OCTOBER 26,2025 01:25AM
Lately, I’ve been thinking about how love feels so fake nowadays. It’s like everyone wants to be seen being in love rather than feeling it. Everything looks perfect online, matching outfits, sweet captions, smiles for the camera but behind closed doors, it’s often empty. Maybe that’s what hurts the most, the performance of it all.
People want fast feelings, fast replies, fast healing but real love doesn’t work like that. It’s slow, it’s quiet and it needs patience, something the world doesn’t seem to have anymore. It’s hard to open up when everyone fears being too soft or too honest. Love used to mean letting someone see you completely, but now it feels like a game of who can care less. And with so many choices out there, it’s like nobody really chooses you anymore, not fully. Still, I want to believe real love exists somewhere beneath all the pretending. It’s in the small things like consistency, honesty, showing up when it’s not convenient. That is the kind of love I still believe in, the kind that doesn’t need an audience to be real.
I think the thing I’m most scared of is loving someone who doesn’t love me. Well, as I was saying the world feels so fake lately. People wear different faces, and you never really know which one they are showing you. One day they care, the next day they act like they never meant a word they said. It’s scary because people have become such good pretenders. Someone can look you in the eyes, say all the right things and still hate the fact that you even exist.
Some people don’t come into your life to love you, they come to destroy you, to humble and dim your light because they’re afraid of what you might become. They will make you doubt yourself, question your worth and feel like you are never enough. But I’ve realized this, anyone who doesn’t support you, encourages you or wants to see you grow doesn’t love you. Love shows up in actions not just words. A person who truly loves you will be there for you, not only when it’s easy but when it’s difficult too. And if you ever start to feel like someone doesn’t love you anymore, it’s because they probably don’t. Love doesn’t just disappear quietly, it fades through distance, silence and neglect. So, at the end of the day, you must choose yourself because you’re all you’ve got.
Falling in love has become something that scares me now. It’s like even if when a good person comes along and says they love you, a part of you still doesn’t believe it. You wait for the disappointment, you overthink their every move not because you want to but because you’re scared of being hurt again. And when you start to feel yourself loving them too much you pull back. You distance yourself before they get the chance to break you. You want to open up, but you don’t because being open feels dangerous now. You fear being seen as weak, scared they will use your softness to play mind games. It’s exhausting, it’s draining and that’s how I realized that I’m emotionally damaged not because I don’t want love but because I’ve been made to fear it.
Still, somewhere deep down I hope that one day I’ll unlearn the fear. That I’ll meet someone who makes love feel safe again, someone who won’t make me regret being real.
BY
Z.N KHAMBULA.
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I hope too, this couldn't be any truer. Especially when you just feel so different from everyone else, it can leave you feeling unsatisfied or even more alone in a room full of people.
Here is my take on love:
Ahem, love is (we need to get our definitions straight first and to do that we need good old Merriam-Webster) a
(1)
: strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties
(2)
: affection and tenderness felt by lovers
b
: an assurance of affection
Ahem, based on this here we can be sure those tiktok dancing people are probably not in love, how do I know that? Love is deeply personal thing you don't post it online.
These people who make these videos just want your attention and views not realizing their videos have a affect on their viewers and is making everyone overall have less faith in humanity.
However, if you get off your phone, off your devices you will not see these tiktok dancing people or anything like that or people acting in love, I mean it's rare if you do but as I said before love is private so of course there is a higher chance we will see the fake stuff.
THERE IS HOPE FOR HUMANITY!! DO NOT WORRY!! DO NOT BE AFRAID!!
Look at the real world. However... the problem here is that most of the population lives through their electric devices. So maybe we are doomed!
But we'll never know because we will never be able to see people's personal lives. SO THERE IS HOPE!!
I believe love still is alive and I believe love is truer and stronger when it's quiet and doesn't shout, just as you said before. Actions do (and always will) speak louder than words.
I truly believe love is real and alive, yet we don't see it.
Love is someone taking care of you for no reason except they felt need to.
Love is a relationship, and like all relationships you won't see it at first it grows, slowly and quietly. Real love, is quiet as I said many times before.
Well that's all I got; have a great day folks!
