For many years, my family kept this hunk of shininess here, thinking there was a chance it could be the real thing. There existed the hope that, yes, indeed, they struck gold!

Now, I have inherited this hunk of shininess, only to discover it was, in fact, “Fool’s Gold.”

As I’ve learned more about Narcissistic abuse, I’ve discovered one of its most important tactics: “future faking.” A future faker uses promises, inferences and intensity to simulate intimacy and to keep control of a relationship or a situation.

Indeed, I have repeatedly experienced this device, although I didn’t know what to call it. It’s sanity-saving to recognize that what I went through had a name.

“Someday…”

A large component of my personal experience with emotional fool’s gold or “future faking,” involved the use of this word. Such hope and promise were contained within it. The assurance that, no matter what hell or pain someone goes through, “it will all be worth it…someday.” I noticed that, while the persons and circumstances of my experiences may have changed, that “someday” element was consistent throughout.

Future Faking: Just Be Good Enough:

Alright, let’s start from the beginning.

Being anything “enough” was at the epicenter of the “someday”/ future faking promise. The dangled carrot of “If you’ll just be or do this, then you can have this reward” was way more dysfunctional than any goal setting. This was all about conditional love, worth and acceptance. I learned I could not possess any of those things unless and until I met the proper specifications. Most of the time, the rules were never clearly and fully declared; it was the insecurity of never quite knowing where you stood.

But keep striving, because, after all, “someday…”

The first few times I tried for the glittering, someday prize, things seemed shiny, innocent, even fair. Yeah, of course I need to try for these things. They don’t just come automatically.

But gradually, as I performed and completed tasks, missions and behaviors, with no promised reward to show for it, I started seeing how the goal posts just kept moving.

Achieve this. Okay, achieved.
Now just achieve some more. Okay, done.
More movement of the goal posts.

And it never stopped. It quickly set in how this was a game I could never win. I could never be “enough” at anything, because the enough ante was always upped.

Future Faking: Someday, They’ll Die:

So, learning that lesson as a behavior baseline, I was now old enough and ready enough to be taught some finer points. Morbid, macabre points.

Coming from an abusive dynamic, it was inevitable, I suppose, that certain family members would come to view death as the surefire escape of the hellish existence. Yes, there were suicidal thoughts and even attempts. But it went further than that. Certain individuals would, in fact, make “someday” promises to me, like “someday, when this person dies, we’ll be able to do whatever we want.”

So, as a child, I looked at that person’s death as that hope for better days.

I know. It sounds adorable.

But, surrounded by adults who were supposed to “know better,” what else was I supposed to ascertain from the message?

Future Faking: Someday, We’ll Be Able to Do What We Want:

That promise included some dream career, guaranteeing “happily ever after,” and worldwide traveling. Within the subtext, was the even more vague, but gleaming promise: “We’ll be happy.”

So, as a child, navigating abuse, I waited with this adult for such happiness and perfection, hinging on another person’s death. We waited for years… decades. Inevitably one day, some twenty-five years after this promise was given to me, yes, this persona did die.

And there was no radical transformation, at least, not of the happy, “we-can-do-whatever-we-want” variety. There was no perfect dream career. There was no perfect international travel.

There was just unrealistic expectation and spent energy, funneled into the “someday.”

And, as I watched and learned all about the disillusionment from this trusted adult, who was supposed to know more than I did, have the answers and make them actualized, I learned another dysfunctional lesson: I better get to work and achieve, already!

Back to the salt mines. And maybe, this time, I’ll get what I want.

Future Faking: Achievement:

I became an overachiever, yes. I’d seen what stagnation produced. I’d seen the disappointment faces on adults as they waited for an answer to materialize that didn’t. I saw how passive inaction led to nowhere, nowhere I wanted to go, anyway.

So, action, achievement, performance, awards, accolades, striving. That was the name of the game now. This time will be different. The goal posts won’t move. I’ll succeed.

I was the cliché overachieving kid, winning good grades, awards, ribbons and trophies. I did this, with the hope that the designated prize of the moment would finally seal the deal: I was enough; I did enough.

But those moving goal posts again.

It wasn’t long before grade school turned into high school, which turned into college, which turned into adulthood, with me still chasing.

And, even though I may have “won” something: attention, an award, some achievement, a coveted relationship, the insidious lies of future faking were still not quelled: “Just Be Good Enough,” “You’ll Get My Love and Approval,” “You’ll Get Promoted” still existed, just out of my reach.

I chased and “hung in there,” believing If I just sacrificed myself enough, exhausted myself enough, then, certainly, the golden promise would be mine. It would not be Fool’s Gold. It would be the real thing.

It kept me humiliating myself in harmful relationships, as I convinced myself they’d love and accept me if I changed in a certain way.
It kept me expending energy, time, effort and resources because I believed somehow “this time, it’ll work.”
It kept me waiting, waiting for some illusive perfection that would make up for all pain.
It was just a matter of time, after all. “Someday…”

Meanwhile, I learned about what it’s like to live manipulated, used and discarded, as not only other persons exploited me for their own purposes, but I did that, as well, to myself.

Sadist…meet masochist.

What was going on here?

As an adult, wasn’t I supposed to know better? So, why wasn’t I doing better?

Because I still believed the Fool’s Gold was its actual 24 Karat, much more promising, cousin.

And it was never going to be that. All it was, instead, was shiny illusion. Manipulative promise. Toxic hope. It was my volunteering to wait, seemingly forever, on a mirage. No refreshing water, only desert.

I was choosing to do that. The Future Faking had no time restriction on it. It didn’t suddenly expire when I turned eighteen. It wasn’t restricted to childhood innocence and other people’s behaviors.

Future Faking, waiting on some form of toxic hope, was now something I had knowledge about. And I could choose to accept or reject its frustrating terms.

Future Faking: The Promise of Fool’s Gold:

Believing in the hope of “when” can, indeed, be Fool’s Gold. It’s when we give our power away to a faulty promise. Sometimes, that’s at the hands of an abuser. Sometimes, that’s simply our own unmet needs running amuck, desperate for some cure-all to make all the pain go away. We become our own abuser.

Future Faking, with its shiny allure, can place demands on unrealistic “happily ever after.” It can keep us hanging on, staying in abuse, tolerating our devaluation, stunting our personal growth, living in pain. We tell ourselves, “I just need to hang in there, because, after all, someday, it will be worth it.”

And it rarely is. When we compromise our characters, our health, our well-being, our autonomy or any other thing that is precious to us, with the hope that Fool’s Gold, will, in fact, become the real thing to us, we are ones left dull and lifeless.

If it feels like someone is using the hope of “future faking” to keep you controlled and staying put, in any context, if it feels like you can never be good enough, do enough, please enough, be enough, that’s abusive. If it is us who are self-imposing this, that, too, is abusive.

Life, love and personal goals are never meant to be unreachable, ever-moving targets.

Pursuing life and future in a healthy way is our true treasure. Its promise lies in the imperfect process of accepting unflinching truth of who, what, when, where and how we are.

Each of us can embrace that today.

Copyright © 2019 by Sheryle Cruse