Modern dating has a new villain, and it’s been hiding in plain sight this whole time.“Future faking”—the practice of making big relationship promises with no real intention of following through—is now something that nearly every single person has experienced, according to new survey data from matchmaking service Tawkify. The study surveyed more than 1,000 actively dating singles and found that 92% had experienced future faking; however, 65% had never heard the term before taking the survey.The basic setup is familiar to anyone who has dated in the app era. You’re a few dates in, and somehow the conversation has already covered the trip you’ll take together, the holidays you’ll spend with each other’s families, the neighborhood you might one day share. It feels promising. According to the data, more than half of singles heard this kind of long-term future talk within the first three dates, and 17% encountered it before or during the very first date.The most common tell is also the easiest to miss. Half of singles reported being referred to as a couple through “we” and “us” language early on—ahead of explicit long-term commitment talk (47%) and trip planning (46%).‘Future Faking’ Is the Dating Red Flag Almost Everyone Has ExperiencedTravel promises, it turns out, are its whole own genre. The top destinations singles were promised included Las Vegas, New York, Paris, Miami, and Los Angeles. Most of those trips never happened.Nearly two-thirds of future-faked relationships collapsed within one month of the promise being made, and only 25% ended with an actual conversation. The more common outcome was ghosting or a gradual fade, accounting for 38% of endings. Just 13% turned into something real.The damage doesn’t end just because the relationship does. More than half of singles now trust new partners less because of past future-talk experiences, and one in five stopped dating entirely for a period of time. Women absorbed a disproportionate share of the fallout: 68% reported trusting new partners less than 47% of men, and 45% now view early future talk as misleading, compared to 19% of men.Two in five singles also admitted to using future-oriented language themselves before they were actually sure about the relationship. Which means, statistically, most people have been on both sides of this at some point.Future faking thrives on the gap between what someone says and what they actually mean, and on the very human tendency to take romantic words at face value. The term may be new to most people. The experience, clearly, is not.The post ‘Future Faking’ Is Ruining Modern Dating, and Almost Everyone Has Experienced It appeared first on VICE.