The general sentiment of the first two paragraphs has been around for a long time, even before the internet and social media. But it still rings true.
It’s interesting to connect that to worrying that your future partner may present a false image of themselves to you. I like the line “People have become such good pretenders”.
I do take issue with one thing you come close to expressing here, which is that anyone who doesn’t support or encourage you doesn’t love you. Sometimes one can just be wrong and in need of correction. But you include “[wanting] to see you grow” as well and so my concerns are allayed.
This, however, I definitely disagree with. It’s a dangerous sentiment to have. Communication is always important in relationships! Sometimes you can think someone fell out of love with you and it’s something else entirely.
But the sentence that comes immediately after that one, “Love doesn’t just disappear quietly, it fades through distance, silence and neglect.”, is definitely true and worth repeating.
The penultimate paragraph is great and very relatable. I hope someday I believe it when my significant other says they love me.
Nice work.
Modern love—not even just romantic love, but platonic and other kinds as well—has felt quite fake to me too lately. It's like you said, everyone fears being seen as too soft, too honest, or too "real," and they don't realize that what a relationship really needs is care, effort, and sincerity.
This was an interesting piece to read, and feels very truthful to what the world is today. I hope someday you'll find a love that doesn't make you regret being real.
WOW. This was....wow.
This line really resonated with me.The way you described love feeling like a performance nowadays felt so...relatable. I haven't experienced romantic love (not yet) but I'd say a lot of friendships nowadays feel the same. Empty. As you so beautifully wrote
I also really liked how vulnerable this piece felt overall. You didn’t try to sugarcoat anything, and that made it even more powerful. The fear of opening up again and expecting disappointment was written very well. I also really liked that you ended it with a bit of hope.
-Sana
this is a decent piece! it's very honest and expresses itself clearly without getting too lost, and is very specific in how it wants to represent the present by drawing the superficiality of social media to how we perceive or experience love due to social media's general influence on the average person. though, i do question about how "modern love" is defined here, and if the difference between how we treat love as a topic and as a feeling today truly is so drastically different from past times, and if this would be better commentary on specifically modern dating culture than love. considering that in history, love - as a topic and how we feel it - has been twisted and distorted as a construct in society for decades and centuries. for it to be used as a weapon for power & status and to be likened to possession or even abuse. in this world that still teaches you that you can only love in a specific way depending on sexuality, gender & race, uses love to remain in or move up higher classes, is used to accommodate into traditional roles ingrained in society, love has been ingrained in performance and been defined shallowly for so, so, long.
thus i'd (personally) say that the superficiality of love today can't be defined as "modern", but can be generally be defined as society's constructed definition of love that crept up to today and manifested in a few unique ways due to social media. though of course, it is fine to be distinct about how social media has an influence on love as an experience and feeling because that is definitely true. but the lack of commentary on how much of these influences are more-so manifestations of what love has been for centuries than being the main cause of the superficiality of love, makes this piece in a way, speak less to me as a piece on love - but speaks to me way more as a piece on modern dating culture. love back then was never all that pure or deep, and to me is just a nostalgic way of viewing the past in romanticized lenses that fail to take account of history. overall, i adore the overall sincerity here, and even with my own differentiating views, it is resonating to feel the things you do. the commentary is something to think deeply about, and reflects on how we treat other emotions and topics other than love due to social media.
Oh my gods, I had near exact same thoughts but I wasn’t quite sure how to articulate myself into words!
For example, recently there have been conflicts within my friend group, and it felt so wrong to see everyone at each others’ throats, playing the blame game. It was heartbreaking honestly. And just yesterday, we decided to all sit down and talk about the situation, and tried to all be frank and honest. And there’s still things to work out, but we’ve realized that so much of the conflict came from not talking and ignoring each other and letting it fester. And that makes me think that that’s the problem with modern love, is exactly like what you said, that people are too good at pretending. Honesty and sincerity have become such scary concepts to so many people nowadays, because absolutely everything in society, academics, career, politics, is so SO competitive, and everyone thinks the rest of the world is out for them and they are alone alone alone. And so we build these walls. We build these walls that are blocking out the people that truly want to be invited into our fortresses. And we’re back at square one. So yeah.