Poor Kate feels like she’s drowning in a pool of overwhelming anxiety, thanks to the extreme uncertainty surrounding her relationship with Josh. She just doesn’t know where she stands with him. Hell, she’s completely in doubt of his feelings for her.
As a result, she couldn’t help but feel anxious, stressed, and overwhelmed out of confusion — despite that a part of her knows exactly what she was supposed to do: Walking out of the one-sided or unbalanced relationship.
Of course, she’s well aware that romantic relationships and the feelings of other people aren’t one of the easiest things to control. Because it’s just difficult to understand what’s going on in someone else’s mind. Hence, it’s quite normal for one to be uncertain about the true feelings of others toward him or her.
But she’s convinced that what she feels isn’t just uncertainty of not understanding what’s going on in her partner’s head and mind, but more of uncertainty caused by his unloving behaviors that aren’t in sync with his endless profession of love, adoration, and commitment.
If she’s having some little, naggling feelings of doubt and fear that her partner wouldn’t be faithful since her ex cheated, it would have been a different case. Because feelings of doubt, fear, and anxiety from such kinds of situations can be easily brushed off ’cause her partner isn’t her ex. Unless she’s yet to completely get over the pain caused by her ex.
But that’s not the kind of uncertainty, fear, and doubt she’s feeling now. As earlier hinted, it’s this deep feeling of uncertainty about her relationship that’s fueled by the unloving acts and behaviors of her man.
Now, the question is: Are you also wondering if your man is pretending to love you as Kate does?
Well, here are five signs someone you love and adore so much doesn’t just feel the same way towards you but has been pretending to love you all the while.
1. It doesn’t Feel like You’re a Priority
“You are a priority. Not an option, last resort, or toy. Don’t allow anyone to treat you like anything less.” – Ritu Ghatourey
With someone who doesn’t really love you, it might most times feel like you belong only to the back seat of their lives instead of being a top priority.
In other words, you’ll feel left behind and less important more often than you’ll feel otherwise.
Sure, it’s quite unrealistic and even unhealthy to expect your partner to always put you first no matter what, even when they’re going through something critical like dealing with the health concerns of a loved one, grueling, or even busy days at work, etc.
But that doesn’t mean there should be any justification for a relationship where you don’t matter enough to your man that he’ll constantly keep you waiting by your phone for his call, endlessly flake on you, put little to no effort to meeting your needs and wants, even up to the extent that you often feel alone and single, when you’re not.
It becomes even a bigger problem when you’re often being labeled or called overreacting or dramatic whenever you confront him about your position on his priority list or even his commitment to you and the relationship. Because it means he’s also being emotionally abusive and toxic.
See, it all boils down to this:
You shouldn’t let anyone confuse you into believing they love you when it constantly doesn’t feel like you’re in any way near a top priority in his life. Because he’s only pretending to love you and nothing more.
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2. He Thinks it’s Okay to Keep Disappointing You But not Others
“No one gets tired of loving, they just get tired of waiting, apologizing, getting disappointed, and being hurt.” – Unknown
If your partner doesn’t consider it much of a big deal to hurt and disappoint you as you’re nowhere near their best-to-avoid-disappointing-list — especially when there are people you know they can’t afford to disappoint, then it’s probably because of some or any of the following reasons:
- They don’t consider you much of a priority for them to be cautious of hurting or disappointing you
- They’re confident that the trust and respect you have for them won’t be affected no matter what they do
- They’re enjoying the benefits of being on your pedestal since you love them more than they deserve
- They just don’t love you enough to avoid treating you differently from others in this regard
In a world where we are all kind of cautious of losing the things we love and hold in high regard, someone who’s pretending to love you might not mind putting up even the very worst behaviors that can sabotage what you share with him even when it means disappointing you without thinking twice.
Hence, he wouldn’t mind flaking or canceling on you if a ‘better option’ comes up, expecting you to always say YES to his biddings despite knowing his disrespecting you, or worse, refusing to do for you what he’d exactly do for someone else at all costs.
Although, it might sometimes be because you’ve failed to assert and enforce your boundaries that they think you’d be fine and okay with it whenever they disappoint and hurt you. But a genuinely loving partner will love, cherish, and respect you enough to avoid hurting or disappointing you irrespective of whether you can let them get away with it or not.
