Real love feels steady, even when it’s not perfect.
Fake love, on the other hand, often looks exciting at first but leaves you feeling exhausted, confused, or never quite good enough. It’s the kind that comes with big promises but little follow-through, where affection feels conditional and everything seems to revolve around what you can give, not who you are. It can take a while to pick up on because it often hides behind charm and intensity, but eventually, the cracks start to show.
Fake love isn’t always malicious, of course. Sometimes it’s born from someone’s own fears or emotional immaturity, but it can still do real damage. When you start noticing patterns of control, inconsistency, or manipulation, it’s worth paying attention. Learning to recognise the signs of fake love doesn’t make you cynical. Really, it just makes you smarter about who deserves your heart.
They love bomb you at the start, then pull back,
The beginning is intense, with constant attention, grand gestures, and declarations that feel too good to be true. Then suddenly they cool off once they’ve got you hooked, leaving you confused and chasing that initial feeling.
Of course, real love builds steadily. Fake love uses intensity to create dependency quickly, then withdraws to keep you off balance and trying to earn back what you had at the start.
Their actions never match their words.
They say all the right things about commitment and feelings, but their behaviour tells a completely different story. Promises get made and broken repeatedly while they insist they care deeply about you.
With genuine love, words and actions align naturally. Fake love relies on words to cover for the absence of actual care or effort, using what you want to hear to distract from what they’re not doing.
Their “love” comes with conditions and requirements.
Their affection depends on you meeting certain standards, behaving in specific ways, or doing things that benefit them. When you don’t perform as expected, the warmth disappears until you comply again.
Real love accepts you as you are. Fake love is transactional, offered only when you’re being who they want you to be, rather than loving the actual person you already are.
They keep you separate from their real life.
You don’t meet their friends or family, they’re vague about their daily life, and you’re not integrated into anything meaningful. You exist in a bubble separate from their actual world.
Genuine love wants to share life with you. Fake love keeps you compartmentalised because integrating you would complicate whatever else they’ve got going on or reveal truths they’re hiding.
It’s all about what you can do for them.
The relationship centres on their needs, their problems, their goals. Your role is to support, provide, or serve them, while your own needs get ignored or dismissed as selfish. There’s no other dynamic that exists between you.
Real love involves mutual care and give and take. Fake love uses the appearance of caring to extract what they want from you while giving back as little as possible.
They’re only present when it suits them.
They disappear when you need support but expect you to drop everything when they need something. Availability is one-sided, with them deciding when contact happens based solely on their convenience.
Genuine love shows up consistently. Fake love treats you like a resource to be accessed when useful and ignored when they’ve got better options or don’t need anything.
You feel anxious rather than secure about the relationship.
The relationship creates constant uncertainty and worry about where you stand. You’re never quite sure if they actually care or if you’re about to be dropped without warning.
Real love creates security even through difficulties. Fake love keeps you anxious on purpose because insecure people are easier to control and less likely to leave or demand better treatment.
They compare you to other people all the time.
Your worth gets measured against exes, other people they know, or impossible standards. The comparisons keep you feeling inadequate and grateful they’ve chosen you despite your supposed shortcomings.
Genuine love sees you as an individual. Fake love uses comparison as a tool to keep you insecure and trying harder to measure up to standards designed to keep you feeling less than.
Affection is used as punishment and reward.
Warmth and coldness get switched on and off based on your behaviour. When you please them, affection flows. When you don’t, it gets withdrawn to manipulate you back into line.
Real love doesn’t weaponise affection. Fake love uses the presence or absence of warmth to train you like an animal, conditioning you to do what they want to receive basic care.
They refuse to discuss the future.
Any attempt to talk about where things are going gets shut down or deflected. They want the benefits of a relationship without committing to anything that would limit their options.
Genuine love can discuss futures even if uncertain. Fake love avoids these conversations because they’re keeping you in limbo on purpose, maintaining access while remaining free to bail whenever.
They never apologise or take responsibility.
When they hurt you, it somehow becomes your fault for being too sensitive or misunderstanding. Apologies don’t happen because admitting wrongdoing would mean acknowledging you deserve better treatment.
Real love owns mistakes and tries to repair harm. Fake love twists everything so you end up apologising to them for being upset about how they treated you.
The relationship makes you smaller.
Your confidence, friendships, interests, and sense of self gradually shrink. You become less of who you were, moulding yourself to fit what they want and losing parts of yourself in the process.
Genuine love helps you grow. Fake love needs you diminished because confident, whole people are harder to control and more likely to recognise poor treatment and leave.
They’re charming to everyone except you.
Other people see them as wonderful, but in private, you get the worst version. In public, they’re attentive and loving, in private they’re cold or cruel, making you question your own reality.
Real love treats you as well as or better than other people. Fake love saves the good performance for people whose opinion matters, while treating you poorly because they’ve already got you secured.
You’re always trying to earn their love.
Nothing you do feels like enough. You’re constantly working to prove you deserve their affection, which always feels just out of reach, no matter how much you give.
Genuine love isn’t earned through performance. Fake love keeps you striving for validation that will never come because keeping you chasing is how they maintain control over you.
Your gut keeps telling you something’s wrong.
Despite their words and occasional good moments, something feels off that you can’t quite name. Your instincts are screaming warnings, but you override them because you want to believe it’s real.
Real love might have doubts, but not persistent dread. Fake love triggers constant internal alarms that you ignore because admitting what you sense means facing that it’s not what you hoped it was.
