The Ones Who Pretend to Love You (But Secretly Hate You)

A birthday message appears because an algorithm whispered your name. A question about your achievement arrives once someone else has already praised it.

The words we’re so proud of you come out smooth but hollow, like a script from a stranger’s mouth.

That’s how false affection sounds: pleasant on the surface, metallic underneath. It lives in the pauses, in the way their eyes study rather than soften.

They don’t always mean harm. Some are bored. Some are bruised. Some are addicted to the drama of someone else’s life because their own feels shapeless. But others—those quiet observers who appear only when something in you is cracking—feed on the sight of you nearly falling.

When Things Fall Apart

After a breakup, for instance, the false ones gather. They text as if worried, though the worry tastes like curiosity; they ask for details, not comfort.
They listen for confirmation that your loss is real.

When you were happy, they praised your relationship. You two are perfect, they said, sipping the sweetness of your joy. But once the split comes, they pivot easily: We always thought he seemed off. The rewrite happens fast, almost impressive in its efficiency.

If they can’t find evidence that you were betrayed, they’ll craft it. Their stories mutate in group chats and private calls, picking up small embellishments until even you begin to wonder which parts might be true. They may even want distance between you and him, not because they care who wins—because your heartbreak feels like proof that happiness never lasts, that the world hasn’t forgotten to punish beauty.

And when you finally go quiet, when you stop explaining yourself, their confusion sounds innocent: Why so distant? They miss the version of you that needed witnesses, the version that still looked up to them.

Sometimes they reach out late, at strange hours, as if hoping to catch you off guard. A name you haven’t seen in years lighting up the screen. The message isn’t really about connection; it’s a reminder that they can still interrupt your peace. You decline politely, offer a soft excuse, and their reply comes curt, almost rehearsed. Okay. Okay. Okay!
That’s when you know it was never about care. It was about access. About making sure you were still within reach.

The Jealous Kind of Concern

They reach out sometimes, just to check in.
How’s life?
Still on your own?
Still working on that thing?

It isn’t conversation; it’s measurement.
They weigh your progress the way rivals measure distance.
If you’re thriving, their gaze slips away too fast. If you’re struggling, they settle in, asking just enough questions to taste the ache.

They speak in careful diminishment. You’re so lucky, they say, never you worked for it.
Luck makes your success safe to witness. Luck means they could have it too, if fate were kind. Hard work implies choice. It implies they stayed small on purpose, that they could have done better.

The Pattern

Compliments arrive edged with corrections.
Private stories drift into casual gossip.
Quiet victories are ignored; small failures travel fast.
They twist your steadiness into pride, your boundaries into coldness, your recovery into performance.

If someone new loves you, they question it.
What does he see in her?
The subtext never changes: Why not me instead?

They call you lucky because the alternative—acknowledging your value—would demand humility they don’t have.

Envy isn’t always loud. Sometimes it hides under care. I just don’t want you to get hurt again. Translation: I need to believe you will.

And if you keep glowing anyway, they mock the glow. She’s changed.
Of course you have. You learned what it costs to let the wrong people stay close.

What to Do

You can’t reason with people who prefer distortion to truth.
Silence is your best argument.

Ease away.
No grand exit. No messages explaining why.
Protection is quieter than confrontation, and far more effective.

They’ll talk about your absence, build stories to fill the gap. Let them. Every assumption they make decorates the cage they chose to live in.

Healing doesn’t need their applause.
Your peace can exist unseen.
If guilt shows up, remember: distance isn’t cruelty. It’s the body’s way of saying enough.

Those who loved the broken version of you will mourn the healed one. That’s not your burden.

When you walk away from these people, something shifts. You stop caring what they think. After a while, you hear your own voice clearly. From a young age, you might’ve been taught to please, to play small, to dim yourself so others wouldn’t feel smaller. But they resented you anyway. Some of them were raised on envy, surviving on small cruelties, craving the chaos that keeps them from facing their own emptiness.

Then one day, you realise: yes, you are that good. You are that powerful. The devil might not reach you directly, but he sends his helpers: the jealous ones, the bitter ones, the smiling ones who call it love while cutting holes in your peace.

They distract, they drain, they whisper that you’ll never break free. But you do. You wake up one morning and stop dreading what others say, what lies they weave, what sideways remarks they drop to test your silence. Because when you were down—truly down, ill, or unravelled—they vanished. You survived without them. You stay away, and you never look back. 

I never have.

They may go half-mad not knowing what you’re up to now: whether you’re married, single, happy, building something new. They’ll ask the ones still orbiting you, gentle at first, then insistent, pretending concern while prying for detail. Do you still see her? Has she changed? They call it care, but it’s surveillance. All it ever confirms is what you already knew: they were never kind, only curious. They want access, not closeness. They want to keep the door open just in case they need you again... or need to boast that they once were close to you.

When someone calls you lucky, listen closely. What they mean is undeserving.

They won’t say you earned it because that would reveal their own hesitation to try.

Let them rewrite your story if they must. You’ve already lived the real one, and that’s the only version that matters.

True affection is uncompetitive. It doesn’t keep score or ask where you’ve been hiding.
It shows up softly, without announcement. It wants nothing proven.

The others—the ones who hover when you bleed and vanish when you bloom—belong to the background noise of an old life.

You can outgrow them quietly, without revenge.
Just live, breathe, stay whole.
Let the sound of your peace travel farther than their noise ever could.