Are you cushioning in dating, or mistaking comfort for connection?

Every winter, the cycle repeats. Cuffing season—the time of year when companionship starts to feel like survival—returns with a familiar urgency. Across dating apps, messages surge between November and February. Studies link it to reduced sunlight and serotonin, but in India, it’s also associated with wedding season, family dinners, and aunties asking when you’re finally settling down.

The pressure to find someone, anyone, creates a softer, more strategic kind of romance. It’s what’s now called ‘cushioning’ in dating, or the act of keeping someone around to make loneliness easier to bear. 

Bharat Bhat, a Mumbai-based lawyer, decided to give cuffing season a try two years ago. “It’s easy to fall into the trap of swiping or giving a shot to someone you weren’t originally inclined toward, especially when you see couples on social media, couples attending concerts, in romantic movies, or celebrating the festive season, besides the weather prompting cuddling,” he says. An uncomfortable party later, he realised she wasn’t his type after all.

That’s the essence of cushioning in relationships—settling for someone to soften the loneliness. “We all want comfort when the world turns quiet. Sometimes it’s just familiar loneliness,” says Lalthang Khuptong, a Delhi-based communications and culture consultant who admits he has indulged in it unintentionally. For many in their twenties, cushioning is less about strategy and more about uncertainty. It becomes a way to stay connected while figuring out what they actually want.

What is ‘cushioning’ in dating and why it’s trending in India

Today’s daters are self-aware about the cushions they collect. “Women I knew liked me but I didn’t date them. I could text and meet them if I was lonely,” says Sahil Kakar, a Mumbai-based publicist. “But I made sure I told them it was just temporary so that there were no expectations.” Things got complicated when emotional intimacy entered the picture. For four months, Kakar spent hours on the phone with a woman he never planned to date seriously. He finally stepped back, realising she might be getting attached. 

Dating apps and social media have made cushioning in dating more frequent. A 2023 study found that the integration of social media into daily life made it easier than ever to keep people around without meaningful commitment. “Dating apps in particular give us the illusion that there are endless options,” the study notes, “which can leave some people stuck in a state of decision paralysis, leading people to keep others around, just in case.” 

Having options isn’t necessarily guilt-worthy. Pop culture normalised it years ago. In Dear Zindagi (2016), Dr Jehangir Khan (Shah Rukh Khan) tells Kaira (Alia Bhatt) not to buy the first chair she sits on. The metaphor doubled as a relationship mantra for millennials—test what’s out there before settling.  “Sometimes, you have the realisation to settle for your back-up plan only after going through the ordeal on dating apps,” says Bohni—who  goes by her first name—a Kolkata-based writer and editor.  She ended up dating her friend-turned-backup option. “It was quite bitchy of me. He was a great friend, a potential life partner, and we got along well.” It eventually ended in guilt and resentment.

A 2017 study found that attachment style—not relationship status—predicts this behaviour. Insecurely attached people rely on backups for emotional security; avoidant types use them to stay distant; anxious types do it from a fear of abandonment. “People who practise cushioning in dating also do it to maintain a ‘main character energy’,”  says Sheena Sood, consultant psychologist and counsellor, P.D Hinduja Hospital, Mumbai. “[They like] the fantasy of getting constant attention. But it only creates more confusion.” 

How pop culture and Bollywood made cushioning aspirational 

Bollywood has long romanticised cushioning in relationships through the friends-to-lovers trope. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) is a classic example. It framed Rahul’s (Shah Rukh Khan) emotional indecision as destiny, not selfishness. Kal Ho Naa Ho (2003), rewarded Naina’s (Preity Zinta) fallback marriage with stability. Actor Jimmy Shergill built a career playing characters of men left behind for the real “hero”—Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hai(2002), Dil Vil Pyar Vyar(2002), Happy Bhag Jayegi (2016), Tanu Weds Manu (2011), and Tanu Weds Manu Returns (2015). EvenLove Aaj Kal(2009) made Rahul Khanna’s dependable husband a joke. 

Like in those films, real-life cushioning blurs between care and convenience. Kakar’s ex left him for a friend she had kept around as a back-up option. “When actors like Deepika Padukone publicly talk about how they would see other people and then go back to Ranveer Singh (an episode of Koffee With Karan), it becomes almost aspirational,” he says.

