Future Faking: When Promises Keep You Waiting Without Progress

By Todd Doyle, author of Healing the Shattered: Surviving Narcissistic Abuse

Future faking is a promise about the future, marriage, moving in together, a trip, a fresh start, that creates hope and buys time, without ever turning into an actual plan with real steps.

What It Sounds Like

“Once things settle down, we’ll…” “I promise we’ll get there.” “Just give it a little more time.” The promise is specific enough to create hope, vague enough to never require a concrete next step.

The Difference From a Real Plan

A real plan has a next step: a date, a conversation, an action both people take. “We’ll talk to a realtor next month” is a plan. “We’ll definitely get a place together eventually” is a promise with nothing underneath it. The difference isn’t how big the promise is; it’s whether there’s anything scheduled, specific, or trackable attached to it.

Why It Works

Hope is a powerful reason to stay patient. As long as the promised future still feels possible, it can feel premature to raise concerns about the present. Future faking relies on that patience never running out, and often arrives at exactly the moments when patience is starting to wear thin, a renewed, bigger promise right as doubt starts to creep in.

How This Can Keep You Invested Longer Than You’d Expect

Each new promise effectively resets the clock. If the relationship has already involved a year of “someday,” a fresh, specific-sounding promise can make that year feel like it was simply the lead-up, rather than evidence that the pattern itself is the problem. This is part of why future faking is so effective at extending relationships well past the point where a pattern would otherwise have become obvious.

A Way to Check

Look at promises made six months or a year ago. Did any of them turn into an actual, scheduled step? A pattern of promises with no accountable follow-through is worth noticing on its own, separate from how sincere any individual promise felt. A useful practice: the next time a future promise is made, ask directly for one concrete next step and a timeframe, and notice how the conversation responds to that specific ask.

See The Narcissistic Abuse Cycle: Understanding the Model and Its Limits for how this can fit into a broader pattern.

This article provides general education and a survivor’s perspective. It does not diagnose another person or replace individualized mental health care or safety planning.