One episode in period five of the way I Met the Mother, called “Hooked,” revolves around individuals being held “on the hook,” romantically speaking, by people in the show’s gang that is central of. “I can’t be to you … now” is the expression the pals keep using to sequence these people along, the “right now” making the doorway cracked open just enough that evidently some bad guy is prepared to continue doing Robin’s washing and rub her foot for the obscure chance for a someday relationship.

This doesn’t result in the buddies look excellent, demonstrably, but maintaining monitoring of and maintaining in contact with alternate intimate leads is a type of thing for people to accomplish, even in the event it really is rarely in such an exaggerated, sitcommy method. a current research published in Computers in Human Behavior dubs these interactions “backburner relationships.” A backburner, as defined by the research, is “a individual to who one is perhaps maybe not currently committed, in accordance with who one keeps a point of interaction, so that or establish the likelihood of future intimate and/or sexual participation.”