Monkey branching

Monkey branching, also called monkey barring, is lining up your next partner before ending your current relationship, like a monkey that keeps hold of one branch until it has the next. The overlap is the definition. Speed is not: starting something new after a breakup is rebound territory. We found no study of how these relationships end.

Updated October 5, 2026

Means

Lining up the next partner before you leave

First seen

October 24, 2005 as 'monkey barring' (Urban Dictionary); 'monkey branching' from December 2, 2010 (Urban Dictionary); in the press from January 2024; no Merriam-Webster entry found

Related terms

Rebound relationship, Micro-cheating, Cookie jarring, Orbiting, Situationship

Monkey branching, also called monkey barring, means lining up your next partner before you end your current relationship, like a monkey that will not let go of one branch until it has hold of the next. The 2010 Urban Dictionary entry for it was about women (Urban Dictionary, 2010). A thread on Mumsnet, a British parenting forum, started May 19, 2012, assumed men; it drew about 53 replies, and many said women do it too (Mumsnet, 2012). This page answers for everyone: the person left, the person tempted to leave, and the new partner. The comparison table sets it next to a rebound, micro-cheating, orbiting and cushioning.

Our rule of thumb: the tell is the date, not the speed. Moving on fast after a breakup is one thing. A relationship that was already running when the old one ended is another.

Signs of monkey branching (also called monkey barring)

Monkey branching, or monkey barring, leaves its evidence in the calendar. The signs below describe a timeline, not a person, and each one has an ordinary explanation. The table is ours, not tested at scale.

The fourth row has its own thread on The Student Room, a UK student forum: “She dumped me, and she updates her relationship status with another guy the same day,” started April 19, 2017, with about 18 replies. The poster asked: “Is there a possibility that I was wrong about the fact that she dumped me for this other fella?” One reply: “Possible but unlikely given the circs.” (The Student Room, 2017). That is about as much certainty as a timeline gives.

On Mumsnet, a thread called “Surviving being left for someone else,” started May 21, 2023, with about 8 replies, has the suspicion in one sentence: “People don’t move on with someone they’ve only known a week.” (Mumsnet, 2023). It may be right. It is still a suspicion.

Monkey branching vs a rebound, micro-cheating and orbiting

These terms differ mostly in when the behavior happens and who it is about. One of ours, not tested at scale.

Someone who starts dating after a breakup, however soon, is on the rebound page. Someone who was already with the new person on the day they ended things was overlapping.

The line that matters is between keeping someone in mind and lining them up. Communication researchers call the people kept in mind back burners. Dibble and Drouin surveyed 374 college students for a 2014 paper, and a 2015 paper by the pair and two colleagues reported two surveys, of 347 and 374 college students (Dibble & Drouin, 2014; Dibble et al., 2015). In Drouin’s 2016 summary of the 2015 paper, which does not say which of its two samples the figures come from, participants reported an average of 5.6 back burners. Of those with at least one, 49% were in touch with at least one of them at least weekly, and 32% of the sample said their current partner did not know they were communicating with any (Drouin, 2016).

In the 2014 paper, among students in committed relationships, back-burner activity was not related to commitment to or investment in the relationship, and Drouin’s summary says the same of how many back burners people had (Dibble & Drouin, 2014; Drouin, 2016). Our reading: keeping options in mind is common and, in these samples, did not go with lower commitment. Monkey branching is the point where one option becomes the exit.

Why people do it

The motive the explainers we read name most is fear of being single. That has been measured, though not for monkey branching. In seven studies published in 2013, Spielmann and colleagues found that fear of being single went with settling for less, beyond what anxious attachment explained. With made-up dating profiles, it went with more interest in less responsive and less attractive people. In speed dating, it went with being less selective, but not with how much interest others showed back (Spielmann et al., 2013).

Evolutionary psychologists give leaving for someone better a name of its own. David Buss and colleagues published a 2017 paper proposing the mate switching hypothesis (Buss et al., 2017). In an Aeon essay that October, Buss called it “My team’s new concept” and wrote: “Both women and men report cultivating back-up mates, potential replacements for their current mate should their relationships implode.” (Buss, 2017). It is a hypothesis, not a measurement. Our reading: in that framework a backup is standard equipment, not a disorder.

Sometimes it is plainer: meeting someone is what makes a person admit a relationship is over. A Mumsnet thread titled “Leaving someone for someone else.” started March 20, 2024, and drew about 29 replies, including the folk version of the term: “You feel guilty because you know it’s wrong, don’t be a monkey (only letting go of one branch when you have hold of another).” (Mumsnet, 2024b). On The Student Room, a thread started May 6, 2006, asked “Have you ever left a boyfriend/girlfriend for someone else? How did it turn out?” Among about 19 replies on its first page: “Yes, and now I’m getting married.” And: “But be careful, if you leave your current bf for this guy, whats going to stop you leaveing him for someone else?” (The Student Room, 2006).

Some pages explain it with a diagnosis. A HuffPost piece from February 27, 2026, “Monkey Branching Narcissists Quickly Move On After Breakups,” quotes Marie-Line Germain, a professor of human resources and leadership at Western Carolina University: “While it isn’t a formal clinical diagnosis, this behavior is a hallmark of narcissistic relationship patterns.” (HuffPost, 2026). We found no study of monkey branching and any diagnosis.

Stage lists circulate too. Attachment Project, which publishes one, adds its own warning: “The 6 stages of monkey branching is a popular framework, and it does align with theories like Rusbult’s model of commitment, but it’s not a psychological concept in its own right, so take it with a pinch of salt.” (Attachment Project, 2026). We left the stages out.

