack of finesse. I loved him, but I was also sort of exhausted by it. I think this is a super cultural thing because when I moved to France, everything changed. And while my boyfriends here have consistently been on the smaller side they are so super enthusiastic

and down for whatever that it's so much better enthusiasm trump size every day of the week and not to be super judgy but I feel like women who don't think that yet maybe just haven't had better and there are real culture ideas here at play. Power, domination, my whatever is bigger than yours, and I just think it makes for better sex all round. I half cannot believe I'm writing this because I'm such a fan of your collective work and under any other circumstances would try to seem cool, but I think even more that guys, especially younger ones who might otherwise feel bummed out, need to know that size is irrelevant. Enthusiasm, openness, a loving attitude,

they're so much more important and have nothing to do with how many inches are on offer. That's from Diane. Thank you, Diane. I think that's a really insightful, interesting take, though. And I don't think we were saying size was everything. I think we were saying we boys grow up with insecurities about it and that show we talked about sex life made many men feel rather uh short lacking coming up short i sent jameson a picture of the view count on that video and because it was obviously higher than some of our other recent

videos and i just said all of we spend all this time trying to sound intelligent and all it took was talking about dicks jameson's reply was when are we not talking about dicks which i thought was actually a fair comment. There he goes. Well, fair enough. Now let's never speak of the show again, because we have dedicated, we've talked about it way too much for a show that's not even that popular. Yeah, we may have driven a few people to netflix on that one so matthew i want to talk to you today about you know a modern phenomenon in relationships and kind of get your thoughts on it i mean maybe your thoughts will be fairly clear cut but i think this is interesting if this is something new or not and it is the idea of partners people having what they call back burner relationships.

So this was an article in Psychology Today that talked about how back burners are people with whom one maintains contact in the hope of someday pursuing a romantic or sexual encounter. The most favoured method for keeping in touch with backburners is texting, followed by various social media channels. And what it basically said is that roughly like 70-something percent of singles have backburners, but more troubling, basically over half, about like 56% of those in committed relationships have, according to this survey, let's always take these with a pinch of salt. These are limited surveys, etc.

But it is in psychology today. relationship uh where that might be someone they uh you know have a bit of not not necessarily even amorous contact with but they have some interactions they share things maybe share secrets they kind of maybe even give assurances that they're sort of interested in that person or just like some keeping them around in orbit perhaps uh with the idea that maybe they in future would be interested in that person um i found this in the modern world it's not surprising that this is very possible people i don't know about you but like i could still find most of if not all my exes on social media now it would be possible to have contact with them um definitely the possibility is there but that does seem kind of high doesn't it like 52 percent or do you think that's that's fairly human that people would have some kind of

backup option in mind? Well, it depends what you call a backup option. I think that there's, it's probably not high. If you just define that back burner thing as someone who you just haven't explicitly said, no, there's nothing between us. And you're're they also don't know that you're with someone and you kind of even casually keep the thing alive by texting then i i if that's considered a back burner because you know that there is some underlying attraction there even if it's not spoken then it's probably not high that probably that probably is fairly realistic and do we count that as a form of i mean is that just another shade of infidelity is it just a kind of micro cheating as they might say if you're continuing to engage someone and you're in a relationship and you, especially if it turns flirtatious, you avoid telling them you're in a relationship.

And in truth, if you find yourself going out of your way to not tell those individuals that you're in a relationship i think that's where you have to suspect yourself is if you're you're talking to someone who you claim is just a friend but you're not actually making explicit that you are in a relationship that that to me then strays into that territory especially if it would be organic to do so if someone says what have you been up to and you happen to have been with your boyfriend or girlfriend for the last two weeks or you've just been on vacation with them and you fail to mention that then that to me starts to stray into that territory. Yeah, I think that's right. But you also have these people where they would know you're in a relationship, right?

