The dating dictionary

What is monkey branching? The signs, and whether it counts as cheating

By Matthew Firth, founder of NexSpark · Aug 9, 2026 · 8 min read

Monkey branching is lining up your next relationship before letting go of the one you are in. The metaphor is a monkey moving through trees: you keep hold of the branch you have until your hand is safely around the next one.

The physician and writer Bruce Y. Lee described the mechanic in Psychology Today in September 2025: “You keep holding on to one bar until you have securely grabbed and swung over to another one.”

You will also see it called monkey barring. Same behaviour, and worth knowing that the two names have split, because searching for one will not always find the other.

The honest test for whether it is cheating

This is the question most people arrive with, and there is a cleaner answer than the usual argument about definitions.

Lee's version is the most useful I have read: “Ask yourself whether you would be afraid of being completely open about your monkey-barring ways with your partner. If the answer is 'yes' in any way, there's a good chance that it can be considered cheating.”

That works because it sidesteps the technicality entirely. Nothing physical has to have happened. If the arrangement only survives because your partner does not know about it, the concealment is the answer. Most people already know what the honest response to that question is before they finish reading it.

It is often not a plan

The word makes it sound calculated. The clinicians who talk about it mostly say otherwise.

Devyn Simone, a matchmaker interviewed by NewsNation in September 2025, put it directly: “Interestingly, the person often doesn't even realize they were doing it or that they have a pattern until I call it out.” She connects the pattern to anxious-preoccupied attachment, and describes the underlying motive this way: the behaviour “is about trying to escape the discomfort of being with yourself.”

The psychologist Brittany McGeehan made a similar point to Parade in September 2025, noting that this is not a clinical term and can be “a nervous system survival pattern, not always a calculated choice.”

Her colleague Kathy McMahon added the line that puts the trend in proportion: “In earlier decades, we might have described it as an 'exit affair,' 'emotional affair' or simply 'being a jerk.' What's new is the catchy metaphor.”

That is worth holding on to. The behaviour is old. The name is new, and a new name is not evidence of a new epidemic.

How it differs from a rebound, and why that difference matters

People collapse these two, and there is research that makes the distinction sharper than you would expect.

A 2015 study in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships looked at how quickly people entered new relationships after a breakup. The finding ran against the folk wisdom: “the speed with which they began their relationship was associated with greater psychological and relational health.” Rebounds, in other words, may be better for people than they are given credit for.

Here is the part that matters, and that most coverage skips. The researchers explicitly removed from their second study the participants whose relationships had overlapped. The finding is evidence about rebounds. It is not evidence about monkey branching, because monkey branching is defined by the overlap.

So the structural difference is not timing. It is honesty. A rebound starts after something ended. Monkey branching starts before, while someone is still being told the relationship is fine.

The signs, if you suspect it

None of these is proof on its own. Together they form a shape.

A new name appears often and casually. Introduced early and mentioned lightly, which tends to be pre-emptive normalising rather than concealment.

Phone habits change before anything else does. Usually the earliest visible shift.

Conflict stops rather than resolves. Disengagement can look like peace. Someone who has mentally left often stops bothering to argue.

They are unusually interested in your independence. Encouraging you toward your own plans and friendships can be generous. Alongside the rest of this list it can also be groundwork.

The breakup arrives fully formed. The clearest retrospective sign. A decision that seems to come from nowhere and is entirely settled was usually made weeks earlier, elsewhere.

What the back burner research adds

There is a related and slightly uncomfortable finding here. A 2014 study of 374 people introduced the term “back burner” for a romantic prospect someone stays in contact with while not being committed to them.

Among people in committed relationships, the researchers found no relationship between back burner activity and how committed or invested those people were in their actual partner.

That complicates the neat story. Keeping options in peripheral vision did not, in that sample, indicate a relationship on its way out. Which suggests the line worth drawing is not about who is in someone's contacts. It is about whether they are actively building the next relationship while representing the current one as fine.

If you recognise yourself in this

Two things are worth saying, because most writing on this treats the reader as the wronged party only.

Lee makes a practical point that has nothing to do with morality: the habit tends to shrink your prospects rather than protect them. People who become known for it get ruled out by exactly the partners they were hoping to reach.

And the more useful observation is Simone's. If the pattern is really about escaping the discomfort of being alone with yourself, then the next branch will not fix it, because the next branch is not the problem. That is a difficult thing to sit with and a much better use of the recognition than a new relationship would be.

Frequently asked questions

What is monkey branching in a relationship?

Monkey branching is when someone begins building their next relationship before ending the one they are currently in, keeping hold of the existing partner until the new connection feels secure. It is also called monkey barring. The defining feature is overlap: the new relationship starts while the old one is still being presented as intact.

Is monkey branching the same as cheating?

Not always in the physical sense, and the useful test is not about definitions. As Bruce Y. Lee put it in Psychology Today, ask whether you would be afraid to be completely open with your partner about it. If the honest answer is yes in any way, the concealment is doing the work that infidelity usually does, whatever you call it.

Is monkey branching the same as a rebound?

No, and the difference is the overlap rather than the timing. Research from 2015 found that entering a new relationship quickly after a breakup was associated with better psychological and relational health, but that study specifically excluded participants whose relationships overlapped. A rebound follows an ending. Monkey branching precedes one.

Why do people monkey branch?

Clinicians who discuss it generally describe it as avoidance rather than strategy. The matchmaker Devyn Simone links it to anxious-preoccupied attachment and to escaping the discomfort of being alone, and the psychologist Brittany McGeehan describes it as potentially a nervous system survival pattern rather than a calculated choice. Many people doing it do not recognise the pattern in themselves.

What are the signs someone is monkey branching?

A new name appearing often and casually, phone habits changing before anything else does, conflict stopping rather than resolving, unusual encouragement toward your own separate plans, and a breakup that arrives already fully decided. No single sign means much. The combination, particularly the last one in hindsight, is the pattern.