Cushioning in Dating: 7 Signs You're Being Kept as a Backup Option

TLDR

Cushioning in dating is when someone you're already seeing keeps other romantic options quietly active on the side, in case things fall apart with you. They're not disappearing. They're not ignoring you. They're just not all in — and they want a soft landing ready if they need one.

Table of Contents

• What cushioning actually means (and how it differs from benching)
• Why dating apps made this so easy
• 7 signs you're being cushioned
• The psychology behind why people do it
• The verdict: what to do if you recognize these signs

What Cushioning Actually Means (And How It Differs From Benching)

Cushioning in dating is when someone you're currently seeing keeps backup romantic options quietly active, in case things with you don't work out. They're not cold. They're not pulling away. They might actually be warm, attentive, and fun to be around. What they're doing, underneath all of that, is making sure there's a soft landing available if they need it.

The term appears in a 2024 academic dictionary of modern dating language published on Zenodo, which defines cushioning as "keeping backup relationship options in case a primary partner does not work out." Psychology Today included it in a January 2025 roundup of terms that define how people are actually dating right now.

The difference between cushioning and benching matters. Benching (covered in detail at Benching in Dating: 8 Signs You're Being Kept as a Backup Plan) happens before any real relationship forms. Someone you've matched with or gone on a few dates with keeps you around as a background option while they pursue someone else more seriously. Cushioning happens after there's been real mutual investment. You're already in something together. The person isn't hedging because they're unsure yet. They're hedging while you're already emotionally involved.

It's also distinct from just casually dating multiple people before becoming exclusive. That's common and generally understood. Cushioning is what happens after there's been enough of a connection that commitment would be a reasonable thing to expect, but they're still quietly keeping people on rotation.

Why Dating Apps Made This So Easy

Dating apps were supposed to make finding a serious partner more efficient. In some ways they have. They also, unintentionally, built the perfect infrastructure for keeping your options permanently open with almost no effort.

A 2024 study published in New Media & Society found that the perceived abundance of profiles on dating apps creates what researchers called "partner choice FOMO," the fear that a better option is always just a few swipes away. That fear of missing out is one of the biggest drivers of non-commitment and decision fatigue in modern dating. When someone believes there are infinite options, committing to one person feels like closing a door they're not ready to close.

When apps never really turn off, it's effortless to keep a few conversations running in the background without any real investment. Someone can be fully present with you on a Friday night and texting a backup option on Saturday morning. There's no friction. No hard decision. Just a thumb and a screen.

The Attachment Project notes that cushioning and similar behaviors take place primarily over instant messaging and social platforms specifically because these channels allow people to maintain connections that require almost no honesty or effort. You don't have to decide anything. You just don't delete the app.

7 Signs You're Being Cushioned

These signs aren't necessarily dramatic. Cushioning is subtle by design. The person doing it usually isn't trying to hurt you. They're trying to protect themselves.

1. Commitment conversations go nowhere

You've brought up where things are going, maybe more than once. Each time, you get something warm but vague: "I'm really enjoying this," "let's just see how things develop," "I don't want to rush." Weeks pass. The conversation resets. Nothing actually changes.

2. They're active on their phone but sometimes slow to respond to you

Not always, but in a pattern. They'll go quiet for stretches, then come back fully engaged. If you're one of several conversations they're managing at any given time, this is what that tends to look like from the outside.

3. You haven't been introduced to anyone in their life

Not a friend. Not a sibling. Not a coworker at a casual group hangout. If you've been seeing each other for two, three months and you still don't exist in their social world, that's not an oversight. People integrate the people they're serious about.

4. Future plans stay permanently abstract

They'll mention wanting to try a restaurant, go to a concert, visit a city. Those plans never actually get made. When you try to set a specific date, it gets diffused. People who are genuinely invested make actual plans, not just references to plans.

5. Your gut has been sending signals

Something feels slightly off, but you can't quite name it. You second-guess yourself. You rationalize. This is one of the most common patterns in situations like this, and it's worth understanding why we do it. Why Your Gut Was Right: How We Talk Ourselves Out of Red Flags breaks down exactly how this works and why it keeps costing us.

6. They match your energy precisely, in a calibrated way

This one is counterintuitive. Cushioners are often very good at giving you just enough. They don't over-pursue, which would signal genuine interest. They don't pull back too much, which would tip you off. They mirror. They match. The attention feels real but never quite tips into certainty.

7. Their dating app profile is still active

This one doesn't require much analysis. If you're three months in and their Hinge profile was last active yesterday, you already know what you're dealing with.

The verdict on these signs: One of these on its own might not mean much. Three or four together, showing up consistently over weeks, is a pattern worth taking seriously.

The Psychology Behind Why People Do It

Research on backburner relationships offers some grounded insight into what's actually driving this behavior.

A 2024 study by Punyanunt-Carter and colleagues, published in the Journal of Social Psychology Research, identified six reasons people maintain backup relationship options. They include the possibility of sexual intimacy, the excitement and validation of ongoing contact, a desire to keep tabs on the other person's life, the hope for a future romantic relationship, and in a meaningful number of cases, no identifiable reason at all. Some people keep backup options active out of pure habit, driven by the same reflex that makes someone keep every app installed even when they rarely use it.

A separate paper by Borzea and Dillow, published in Communication Research Reports (2017) and cited by the Attachment Project, found that people with unrestricted sociosexuality (an openness to non-committed sexual relationships) were more likely to keep people on the back burner. Interestingly, personality traits like narcissism didn't predict this behavior as strongly as researchers expected. The behavior doesn't require someone to be manipulative in a clinical sense. It just requires someone who hasn't decided to fully choose.

The Attachment Project also points to attachment styles as a factor. People with anxious attachment sometimes hedge with backup options as a way of managing their fear of abandonment. If they're fully in and it ends, that loss feels unbearable. Keeping options available is a form of self-protection that looks, from the outside, a lot like disinterest.

That context is useful. It doesn't make the behavior less of a problem for the person on the receiving end. But it does explain why confronting someone about this often produces genuine remorse alongside genuine confusion. They may not have fully acknowledged what they were doing, even to themselves.

The Verdict

If several of these signs are showing up in someone you're currently seeing, waiting and hoping the situation resolves on its own won't get you anywhere. Cushioning doesn't self-correct. The person doing it has found a comfortable arrangement with no pressure on them to change it.

The move is a direct conversation about what you want. Not a confrontation, but a clear statement of what you're looking for and whether they're in or out. If they're serious about you, that conversation will confirm it fast. If they deflect, get vague, or suddenly become very busy, that's also an answer.

You deserve to be someone's first choice, not their fallback plan. If you're not sure which one you are, ProfileFlags can help you decode the patterns in someone's messages and profile before you're in too deep. A lot of cushioning behavior shows up in how someone communicates online before you've ever had the commitment conversation.

And if you want a solid baseline for what green flag commitment actually looks and sounds like in someone's behavior, The Green Flag Dating Playbook ($14.99) gives you a clear picture to compare against.

The free guide at overstanddating.gumroad.com/l/5redflags also covers five red flags most people rationalize away, including the kind of warm but non-committal communication that sits at the center of cushioning.

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