I Don’t Get How People Can Fake Relationships. I Can Hardly Fake A Smile

I’m told I wear my emotions on my sleeve. In reality, I probably wear it right on my face. I seriously can’t fake a smile or a friendly tone. What I’m feeling comes right out, whether I want it to or not.

Given that, I really don’t get how people are able to fake entire relationships.

Fake relationships come in a lot of shapes and sizes. Some are based on money, some are because a pregnancy has happened. Even worse, some are because of intense sexual energy and a desire to take possession of each other.

Whatever the reason, there are some telltale signs of these fake relationships.

Fake relationships involve way too much PDA.

People in a fake relationship know exactly what’s going on. Everything is surface about their relationship. They’ve come together for one of the reasons already discussed and are lurching through it together. To cover up for the fact that their relationship is fake, they’ll often engage in excessive and, frankly, kind of gross public displays of affection. And most of the time, you don’t get one without the other.

These fake partners are stuck to each other like flies on bullcrap. Fake relationships often come with a good amount of codependency and possessiveness. And while in your presence, they have no issue with getting into each others’ spaces. The excessive public displays of affection come one after the next, and it’s enough to make anyone uncomfortable. I can just imagine the look on my face…

Fake relationships have no communication.

In a fake relationship, the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, so to speak. The two people generally keep each other out of the loop and don’t communicate important things. This is probably the biggest failing point of any relationship. Without communication, resentment builds. And resentment can eventually turn into a strong dislike.

People in a fake relationship don’t bother to communicate because the goal of communication, improvement and openness, aren’t an actual objective. And until that does become an objective of the relationship, it’ll remain mired in fakeness.

Fake relationships are full of fake moments.

Any time I see an Instagram profile of a couple and every picture is somehow playing up the relationship, I get the immediate sense that I’m looking at one of these fake relationships. Excessive public displays of affection can begin to come into play here as well. Are they really constantly on the go, visiting someplace new, and making out there because they enjoy each other’s time or because they’re trying to put on a front?

Constant status updates about the relationship, every step of the relationship, are another dead giveaway. Oversharing about fights and makeup sex are list like excessive public displays of affection too.

Fake relationships lack serious plans and discussions.

Maybe the most potent sign of a fake relationship is the complete and utter lack of direction toward anything productive or any shared goals. In a real relationship, the two parties involved grow and change together. They may not walk lockstep toward the same ultimate objective, people grow in different directions sometimes. But these goals act as a shared objective, something that both want to achieve.

But in a fake relationship, deeper discussions about plans just simply don’t happen because it’s not an important objective of the relationship. There’s something else keeping them in it, be it a kid or reasonably good sex. But shared goals definitely aren’t.

Now it’s not to say that a fake relationship can’t be made into a real one.

Nearly any relationship where there’s some common ground can work out. But fake relationships only become real relationships when the work is put in to make them better.