But is there some kind of subtle way where you are both keeping in contact as a like, well, we do have something and maybe we'll see if we're both single again. You know, maybe we'll give each other a call. and you're kind of just keeping them there to know, hey, I'm here if you break up with that person. then it's firstly your partner, in my opinion, deserves to know that, Oh, this is, I'm maintaining a relationship here,

but I have actually been with this person. And that's, that then should be something that's, that your partner is, you're sensitive to with your partner. It has to be something that you actually, you know, those, those things, if it were the other way around and our partner was friends with someone that they had been with and now they're staying friends with them and it's an active friend, it's one thing to be cordial with someone. It's another thing to have an active friendship with someone that you're maintaining that you're regularly

texting them you're regularly having conversations with them that's a that's a different thing and that deserves for your partner to feel comfortable with it or for you to take the time to explain to your partner what the relationship is today and and why it's you know yeah i'm a big believer in choose like if if you want to stay in touch with someone you have to be honest with yourself how important is it for me to stay in touch with this person do i really need this person as an ongoing friend in my life? I'm not saying you and that person have to be, there has to be any bad energy. But if you're really convincing yourself you must continue to be talking to this person, ask yourself why. What is it that that friendship is bringing to you that your closer friends aren't

bringing to you yeah you've probably got closer friends you've probably got friends that you're that you're you know that mean a lot to you that you actually spend time with so what what is the need to continue connecting with this person? And I think it becomes, if you're not careful, people can turn it into a form of, it's like not really committing to the person you're with. Yeah, and it can almost be a subtle, it can almost be a way of slow self-sabotage because you're inviting another presence to create jealousy, to create conflict and create problems that otherwise wouldn't exist if you weren't maintaining this. Exactly. And then you have to say, well, how important is it? How worth it is it? What's the reason I'm doing this? Yeah, I think for some people, I think just the times we live in, it becomes irresistible for people to,

I think they start with keeping tabs on their ex and then it might be checking in occasionally and then it might be like saying, commenting and saying hello. And I think it can become this kind of like, just keeping tabs tabs like maybe if they're ever single again we'll i'll hit them up or something it's just there's so many shades of it and it's a thing because i don't want to create paranoia or anything and i think that is a problem

with our time where people have so many sources to talk to other people everyone becomes so paranoid of like is someone cheating on me is someone on social media flirting with other people but they just kind of think well i just want to keep a hand a hand in there yeah i i'm a big believer that when you're still when you're still leaving the door open to those different options you are you're actually denying the relationship you're in the chance to be all that it can be because you're not actually seeing who you are when you cut off your options and go all in you're not seeing how the relationship can evolve from a place of true security true safety real um real commitment and there's no shame in a relationship not working out but it's a shame if it doesn't work out because the whole time you

spent your time in it you didn't actually go all in that to me is is time that's kind of time wasted because you're not going and doing other things. You're not dating other people. You're not, it's not like you are actually going out with any of those people that you're, quote, keeping on the back burner. You're not. But you're also not fully invested

in the situation you're in. You're somewhere in no man's land. And I do think that's a shame. To know what a relationship is, you do actually have to let go of those other options. Right. Now that I'm thinking about it, when you talk about the whole back burner thing,

that is an indication of our unwillingness to be present with the situation we're in. It's a way of not choosing. And, you know, on our retreat, we talk about how, you know, answers are a reward for doing things. We talk about this on day one of the retreat. If you want answers in life, you have to actually go, go and do something. If you want answers about what the right career is, you do actually have to taste some careers. You do actually have to go and try something. You do

actually have to immerse yourself in something. And that starts to give you answers. You can't get answers by just sitting there and intellectualizing everything. And I don't think you can get answers from a relationship by being halfway in. You get answers by, if you decide, you know what, I'm actually going to give this a shot. I'm not talking about on day three of meeting someone or in week three even. But if you've decided to have a committed relationship with someone, then that's the time to say right now, I don't know if this is going to be forever or not, but right now, this is what I'm going to do. And I'm going to do it really well. And I'm going to see what it can be. For everyone listening right now, if you have not booked your retreat appointment for the virtual retreat, it's coming up on the 24th to the 26th of September. Registration closes on the 19th.

That means there is so little time now to go and book your appointment that this could be one of the last opportunities to do it. So go to mhvirtualretreat.com, book your appointment, get in before the 19th, because after that doors close and we are not taking new attendees. If you don't get in on this round, it's gonna be all the way till next year, well into next year, before we do another one of these.

Join it now, get the progress for the end of the year and start the next year right because you have this blueprint for how to live your life going forward. Once again, the link is mhvirtualretreat.com to go and book your appointment, to speak to one of our specialists about the program and get your place. Stephen, thank you. Thank you, Pickles. Thank you, brother.