Future faking is a slang term for when someone deliberately manipulates you by overpromising a grand future they cannot deliver on.
The manipulator, (often a narcissist), will hook you emotionally and lure you into giving them what they want by faking what (and how much) they can offer you in the future.
The term is usually used in dating, but future faking is common in all kinds of relationships. From bosses and employees to athletes and coaches, future fakers are not picky when it comes to which relational context they use this tactic.
The thing is, they are not picky about when to use this tactic, but it only works on those who are already needy of something (or who are unsuspecting).
In short, the narcissist can only get away with future faking on certain people, and what we want to do here is make sure that you are not in that basket of people they can easily manipulate!
CLICK Here to Learn the ONE thing you can say to ANY man that will capture his attention, trigger his curiosity and make him hang onto every word you say!
Future faking usually happens most intensely and frequently at the start of a relationship.
However, people with narcissistic personality disorder will use future faking at any time, even years into a relationship with you.
So why does it usually happen at the start of a relationship? Because time is on their side right at the beginning.
Early on in the relationship, someone can make over the top promises without being discovered, because not enough time has passed yet.
That’s why they come on strong with phoney future promises as early as possible.
Future faking also often happens at the beginning of romantic relationships because it allows a potential suitor to appeal to your vulnerabilities and emotions quickly, establishing greater control over you.
Here’s the deal:
Due in part to the fact that future fakers know they don’t actually have any real substance or game, they unconsciously developed the strategy of being charming and faking it til they make it.
Do you want to discover exactly how committed your guy can be to you? Find out with my quick and easy 10-question quiz below:
Fact: Some men will string you along for as long as you will tolerate and never fully commit to you. Answer these 8 questions to discover precisely how commitment friendly your man is.
1. When I speak to other guys, and give attention to other men...
He gets jealous and isn't afraid to show it.
I know he gets jealous underneath but he tries to keep it cool
He doesn't have a hint of jealousy!
I don't know.
2. How willing is he to have a fight or argument with me?
He tries hard to avoid fights or arguments
He always wants things his way and won't listen to me
He doesn't show any avoidance to arguments.
I don't know.
3. What is his relationship with his father like?
He has a huge respect and talks fondly of his father.
There's not really a relationship between him and his father.
He talks about his father with disdain.
I don't know.
4. When I first started dating him, he mentioned commitment & long term relationships
Quite often, and he has been happy talking about it.
Occasionally, and he's a bit guarded when talking about it.
Never, he never likes to mention commitment at all.
I'm not sure...
5. How many long term committed relationships has he had?
At least 3 long term relationships...
Just one or two.
He's never had a long term relationship before...
I don't know...
6. How often does he push for sex?
All the time, and he gets pissed off if I don't give him sex.
Rarely ever, he cares about how I feel.
Never, he is a real gentleman
I'm not sure...
7. How keen is he to introduce you to his friends and family
Very keen, he wants everyone to get along with me.
He's not sure, he says he needs to find the right time.
Not keen at all, he tends to avoid the topic and drag it out.
I'm not sure...
8. How much effort has he shown you that he wants to learn about your friends and family?
Not much at all, he never asks me about my friends or family.
On the odd occasion, but he doesn't care about it too deeply.
He is always very fascinated with my friends and family
I don't really know...
We are analysing your quiz results right now and preparing a comprehensive summary. (It's a 15 min read)
In your personalised results email, we will also give you free advice and coaching to help you inspire a deep sense of emotional commitment from the man of your choice, even if you've had no luck with men so far.
Please enter your first name and email below so that we can safely deliver your results and explanation to you. (As well as give you $3,765 worth of coaching bonuses!) And yes, we'll treat your email like it was our firstborn.
There are many reasons people use this tactic in interpersonal relationships, and not all of the reasons are malevolent.
People future fake because:
Related: Here are 5 Telltale Signs A Man Has Low Self Esteem.
If you want to spot a future faker, the first thing to know is that they will either:
Here are some specific examples of future faking…they may say things like:
Examples of future faking in contexts other than romantic relationships:
When your boss at work tells you that you’re working hard and doing exceptionally well, and if you keep that up you will bag the new, higher job position and a hefty raise.
But after working longer hours and even on weekends for months or years, you find that your boss always has a reason to keep you in your current position.
“Oh you’ll have that new position as soon as it’s approved by the big boss.”
Or…
“Ah, I’ll get around to promoting you in the new year..”
The weirdest thing happened to my family and I a few years ago.
