LOVE is a beautiful feeling, and Relationships should be about love… however, in todays world, pretense in relationship is the new norm. Some people pretend in relationships; they date or enter relationships for many wrong reasons. It might be for financial benefits, sexual benefits, some need, to satisfy the society or just settle. Some people are also looking for that false sense of security that they feel can be easily gotten from an individual, and they mistake that for love. There are so many other reasons than love that can lead to the emergence of pretense in relationships.
Unfortunately, in the end, no matter how long it takes, this doesn’t end well; why? You may ask. It is simply because the foundation wasn’t built on solid ground but on pretense, lies, and deceit to get that selfish end goal. Often, in the long run, children are involved and are used as an excuse not to leave a glaringly bad relationship or marriage, forgetting that the children see the arguments, lack of intimacy and grow up thinking this is normal, thus breeding emotionally dysfunctional kids in the future.
Relationship pretense really fools no one but yourself. Not your kids, close friends, or family. And, as a strategy for coping and staying together, it is doomed to fail almost every time…
How Pretense Work
Pretense is like a slow-spreading disease. Once it takes hold within a relationship, it is sure to spread, corrupting every part of the connection it touches. If left untended from the start, it is bound to create havoc at the end. It also works with the ego, helping your ego ignore warning signs.
When “LOVE” isn’t the motive for marriage, dating, or relationship, then no matter how long you fake it, you simply cannot make it.
A relationship can end in several ways through pretense.
- It can die a quick death, and you both go your separate ways
- It can end slowly; you are together but know this relationship is going nowhere. You are probably staying comfortably together for several reasons
- It can end in a painful way involving numerous fights, a battle of egos, and drama
All the reasons above aren’t worth it. Peace of mind should be the number one goal in a relationship filled with love. If a couple isn’t walking together towards the same path, then it is wiser to part ways early.
Force in Relationship
If someone is forcing you to do something, making decisions for you or themselves without your consent, or they are hurting you emotionally or physically– that’s not love, that’s a mechanism of POWER and CONTROL. Nobody has the right to force their will on us as God has given us free will.
Intimacy in Relationships
The very foundation of any successful long-term relationship is intimacy, which gives each other permission to see each other for who you really are –faults and all. Pretense precludes this from happening. And people pretend out of fear to disclose your true self. Think of it a minute: what part of you is afraid? Your heart or your ego?
The answer will help you to be fully honest and open in real communication with your partner and everyone around you.
Nobody says the truth wouldn’t hurt, neither was it going to be easy to bare your heart and soul, but it is better to be in a real, stable relationship with someone who loves you for you with your imperfect ways than to pretend to be perfect. If you want your relationship to be better, grow, and blossom in different ways, pretense in relationships should be a total NO, and there should be no room for deception whatsoever. Once you decide on this path, you will experience a more beautiful relationship with your partner or lover. Life, in general, is sure to be more fulfilling
Pretense Quotes
“You wear a mask for so long, you forget who you were beneath it.”
-Alan Moore
“When you aren’t sincere you need to pretend, and by pretending you end up believing yourself; that’s the basic principle of every faith.”
-Alberto Moravia
“The pious pretense that evil does not exist only makes it vague, enormous and menacing.”
-Aleister Crowley
“To copy beauty forfeits all pretense to fame; to copy faults is want of sense.”
-Charles Churchill
“Pretense cannot sustain blind power.”
-Dejan Stojanovic
“You must not under any pretense allow your mind to dwell on any thought that is not positive, constructive, optimistic, kind.”
-Emmet Fox
“Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.”
-Eric Hoffer
“The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices.”
-Francois de la Rochefoucauld
“The world is full of people who are very clever at seeming much smarter than they really are. “
-Kurt Vonnegut
“I look for a girl without pretense who is sweet and intelligent – preferably brunette, but that’s not completely important. “
-Lucas Till
“You can’t cure someone who’s pretending to be sick.”
-Marty Rubin
“Genuine happiness is not nearly as common as a fake smile. “
-Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“In some cases, it is not the person that has changed, but their decision not to be themselves.”
-Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be.”
-Patrick Rothfuss
“There is no worse sickness for the soul, o you who are proud, than this pretense of perfection.”
-Rumi
“No one can long hide behind a mask; the pretense soon lapses into the true character.”
-Seneca The Younger
“People pretend to be other people because they have never thought of their true selves.”
-Sunday Adelaja
“I don’t impress if you’re a religious person. I just wanna know about soul behind that mask.”
-Toba Beta
“There’s a difference between playing and playing games. The former is an act of joy, the latter — an act.”
-Vera Nazarian
“When all lies, deceit, pretense is stripped away, what remains? The truth of a painting, or a book or a man.”
-William S. Burroughs
Pretense Sayings
“That’s what real love amounts to- letting a person be what he really is. Most people love you for who you pretend to be. To keep their love, you keep pretending- performing. You get to love your pretence. It’s true, we’re locked in an image, an act “
– Adyashanti
“The higher the rank the less pretence, because there is less to pretend to.”
– John Wilmot
“The essence of vulgarity seemed to lie in the pretence at being or the attempt to be, something that one really was not, with the resulting lack of ease and dignity and taste. “
– Orson Scott Card
“Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretence. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.”
- Robert Frost
“I love the idea of spies in love. How would it work between two people who were so programmed to lie and be suspicious, who have a whole life based on pretense? ”
– Zebulon Pike
“How far does a pretense of feeling, maintained with absolute conviction, become authentic?”
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Also, read
- 15 WAYS TO KEEP A RELATIONSHIP ALIVE
- Eight causes of failed relationships
- HOW TO GET OVER A TRAUMATIC BREAKUP
“Don’t pretend to be what you’re not, instead, pretend to what you want to be, it is not pretense, it is a journey to self-realization.”
– Charles Haddon Spurgeon
