Commitment-phobe and the dangerous game of future faking

“From the very beginning, we talked about family, marriage, kids. It was not casual — it was constant. We were planning our future together; we were talking about names of our kids; we were going to jewellery stores where he asked my ring size... I genuinely believed I was building a life with this man.” Digital creator Anastasiia shared this story on Instagram at the end of last year in a three-part post. She described a fairytale experience that many women dream of

— meeting a man, feeling an instant, “magical” chemistry and connection, and swiftly beginning to create a shared vision of a future together. “Back then, it felt like love, it felt like destiny,” she continues. But what followed was far less romantic. As time went on, none of the big plans came to fruition; her partner seemed to be all talk, no action. “The proposal was always delayed for some fake reason,” she says. “It turned into an emotional rollercoaster of manipulation, a complete disconnect between his words and actions. And I stayed in that dynamic, hooked and confused, trying to make sense of things that didn’t make sense.”

Further down the line, Anastasiia discovered that her ex had been deceiving her in various ways and managed to extricate herself from the relationship. She now believes she was a victim of “future faking”, a new buzzword popularised by social media to describe the experience of being sold the dream of a future together by the person you’re dating — but that dream never becomes a reality. Or, as Anastasiia describes it, “building an illusion of a future he never actually planned to give me”.

Taylor Swift

Future faking can often go hand-in-hand with love bombing, another fairly recent term for when someone overwhelms a new paramour at the beginning of a relationship with excessive affection, attention and praise. It might initially feel like you’re being swept off your feet; in reality, this behaviour creates a frenzy of emotional intensity and breaks down boundaries too quickly in place of true intimacy, which takes time to build.

Like many things, the concept of future faking is nothing new, even if the terminology is. Taylor Swift seemingly made reference to it following a six-year relationship with actor Joe Alwyn, singing, dedicated a song during the track “loml” on her 2024 post-break-up album The Tortured Poets Department. Then there’s the straight-up manipulation of talking someone into bed, the classic risk that women, in particular, are warned about: that a man will say whatever they want to hear to get them intimate. The character of Samantha in Sex and the City was memorably the unexpected victim of this romantic duping in the episode “They Shoot Single People, Don’t They?” when she’s lured in by a club owner who refers to them as a “we” and immediately starts painting an enticing picture of a future together... before abruptly ghosting her.

However, most of the time this kind of “deception” isn’t necessarily intentional, according to the experts. “Most people say these things because they really believe it,” explains Julie Menanno, a marriage and family therapist and author of Secure Love: Create a Relationship That Lasts a Lifetime. “They’re not just trying to be manipulative.”

Future faking can be a result of the idyllic honeymoon phase at the beginning of a relationship. “When two people come together and they’re attracted to each other, they get along, they share the same interests, there’s a lot of compatibility, it’s really easy to say, ‘This would be great — look, we can have this wonderful future together,” says Menanno. “And that’s safe, because there’s no downside yet, right?”