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Key points
- "Benching" is when someone keeps you as a back-up in dating because that person is interested in someone else.
- Being benched doesn't feel good and can waste your time.
- A person may be benching you if they show limited availability, inconsistency, or one-sided interactions.
- Dating apps, the many available messaging options, and dating advice may be encouraging benching.
Have you ever felt like saying, "Put me in, coach, I can do it," when dating or trying to date someone? If so, that person may be "benching" you. Being benched in dating means that, unfortunately, you aren't a starter in that person's potential lineup of love. Instead, you are a backup, a member of the B team, a second fiddle, and basically a reserve who's being kept around by that person just in case he or she can't get someone more desirable.
Benching has become a new dating term to describe a practice that seems to be growing more and more common. There is even a hashtag #benching on social media such as TikTok that people have been using to describe their experiences. And—spoiler alert—many of those experiences have not been positive. You don't hear too many people saying, "You mean I'm number seven? Wow, I'm so lucky that he or she is sort of, kind of interested in me. Maybe someday I can move up to the sixth position."
Typically, someone will bench you because, let's be real, you aren't really what that person wants. You may have some elements attractive to the person such as a "nice" personality, a good sense of humor, dancing skills, a shoulder to cry on, the money to take him or her out to nice restaurants, or the ability to do your thing without requiring batteries or having to be plugged into an electric outlet.
But in that person's mind, all of that is not enough. That person may already be with someone else, be pursuing someone else, or at least have a theoretical someone else in mind. Think of that movie He's Just Not That Into You where that Kevin Connolly character kept courting that Scarlett Johansson character when she was actually more interested in that Bradley Cooper character.
So, unless your goal in dating is to forever be a backup, beware of the following signs that you've been benched:
- Limited availability: Of course, that person isn't the fire department or Netflix and doesn't need to be available at all hours. However, if the hours that you can connect seem overly restrictive, such as only between 7 pm and 9 pm on Mondays on odd-number days when the moon is in the Seventh House and Jupiter aligns with Mars, that's a bad sign.
- Inconsistency: Blowing hot and cold may be fine when it comes to pasta salad, but when a person acts in a very inconsistent manner, it may reflect their internal struggle about how they think about you. One common manifestation of inconsistency is when that person repeatedly changes plans at the last minute because a better option has emerged.
- One-sided interactions: If you are doing all the work with not nearly enough reciprocation, you are either being benched or dealing with a cat.
- That person talks a lot about other potential dates: This can be like someone going to the Olive Garden and then talking about the menu at Chez Panisse.
- That person tells you that you are being benched: Yeah, this one is hard to overlook. That person may or may not use the actual word "bench" and instead say something like "I just want to be friends", "Let's just take our time because 47 dinner dates are just not enough to get to know each other", or "I don't really want to date anyone right now, even though I am on Bumble, Hinge, Tinder, Hot Sauce Passions, and every dating site known to humankind."
- You feel like you are being benched: Listen to your intuition. It's not common to go from "I feel like I am being benched" one day to "Yep, we're exclusive" the next day.
Three trends may be feeding benching. One is the growth of online dating and dating apps that can make dating seem like shopping for clothes on Amazon, where a search for "cargo pants" will yield over 40,000 results. It can give people the illusion of choice and the opportunity to "select" many people at a time. It can also make potential dates seem more like, well, cargo pants, things to be tried on, worn for a while, maybe even roughed up a bit, and stored in a dresser drawer.
A second trend is the explosion of low-effort ways to stay in contact with many different people. It's now super easy to keep people engaged by sending a bunch of emojis and sharing cat videos. Heck, these days, with various algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) available, you may not even be exchanging messages with a real, live person.
A third trend is people, including some dating coaches, encouraging people to try benching others. The claim is that such a strategy will boost options and, in turn, confidence.
Umm, stringing along others may not be the best strategy. First of all, you are stringing along others. If you want more confidence, try taking up a hobby or improving yourself in some way. Plus, benching kind of defeats the whole purpose of dating, which is to find the right match, right? Benching wastes not only the benchee's time but also yours, time that could be better spent finding the right person. Moreover, you can't simply bench with impunity. The word could get out that you are a bencher. And if you are treating dating like a game, better-quality people may not be so game to play with you.