The friends-to-lovers trope in Bollywood suggests that settling for comfort is romantic, not lazy. “A lot of people, especially when they get out of a relationship, want to feel understood, so they turn to a friend for intimacy. When that friendship has always been an anchor, it’s easy to romanticise it,” says Mrittika Maitra, a Gurugram-based marketing personnel. “But, force-fitting romance into friendship doesn’t work; you also lose a friend in the process.”

Maitra dated a friend out of convenience, and a month later it got too awkward and obvious that it wasn’t going to work. When she tried to break up with him, he panicked and dumped her a week later because he didn’t want to date someone who didn’t prioritise him. He also refused to stay friends with her. “He liked me because of convenience. I was just around him often enough and it’s easy to form a relationship with someone when you are starved for companionship,” she says. 

The emotional cost of being someone’s ‘cushion’

Convenience is what makes cushioning in dating work. It allows one person to stay emotionally detached, while the other becomes unknowingly invested. The lack of empathy is what often turns it cruel. 

As depicted in How I Met Your Mother(2005-2014), marrying a friend if both people are unmarried by the time they turn 40 shows how the back-up becomes the consolation prize. “It made emotional limbo look cute or harmless. In reality, it hurts. It blurs lines and gives false hope. It turns people into emotional crutches instead of human beings with feelings and dignity,”says Khuptong, who has been through such an experience. “They moved on to someone else. It took me years to come out of that cycle of feeling worthless, always second-guessing myself, and constantly thinking that I was not worthy of love.”

Sood adds, “Feeling replaceable and unimportant creates self-doubt and anxiety that develops into negative self-perceptions. A person gains back their self-respect through setting boundaries and self-value affirmation after they choose to leave the relationship.” 

It also takes time to figure out where one stands. For Bhat, the realisation came slowly. After a few dates, the woman who he was seeing confided in him about her troubled past instead of her long-distance partner she was in an open relationship with. “I realised I was more of a comfort blanket to her, filling in the gaps her partner couldn’t provide–emotional warmth and some physical aspects,” he says. “It felt strange, because on the one hand you want the other person to want you but then you also question the lack of self-respect [in such an equation].” 

Why people cushion in relationships: Familiarity, fatigue, and fear of rejection 

It’s easier to deal with the known devil than risk the unknown. With dating apps offering endless options, cushioning in dating often feels less like deception and more like convenience. Why start from scratch when familiarity can offer temporary solutions? 

It’s exhausting to get to know a person and figure out if they have red flags which are non-negotiables. It’s simpler and more convenient to go back to a known minefield. “People are just lazy and want a relationship without putting in the work for it. It’s easy to put in the work for someone you already know,” says Bohni. 

After the exploration-heavy 20s, many singles begin to seek stability. “Irrespective of how independent you are, knowing that someone is there when you meet them comes as a great relief and is reassuring,”  she adds. 

A 2025 Bumble survey found that 95 per cent of singles worry about the future being shaped by whom and how they date. For 59 per cent of women, growing anxiety about the future has made reliability and emotional consistency more valuable than excitement or chemistry. 

Going back to a back-up option or even an ex can feel safer than starting afresh. It spares people the risk of rejection, something that still carries a heavy stigma, particularly for men. “Many people, especially men, don’t understand how to deal with rejection emotionally,” says Maitra. “Men also don’t think of it as getting rejected but as an opportunity to show tenacity and resilience by still pursuing, thanks to Bollywood films. This stems from the entitlement to female bodies. People don’t realise that pigtail pulling is violence that could eventually lead to an acid attack,” says Maitra. 

Bhat agrees, “Indian men, in general, have had a longstanding complaint of being friendzoned, just because the woman they are interested in hasn’t reciprocated. It doesn’t stop them from pursuing the woman.” This pattern of one-sided longing is romanticised in films like Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (2016), where Ayan (Ranbir Kapoor) refuses to be friendzoned by Alizeh (Anushka Sharma). The story frames emotional dependence into a form of pursuit. It’s not love, but a refusal to sit with discomfort.

In reality, cushioning in dating has less to do with love and more with distraction—a way to feel safe without taking responsibility.