In fact, even if they accidentally let you down, which is inevitable, they’ll genuinely and sincerely apologize as well as strive to make amends.
So, if your man doesn’t seem to care that he keeps disappointing and hurting your feelings but would do anything to avoid disappointing others, even when you’ve countlessly let him know how doing so makes you feel, he might not truly love you. Worse, he might be pretending to love you instead.
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3. He’s Fond of Putting You Down and Making You Feel like Sh*t
“Strong people don’t put others down… they lift them up.” – Michael P. Watson
As long as you may want your relationship to work out well despite all the pain and emotional stress you might have been going through, someone who is pretending to love you will constantly cause you pain and drain your self-worth.
They’ll often humiliate you, and make you feel like you aren’t good enough to achieve your goals in life, that’ll, in turn, make you feel like crap around them as they constantly lower your self-esteem with subtle, backhanded statements, etc
They’ll also make you believe you don’t deserve to be treated better and you’ll be subdued to the level of accepting emotional hurt, hoping there will be bliss days after.
Even though, relationships aren’t all about happy memories, exciting experiences, and lovemaking. Because they’ll be trials, fights, and times when both parties will hurt each other emotionally and otherwise.
But if your partner constantly brings you pain and shame and even worse, scolds you for being childish, immature, and melodramatic when you confront them about the way they treat you, then it’s obvious that they’re pretending to love you.
Because the harsh reality is that anyone that makes you feel overly devalued and worse than sh*t, even if it is not intentional, probably doesn’t love you enough.
So you deserve better than being in a relationship with someone who doesn’t value or love you for you.
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4. Pay Attention to How They Talked About Their Past Relationships
“You’ve been trying too hard to convince and persuade them against their disinterest in love and relationships all the while you’ve been together.”
As humans that are social creatures, we naturally appreciate being validated, acknowledged, and accepted. It’s this subconscious and sometimes subtle need for validation and acceptance that often prompts a lot of us to frequently attempt to convince others against the ways they think.
Yeah, I know it isn’t clear yet, but I urge you to hold on for a moment.
Have you ever been talking to a love interest and while talking about their past relationship experiences, they bitterly vented on how badly they’ve been broken and how they’ve lost interest in love and relationships?
Yes? Then I hope it wasn’t your current partner. And if it was, it isn’t surprising that you’re still reading this article about someone pretending to love another. Because for you to be in a relationship with them up till this point means you’ve been trying too hard to convince and persuade them against their disinterest in love and relationships all the while you’ve been together. And you’ve been doing so out of the need for acceptance and validation.
In fact, the blunt truth is, even though this might not always be the case with everyone that says they no longer believe in love, a considerable amount of people who say so, are indirectly telling you that they don’t really intend to commit to a relationship with you.
Sure, for a few people, it isn’t because they don’t want you, but because of the traumatic experiences, they’ve had in the past that they’re yet to get past through. But if that isn’t the case, you should know better than trying to always persuade someone that doesn’t want to commit to doing so.
Because they might end up pretending to love you until they find someone they love enough to commit with. That’s why it isn’t worth the effort.
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5. He’s Anything But Supportive
“The best possible thing you can get out of a relationship is that you’re with someone who encourages you to be the best version of yourself every day.” —Nishan Panwar
Getting support in a relationship is a beautiful thing because nothing beats being in a relationship where both partners listen to each other’s needs; care about and support each other’s goals and dreams; challenge each other to be their best selves, stand by each other; and create room for each other to grow as a person.
But someone who’s pretending to love you will always dismiss tough conversations, minimize or invalidate your feelings, never show interest in your goals, and will even disappear when things get tough. And as a result, you’ll end up feeling insecure, anxious, frustrated, and worse, feel alone in the relationship.
While a loving partner isn’t someone who will always solve your problem, and always make you happy — which is unrealistic to expect, they’ll never judge you or limit you in any way. They’ll go to the other side of the world for you when you need them, yet, they won’t smother you.
In fact, they’ll be so supportive enough that they’ll make you feel like a rockstar even when you aren’t into music.
But the sound of the drum is completely different from someone that’s pretending to love you.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
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