What to do about it, and do these relationships last?

We found no study that follows relationships which began as an overlap to see how long they last, and none of the lifespan pages we read cites one. The figures we found are client data or guesses; the rebound page’s table shows where one of them comes from.

The closest research is on mate poaching, where one partner was lured away from someone else. In three studies, Foster and colleagues found that people who had been poached by their current partner reported less commitment, satisfaction and investment, paid more attention to alternatives and reported more infidelity than people who had not (Foster et al., 2014). It did not measure how long the relationships lasted.

Knopp and colleagues at the University of Denver followed 484 adults through two mixed-gender relationships. Those who reported having sex with someone else during the first were three times as likely to report doing so in the next, after controlling for demographic risk factors and regardless of gender or marital status (Knopp et al., 2017). That is a measured risk in one sample, not a forecast about any couple.

The forums report both endings. On Mumsnet, “Will this relationship last?”, started January 14, 2024, drew about 33 replies. Two or three predicted it would end, and one answered the title: “Nobody can possibly know if his new relationship will last two more weeks, or if they will get married and live happily together until one of them dies.” (Mumsnet, 2024a). In “Doesn’t ever work with the other woman?”, started January 21, 2025, with about 14 replies, of the replies we read, most described relationships that lasted, several unhappily, and we counted none as a clear failure. One said: “They are very happily married and still together 13 years on.” (Mumsnet, 2025).

Our view: we found no source that can tell you whether theirs will last, and neither can we.

If you were left:

1. Leave the new couple’s feeds alone. Tracking cannot settle it. Only the start date can, and a feed does not show that. Watching from a distance has its own page, orbiting, and the research on getting over someone, whatever the label was, is on how to get over a situationship.
2. Keep the timeline you were given. If the dates do not settle it, you may not find out.

If you are tempted to branch:

3. End it first. The overlap is what turns leaving for someone into monkey branching. One of ours, not tested at scale: “I’ve met someone, and I’m not going to start anything while we’re together, so I’m ending this now.” Scripts by stage are on how to end a situationship.

If you are the new partner:

4. Ask once how the last one ended. One of ours, not tested at scale: “I’d like to hear how things ended with your ex, and I’ll only ask once.” Then set the answer next to what you saw. Knopp’s study was about infidelity across two relationships, not about how either began, so it says nothing about the person in front of you.

What the research says

We found no study of monkey branching by name. What follows is the nearest research, read as abstracts and summaries, not full papers.

The word is older than its press. Urban Dictionary has “monkey barring” from October 24, 2005: “to set up another relationship before the present one is over,” with the image spelled out, “just as monkeys dont let go of one branch til they have another in sight” (Urban Dictionary, 2005). “Monkey branching” follows on December 2, 2010, in an entry about a girl who flirts as if single while she has a boyfriend: “she’s basically branching off from her boyfriend and establishing backups.” (Urban Dictionary, 2010). A 2022 entry adds that “some people do it at the dinner table” (Urban Dictionary, 2022). In the 2012 Mumsnet thread, a reply half-remembered it as a proverb: “isn’t there a saying about this ‘a monkey won’t let go of one branch ‘til he has hold of another’ or something.” (Mumsnet, 2012).

The earliest dated explainer we found ran on June 9, 2019, on Magnet of Success, an ex-recovery coaching site (Magnet of Success, 2019). The press came in two waves. In January 2024, The Good Men Project called it “The Latest Dating Term You’ve Probably Never Heard Of” (The Good Men Project, 2024), and the ETX Daily Up wire followed two weeks later (Free Malaysia Today, 2024). In August 2025, Vice quoted Angelika Koch, a relationship expert at the dating app Taimi, and pointed to a forum post from about 2015 (Vice, 2025). In September 2025, a Nexstar wire story called monkey-barring “the newest term,” while noting that “People on social media have shared their experiences with this phenomenon for years, sometimes calling it ‘monkey branching.’” (Nexstar, 2025). The newest term of 2025 was twenty years old. We found no Merriam-Webster entry when we checked on October 5, 2026 (Merriam-Webster). Outside dating, Wiktionary’s verb monkey-branch also covers work: improving one’s status by moving to better options “as they become available” (Wiktionary).

What each study measured, and what it did not:

• Schmitt and Buss ran four studies of mate poaching, with 236, 220, 453 and 333 participants. How well poaching worked depended on the relationship targeted, a list that included ones “just beginning, or about to end.” The paper is about attempts and tactics, not about how the new relationships went (Schmitt & Buss, 2001).
• Foster and colleagues ran three studies of people who had been poached. Per Pacific Standard, the first followed 84 young people with a mean age of 19 over nine weeks, the second had 219 with a mean age of 20, and 10% to 30% of participants said their relationship had begun that way (Pacific Standard, 2014). The two longitudinal studies gave “conflicting evidence” on whether the problems develop over time or are stable. There is no measure of duration (Foster et al., 2014).
• Knopp and colleagues measured reported sex outside the relationship across two relationships per person, not how either relationship began (Knopp et al., 2017).
• The back-burner papers counted college students’ alternatives, how often they talked to them and what partners knew. They followed no one through a breakup (Dibble & Drouin, 2014; Dibble et al., 2015).
• Spielmann and colleagues measured fear of being single and how selective people were, not overlapping relationships (Spielmann et al., 2013).
• Buss and colleagues’ 2017 paper proposes the mate switching hypothesis. We could not open its abstract, so Buss’s Aeon essay is our source for the idea (Buss et al., 2017; Buss, 2017).

Brumbaugh and Fraley’s study of moving on fast after a breakup, rather than before it, is on the rebound page.