Toxic new 'monkey-barring' dating trend is on the rise but experts explain why it's considered ‘cheating’
Topics: Sex and Relationships, Community, Life
Britt Jones
Featured Image Credit: Getty Images/Dmitrii Marchenko
Topics: Sex and Relationships, Community, Life
New dating terms come and go, but this one is here to stay because we all know someone who is ‘monkey-barring’.
There have been so many dating terms, it can be hard to keep up. There was breadcrumbing, ghosting, masterdating, banksying, and microromancing on the cards in the last few years.
Now, there’s ‘monkey-barring’, and it’s not a good thing to do - for both you or for those you’re dating.
While you might immediately conjure up thoughts of swinging on a monkey bar at a playground, when it comes to the dating world, it just means to hop from one relationship to the other.
However, there needs to be an overlap.
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Essentially, a person who is monkey-barring is in a relationship, but will create new connections with someone else at the same time. Then, they will leave their current partner for this new connection and repeat the cycle again and again.
It’s like having one foot in their relationship, with the other constantly out and in search of greener pastures.
Even though it might seem perplexing to do, it does speak of a larger problem warring inside of the person.
If you are a monkey-barrer or know of one, it could spell inner conflict that hasn’t yet been addressed.
Not only can it flag something going on internally, but it’s also not great to be the person that’s being hopped to and from whenever the monkey-barrer feels it isn’t working anymore.
Experts have commented on the phenomenon, and their opinions open up a whole explanation as to why someone might monkey-bar, and what it means about their emotional state.
It's also a form of cheating, as a person is forming intimate connections outside of their relationship.
According to Angelika Koch, a relationship expert at Taimi who spoke to Vice, those who partake in this type of relationship pendulum swinging are afraid of the work it takes to sustain a relationship.
She explained: “People who do this often lack emotional growth, because they are constantly moving through life in a fear-based manner to avoid the hard work it takes when healing from wounds in a past relationship.”
She went on to say that ‘jumping from one potential partner to the other doesn’t allow you room to truly grow and get to know yourself’ and this ‘fear-based action’ is usually based on co-dependency.
Koch went on to claim that people who do it enjoy the ‘thrill’ because it ensures they’ll never be alone.
The downside of this is that 'jumping from one potential partner to the other doesn’t allow you room to truly grow and get to know yourself'.
Monkey-barring is not to be confused with polyamory, which is when two or more people consent to multiple relationships.
It doesn’t come with consent, and it’s instead based on codependency and is arguably a form of cheating, while polyamory is based on 'the ability to love several people romantically at once and isn’t cheating because everyone involved consented'.