My son is a well known jiu jitsu competitor in Australia, especially Melbourne. Though he’s young, he achieved the number 1 position for under 18s in the world at age 9 in one of the established jiu jitsu competitions worldwide.
We were looking for a new academy with *seemingly” better training for him, and we found one club that was over two hours drive (return trip included).
We showed up one day for kids training and the head coach immediately started talking to us about his unique method of training the kids and basically started flexing and telling grand stories (ahem, lies).
Anyway, you can probably imagine that it would’ve been valuable for my son to represent his club at competitions.
Over the course of a couple of months, he started intense future faking:
(That particular promise he actually delivered on for the first 2 months until one day he suddenly went cold), and we immediately offered to pay, and we kept up regular direct debits for months – and here’s the catch – he kept taking the payments even after we left the club.
He had no intention of stopping those payments. Gee, what a 180 he did – he couldn’t keep up the facade anymore, and nor did he care as he was busy trying to snag other good competitors now that he’d snagged us. And our money.
We never really believed this one, but it was so bizarre, and he also went cold over time.
We never even asked for any of this. We were happy to travel no matter what for the right training for our son, since it’s incredibly difficult to get good training at that age in that sport.
The coach also “love bombed” my son by giving him free items every time he showed up. From hoodies to key rings to lanyards to stickers to t-shirts, (a lot of them with his club’s logo on it, of course.
That was years ago now, and we were lucky that we managed to get our son out of that rather quickly.
That is partly thanks to my son’s incredibly sound gut feeling about the club (it was the only club in which he hated attending and didn’t want to wear the clothing that was given to him for free).
Hundreds of parents ended up leaving in anger after we left as well.
However, others aren’t so lucky because they’ve been stuck there for years, pandering to the coach, and now so deeply caught in his web of narcissistic control that they (and their kids) cannot leave.
I can attest to the fact that if you have a mentally ill, controlling and narcissistic parent, they will likely use future faking to manipulate you.
As a child, you might be quite vulnerable to these empty promises, but over time you begin to wise up to the fact that your parent has left a long trail of broken promises behind them.
Narcissists use future faking to keep you in their grasp, as they cannot bear (nor cope with) the idea of you leaving them.
You leaving them would disrupt their narcissistic supply catastrophically.
A mother or father who is using future faking to manipulate you might:
In my own case, my adoptive mother used to promise to play my favorite board game with me if I just got better at knowing my times tables than she ever was.
When I actually did accomplish that (I even received a trophy for my effort and skills at school and could out-recite her when it came to the times tables), she sat and played with me for half a game, and then lost her temper and said I wasn’t good enough at the game. She never played again, and I never asked again either.
That was when I was young.
When I got older and met and moved in with my now husband whom she has hated from day 1, she promised me a brand new Mercedes car if I would just leave him and come back home.
She did end up buying the Mercedes without talking to me about it. But it turns out it wasn’t really for me, it was for her. It was just conveniently used as a tool for gaslighting me.
It didn’t matter anyway, as I never took her seriously, never drove it – and thank goodness, I never returned home.
QUIZ TIME: Do I have secure or insecure attachment patterns? CLICK HERE to find out with our specially crafted women-specific 10 Question Quiz!
(Why is this important? It is because your core attachment style largely dictates and influences what happens in your relationship. Thus it’s imperative you understand your core attachment style!)
It’s harder to spot a future faker if you’re in need of what they’re promising or offering you. The more you need it, the more vulnerable you are to them, and the less you’ll be able to spot them.
But one thing you can do if you want to spot a future faker, is reveal and test them in intelligent ways. If they don’t pass the tests, you know they’re likely a love bombing future faker.
You test a future faker by:
Is he hooked on grandiosity and pretentiousness? Or does he have every intent to fulfil his promises?
When future faking, people often get really carried away with their need for glory and their desire to present themselves as this ultra powerful saviour.
But this requires rehearsing and acting on their part, which leaves no room at all for playfulness. That’s where your playfulness comes in to trip them up (in a good way). The spontaneity will cut through the rehearsed BS.
Their obsession with their false promises leads to them being highly myopic, focusing on the image they’re creating, as they’re incapable of actually connecting with you.
This facade and insincerity can be revealed very easily if you introduce some high value banter (which allows you to lead with playfulness) and spontaneity in your questions. (CLICK here to take my husband’s free high value banter class and get FREE banter examples.)
As myself and my husband tell the women we coach all the time: a guy who cannot banter back to you at your level is not actually there to form a real relationship with you, regardless of how grand their promises.
