What is Future faking?
In short
Future faking — Big, vivid promises about a shared future — a trip, moving in together, meeting the family — used to fast-track closeness, with nothing behind them and no date ever attached.
Why a promise moves faster than a plan
People commit to imagined futures. Being written into someone's next year is about the strongest signal of seriousness we have, and unlike an actual plan it costs the speaker nothing to say. That is why it can be handed out so early. Sometimes it is calculated. More often the person means every word in the moment and simply never thinks past the feeling — which is not a kinder outcome for whoever is waiting.
It travels with love bombing and is often mistaken for it. The difference is the tense. Love bombing floods the present with attention that is happening right now. Future faking mortgages a future nobody has earned yet: you spend real time, real choices and sometimes real money against the promise, and the bill only arrives when the date never comes.
How to recognise it
- The plans are rich in detail and never acquire a date, a booking or a cost.
- You mention one weeks later and it has evaporated: no memory of it, no follow-up, sometimes mild irritation that you asked.
- The promises get bigger right after friction — an argument, or the moment you start pulling back.
- Anything that would mean doing something this week sits in a vague later: in the spring, once work calms down.
What to do about it
Make one promise smaller and nearer. Not the trip to the coast — a Saturday, this month, actually booked. Say it lightly: let's put a date on it. What happens next is the whole answer, and you get it without ever having to argue about what somebody meant. In the meantime, decide by what has happened rather than what has been described. Don't turn things down, move money or rearrange your year around a plan with no date on it.
Plenty of people say these things, mean them completely, and then do not do them. That is still worth knowing when nobody was lying: it tells you about reliability rather than honesty, and you live with the reliability either way. The record of what actually got done is the part you can count on, and it spares you the argument about intent.
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