Why fake dating falls flat (and how to fix it)

Hello friends!! Welcome to The editor’s lens where I talk about things that I see in books that… well, actually, just really annoy me. I pull them apart, study them, and put them back together — hopefully with some tips! Today I’m talking about why fake dating falls flat (and how to fix it).

Fake dating is one of those romance tropes that sounds almost ridiculous when you explain it out loud. Two people pretend to be in a relationship for Reasons™… and then accidentally fall in love for real.

And yet, readers adore it.

When fake dating works, it creates some of the most entertaining dynamics in romance:

• forced proximity
• escalating tension
• public affection mixed with private denial, and
• the inevitable moment where one person realises the feelings stopped being fake several chapters ago.

But like a lot of popular tropes, fake dating often struggles under scrutiny.

Sometimes the setup feels flimsy. Sometimes the emotional progression doesn’t feel believable. And sometimes the story becomes so focused on maintaining the “fake” premise that the characters stop acting like actual people.

The trope works best when the relationship is doing more than creating romantic tension. Because underneath the banter and awkward public hand-holding, fake dating is really a trope about vulnerability.

The premise has to feel worth it

One of the biggest reasons fake dating falls apart is because the setup itself doesn’t feel convincing enough to sustain an entire story. Readers are usually willing to suspend disbelief a little for romance (and fantasy).

But the emotional payoff still needs to justify the premise.

If the characters could solve the problem with one honest conversation, a simple boundary, or basic communication then tthe setup starts to feel artificial instead of compelling.

This is why the strongest fake dating stories tend to involve:

• social pressure
• public expectation
• professional consequences, or
• emotional stakes that make pretending feel easier than telling the truth.

In The Love Hypothesis, the fake dating setup works because Olive believes the relationship serves a practical purpose within her academic and social environment. The premise is heightened and undeniably romance-novel dramatic, but the emotional logic underneath it remains understandable.

The reader doesn’t need the situation to feel realistic. They need it to feel emotionally believable.

The fake relationship needs to change the characters

A common problem with weaker fake dating stories is that the fake relationship exists purely as a plot device. The characters pretend to date. Hijinks occur. Feelings emerge. But nothing about the arrangement actually transforms them.

The best versions of the trope work because pretending creates emotional pressure.

It forces characters into situations they would normally avoid vulnerability, intimacy, public affection and/or emotional honesty.

Even if the relationship begins as performative, the emotions underneath it slowly stop being controllable. That’s where the tension comes from.

In Boyfriend Material, the fake relationship pushes both characters into confronting parts of themselves they would rather avoid. The romance works not because the setup is clever, but because the arrangement gradually forces emotional growth neither character expected.

The opposite can be said of All Superheroes Need PR. Neither character changes anything about themselves, so when they transition to a real relationship, it doesn’t have the emotional payoff and falls flat, making the relationship feel awkward and only about the physical attraction.

Without that transformation, fake dating often feels shallow. Because the relationship is supposed to change something.

The tension can’t stay static

This is where a lot of fake dating stories struggle in the middle. The characters fake flirt, panic internally, insist the feelings aren’t real, and then repeat the cycle for 200 pages. (My secret delight!)

However, at a certain point, the emotional tension stops escalating and starts looping. And once that happens, the pacing starts to drag. The strongest fake dating stories understand that tension needs progression and every stage of the fake relationship should complicate things further.

Maybe the lies become harder to maintain, or the emotional boundaries blur. It’s possible that the consequences of the truth become more painful.

In The Spanish Love Deception, parts of the middle revisit similar emotional beats between the protagonists without significantly changing the dynamic, which can make the tension feel stretched rather than escalated.

Chemistry alone can’t sustain momentum forever. The relationship itself has to evolve.

Why fake dating and slow burn are #couplegoals

Fake dating overlaps naturally with another hugely popular trope: slow burn romance. And honestly, the two are almost designed for each other.

Because fake dating creates constant proximity without immediate emotional certainty.

The characters are forced into intimacy before they’re ready for emotional honesty. Which means hand-holding becomes loaded, casual affection becomes confusing, and every staged romantic moment starts carrying real emotional weight.

That gradual blurring between performance and reality is what makes the trope satisfying, because readers know where the story is going, and the fun comes from watching the characters realise it.

The best fake dating stories understand performance

At its core, fake dating is a trope about performance. The characters are role-playing. They’re presenting a version of themselves designed to be convincing to other people, and often safer than being emotionally honest.

Which means the trope works best when the contrast between public performance and private emotion starts to collapse. The characters become more honest while pretending than they ever were while being “real.”

That irony is what gives the trope emotional depth.

In To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Lara Jean’s fake relationship gradually becomes a space where she learns emotional confidence and vulnerability. The relationship begins as performance, but over time, it becomes one of the few places where she can stop performing entirely. That shift is what makes the romance land.

Why readers love the trope anyway

Even when the premise is absurd, fake dating taps into several things readers love:

• yearning
• mutual pining
• forced proximity
• emotional denial, and
• public affection with private panic.

And perhaps most importantly: It allows characters to experience fragments of a relationship before they’re emotionally prepared to admit they want one.

That’s why scenes like “accidental” hand-holding, sharing a bed for appearances, introducing the fake partner to family, or pretending to be jealous work so well.

The characters are rehearsing intimacy long before they’re capable of confronting their actual feelings. And readers love watching that emotional inevitability unfold.

When the trope falls apart

Of course, fake dating doesn’t always work.

Sometimes the premise is too thin to sustain the story. Sometimes the characters spend so long denying obvious feelings that they start to seem emotionally irrational rather than conflicted. And sometimes the story relies so heavily on miscommunication that the romance begins to feel frustrating instead of satisfying.

This is particularly noticeable when the emotional arc stalls, the tension keeps resetting, and/or the relationship dynamic never meaningfully changes

Because once the reader understands the emotional endpoint, the story needs progression to maintain investment. Without progression, the trope starts to feel repetitive rather than romantic.

How to fix the trope

The strongest fake dating stories usually do three things well.

1. The setup creates genuine pressure

The characters have believable reasons to maintain the arrangement.

2. The emotional dynamic evolves constantly

The relationship never stays emotionally static for too long.

3. The fake relationship reveals something true

About the characters, about vulnerability, or about what they actually want.

The romance works best when the relationship stops being fake emotionally long before it stops being fake publicly. That imbalance is where the best tension lives.

In conclusion

Fake dating works because it creates emotional contradiction. The characters are pretending to be in love while trying very hard not to fall in love. And the more convincing the performance becomes, the harder it is to separate what’s fake from what’s real.

At its best, the trope isn’t just about forced proximity or romantic tension. It’s about the terrifying moment where pretending becomes honesty.