CLICK here to discover why you as a woman need to use the dark art of “High Value Banter” in order to quickly weed out the wrong types of men and create emotional attraction with the “BEST of MEN”! (…Even if no man has ever given you any love and all you’ve encountered so far are pen pals, ghosts, booty calls, and incredible duds!)
Not always. The behavioral patterns that lead people to engage in future faking can be so unconscious and so well practiced that they never give their own behavior a second thought.
Plus, honest self reflection isn’t a skill that narcissists possess, but it’s not even a skill that a lot of “normal” people possess.
Sometimes it’s just old patterns running, and it’s not a conscious attempt to make life miserable for you, as sometimes they don’t even know that they’re hurting you.
But that’s the best case scenario.
There are other people who are more calculating, and you could honestly say that they are intentionally trying to use you.
Specifically, use you as a pawn in their twisted game of succeeding in romance and reproduction.
No.
Sometimes, future fakers are otherwise normal people who possess some narcissistic traits. This is known as subclinical narcissism.
What you have to understand is that even some normal people use future faking. Why?
Well, it helps them solve adaptive problems. One example of these adaptive problems (in the context of dating) is how to pass on their own genes as quickly as possible.
What better way than to build a fantasy relationship in your mind based on a false promise or two, (or ten?)
If you buy into the future faking, that gives them the power to do what all living organisms instinctively want to do: reproduce.
Or at least, it gives them another option of whom to reproduce with.
You might think that this behavior definitely signals that they’re a narcissist. But that’s not true.
Narcissm is on a spectrum, so normal people can sometimes use future faking to achieve a goal in their interpersonal relationships.
Absolutely it is.
It’s a form of gaslighting because it’s a tool of control, which all gaslighting behavior is.
More: Gaslighting In A Relationship: 10 Examples & How To Stop It.
If you try to hold your partner accountable to all their promises and they don’t respond with empathy, warmth, compassion, you know that they’re gaslighting you.
Sometimes future faking can be an innocent mistake of overpromising and under delivering – but a genuine person won’t blame you for their own inability to deliver.
They’ll own their part in the whole situation.
SPECIAL REPORT: How to Become the World’s Most Attractive & Feminine Goddess (Even if you have no self esteem or no man has ever paid you any attention…) CLICK HERE to download it at no cost.
If you’ve just started dating, it’s relatively easy to stop someone in their tracks and walk away once you’ve noticed the red flags.
As long as you’re more emotionally attached to the negative consequences of getting involved with them than you are to their over the top promises, of course.
Recommended reading: 5 GIANT Red Flags In Men to NEVER Ignore.
But let’s say you’ve just started dating them and are already in too deep. What can you do?
This know is signalling to you that something is wrong, and that they are bad news.
We often try to overlook the uncomfortable, insincere statements of a narcissist because we’re getting so hooked and invested in the relationship with them that we feel guilty for doubting them!
Don’t let this happen. If you let this happen, you’re already falling victim to their gaslighting.
But what if you’re more emotionally involved and even months or years into a fake relationship with a future faker?
Here’s what you can do:
See the inconsistencies in their stories and words. If the best a guy can offer you is grand promises that never come to fruition, he won’t care about the details of what he’s said or promised in the past.
So for example, today he promised you 5 cupcakes on your birthday, but tomorrow it’s 2 cupcakes. That’s a red flag you need to take note of. Don’t brush it off, see it for what it is – a real inconsistency worth noting.
Best of luck out there! Remember, you’re the best person to have your own back. If you don’t have your own back, there’s a slim chance anyone else will.
Over to you now.
Do you have any personal examples of future faking you can share with me? I’d love to learn from you (as would other women). Looking forward to hearing from you in the comments below!
P.S. CLICK HERE to check out my full article archives! Or you may greatly benefit from one of our highly popular paid programs, CLICK HERE to see what we offer right now.
If you want to be supported by a warm community of high value feminine women, then join our Facebook Group. (It’s free and so incredibly valuable!) CLICK HERE TO join thousands of other women in our “High Value Feminine Women” Community.
By the way, while you’re at it, connect with me on social media.
Renee is the founder of The Feminine Woman & co-founder of Shen Wade Media where we teach women how to show up as a high value high status woman whom easily inspires a deep sense of emotional commitment from her chosen man. She graduated with a bachelor of Law and bachelor of Arts majoring in sociology and psychology. She has been a dating and relationship coach for women in the past 15 years and together with her husband D. Shen at Commitment Triggers blog, they have positively influenced the lives of over 20 million women through their articles and videos as well as 10’s of thousands through paid programs through the Shen Wade Media platform.
Connect deeper with her work through the social media links below.