If you’ve ever stared at that little pinwheel on your Mac, waiting for something to open that never does, you know the feeling of future-faking. You’re stuck in a relationship loop. You wait for something to happen, a promise to be kept, a trip to be taken, or a change to show up, but deep down, you start to wonder if it ever will happen.
Future-faking shows up in so many relationships. It’s that ongoing cycle of just wait, it’s going to get better. Maybe it’s the partner who keeps promising a trip you’ll never go on, or the engagement that’s always coming soon.
Clients tell stories like this over and over for six years together, endless talk of vacations or marriage, yet nothing ever actually materializes. There’s always an excuse, always another reason to hold on just a little longer. We hold on because we want to believe it. We want to believe that this time will be different, that the plans we have been told are real.
But here’s the truth: future faking is built on false hope. It’s a way to keep you emotionally invested while the other person does absolutely nothing to make those promises a reality.
Sometimes the faking starts small, a trip, a promise to pay off a bill, a vague plan about moving closer. But it escalates. Before long, it’s marriage, kids, buying a house, or building a life that never seems to arrive.
It is sneaky. You get caught up in the dream, not the real relationship, but the idea of what it could be. You start living in a movie of your own making, replaying the future in your head over and over, convincing yourself that it’s real because it feels so good to believe it could be.
Let’s be honest, we all do this. Sometimes we get hooked on the story because it gives us hope. It gives us something to work toward when reality feels hard.
We also learn this pattern early. Many of us grew up with a little bit of future-faking in our family dynamic, parents who said things like, “Next year will be different,” or “We’ll do that later.” We learned to hold on for something that never came.
If you grew up walking on eggshells or constantly trying to please, those codependent patterns we have carry right into adulthood. We end up in relationships where we are waiting for someone else’s potential to finally show up.
Future faking only works when we stop practicing discernment, that ability to see things clearly, to separate the fantasy from the truth.
Discernment isn’t being “woke.” Discernment is awareness. It’s being able to step back and say, “Okay, what’s actually happening right now? What’s real, and what’s the story I’m telling myself?”
It’s also realizing when you’re doing the future faking to yourself.
We all do it: “When I have this much money, I’ll finally be happy,” or “When I get that job, I’ll feel at peace.” That’s just another version of the same illusion. You’re kicking your own peace and happiness down the road.
When we buy into someone else’s future faking, or even our own, what we’re really doing is giving away our personal power. We’re saying, “My peace, my happiness, my stability, it depends on this future event or this other person.”
But it doesn’t. It depends on you.
It depends on your ability to see clearly, to stop living in the illusion, and to step back into your own authority. When you do that, you stop waiting for the movie to play out, and you start directing your own life again.
Your Turn
Here’s what I want you to think about:
Where in your life are you being future-faked or future-faking yourself?
What promises are you holding on to that have no real action behind them?
What stories are you telling yourself to stay in a situation that isn’t changing?
Once you can answer those questions honestly, you’ll see where you’ve been giving away your power, and how to take it back.
It’s time to stop waiting on that spinning wheel. Reset your system.
Get honest, get clear, and get back in the driver’s seat of your own life.
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