In a Relationship but Keeping Your Options Open? Toxic Dating Trend ‘Cushioning’ Raises an Uncomfortable Question

Does cushioning count as microcheating in relationships? (Credit: AI)

We're pretty comfortable labeling the trend of cushioning 'toxic' – but take a look at the ground facts and make up your mind yourself, anyway.

Much like its name, cushioning specifically refers to an individual – gender no bar – in a monogamous relationship, keeping back up options which are necessarily romantic. These aren't people of the gender(s) you're attracted to, with whom you've developed an apparently 'platonic' bond; it specifically refers to conversations and equations that pointedly lean towards romantic parlance. Even the routes to line such equations up are very directly wrong, given the context of monogamy – think being in a proper relationship and still running accounts on dating apps, actively seeking people out and consciously nurturing romantic subtexts with them. If you're wondering what's the purpose, this trend is likely to creep up in monogamous relationships going through a rough patch or evidently on the way to its demise. The purpose then, for the individual cushioning, is to set up options for themselves to flock to, potentially as soon as their existing relationship combusts.

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Original source: https://www.timesnownews.com/lifestyle