Marry Katherine: Future Faking

It happened early, in the beginning stages of intimacy. A song was shared—not framed as a promise or an intention, just something meaningful. Marry Katherine.

“Katherine, Marry Katherine she'll be good for you, and you might find that you're good too, with a woman who sees things like you do. Katherine, Marry Katherine you're not young it's true, but not too old for something new…”

Nothing was said in that moment about marriage. Nothing was claimed about the future. And yet, the future quietly entered the room. Moments like that don’t land as logic. They land as possibility. They place you, gently and without demand, inside an imagined future.

This is how future faking often begins. Not with promises, but with suggestion. A subtle orientation toward what could be, introduced before there is any real structure, consistency, or truth to support it. The nervous system doesn’t wait for evidence. It responds to belonging—to being seen, named, and recognized as a meaningful possibility in someone else’s inner world. That’s where attachment forms.

Later, after that attachment had already taken root, he did say he wanted to marry me. By then, the idea didn’t feel new. It felt familiar. The words didn’t introduce the future. They confirmed something that had already been emotionally rehearsed.

This is where the consequence lives. When the suggestion of a future is rooted in truth, it creates alignment. When it’s used to get something—connection, intimacy, reassurance, validation—without the intention or capacity to build what’s being implied, it creates distortion. The attachment forms not around reality, but around projection.

One person bonds to a future. The other benefits in the present.

Attachment changes behavior. Once bonded, people become more patient, more forgiving, more willing to wait, explain, accommodate, and rationalize. They invest time, energy, and emotional labor under the belief that they are moving toward something shared. When that future never materializes, the damage isn’t just disappointment. It’s confusion. It’s self-doubt. It’s the erosion of trust in one’s own perceptions.

The deepest consequence is that closeness becomes associated with ambiguity. Hope becomes entangled with uncertainty. And language that should create safety begins to destabilize instead.

A future doesn’t have to be promised to be powerful. Sometimes it only has to be suggested. And when that suggestion isn’t anchored in truth, it doesn’t just mislead or reshape attachment—it leaves behind a very real grief for the future you believed in, and for the version of yourself who trusted it was being built.

And—

The difficult task of building a new one.