Fake Dating and Emotional Performance: The Cost of Performing Intimacy in Love, Theoretically

Thematic Claim: Emotional Performance as a Survival Strategy

In Love, Theoretically, Ali Hazelwood uses the concept of fake dating to explore a broader psychological pattern: the performance of intimacy as a defense mechanism. The novel’s central claim is that performing emotional closeness—shaping one’s personality, desires, and even physical needs to match what others expect—may temporarily earn approval but ultimately prevents authentic connection. Elsie Hannaway has built both her side career and her personal identity around this performance. The narrative traces her slow, painful realization that the intimacy she manufactures for pay or safety cannot substitute for the vulnerable, honest intimacy she craves. Only by abandoning her emotional performances can she build a real relationship with Jack Smith-Turner.

Tracing the Performance Across the Plot

1. The Origin: J.J. and the Unknowing Fake Relationship

The roots of Elsie’s emotional performance lie in her college experience with J.J., her former roommate and fake boyfriend. What began as a ruse to make J.J.’s ex jealous—an arranged pretense—slowly became Elsie’s entire social existence. She did not realize the relationship was fake for a long time: “I didn’t know it was fake” (Chapter 17). She read the Dune books, cut her hair, did his laundry, and had sex because she wanted him to have “a version of me he could enjoy.” This was not transactional dating for money; it was an unpaid performance of romantic intimacy. J.J. ended it abruptly to get back with his ex, and Elsie learned a devastating lesson: even giving someone the perfect performed self does not guarantee being wanted. Instead of rejecting performance, she doubled down, carrying the pattern into her later life.

2. The Profession: Faux and the Greg Contract

By the start of the novel, Elsie has turned performance into a source of income. Through the Faux app, she is hired by Greg Smith-Turner to be his fake girlfriend at family events. The job forces her to perform not only the role of a girlfriend but also the specific persona Greg’s family expects: a children’s librarian, unthreatening, nurturing. She curates anecdotes from Reddit, smiles through Uncle Paul’s threesome offers, and suppresses her true feelings (like her love of Twilight). She notes that fake dating involves “hiding and shaping yourself into what you think others want you to be”—a line that Cece directly identifies as Elsie’s “basic misconception” (Chapter 2). This professional performance also requires hiding her type 1 diabetes, a secret she guards so closely that she endangers her own health (Chapter 1 Prologue). Her insulin pump becomes a symbol of the inner truth she must conceal.

3. The Crossover: The Prologue and the Intimate Lie

The Prologue (set six months into her work for Greg) crystallizes the dangerous blurring of performance and reality. Elsie, trapped in a bathroom stall with Jack, is physically and emotionally vulnerable after a diabetic episode. She begs him not to tell Greg and relaxes into his chest—a moment of genuine connection that she immediately tries to reframe as part of her performance. Jack’s later confrontation in the bathroom stall (Chapter 3) accuses her of lying to Greg: “You’ve been lying to him … pretending to be someone you’re not.” Elsie cannot defend herself without exposing Greg’s secret, so she remains trapped in her performance. This moment reveals the central contradiction: the fake dating that pays her bills also prevents her from being honest with someone who could care for her.

4. The Collapse: Honesty with Jack and the Therapy Breakthrough

The turning point comes when Jack pushes Elsie toward honesty—first in small ways (ordering what she wants at Miel, admitting she looks up cheese online) and then in the major confession about J.J. (Chapter 17). She tells Jack the whole story, including the devastating realization that “I’d given my all to be the perfect Elsie he wanted, and he still didn’t want me.” Jack’s response is blunt but compassionate: “And what you took away from it was that you had to try harder.” He sees that her performance is a protection, not a defect. In the Epilogue, eight months later, Elsie attends therapy, lives with Jack, and plans a personal surprise—trapping his Hadron Collider model in cherry Jell-O with a card that reads “I’m right here. With you.” The cherry Jell-O, a symbol of her diabetes and hidden vulnerability, is repurposed into an act of honest, homemade intimacy—no performance, no script.

Character and Symbol Connections

Characters as Mirrors of Performance

Elsie embodies the performer: she shapes herself so completely to others that she loses the ability to recognize her own wants. Her people-pleasing is traced back to childhood, when she dressed as the duality of light to be “the me they wanted.”
Jack is the anti-performer. He refuses to perform social niceties, states his preferences bluntly, and demands the same from Elsie. His honesty is both the threat to her system and its salvation.
Greg is a fellow performer; he hires a fake girlfriend to project a certain image to his family, but unlike Elsie he does not internalize the performance. He remains the lovable client, not a victim of his own act.
J.J. is the predator who weaponizes performance, making Elsie believe she is in a real relationship while he treats it as a game.
Cece is an honest performer: she pees with the door open and eats Chex Mix as cereal, but she also fakes appreciation for avant-garde cinema to keep Elsie comfortable. She represents the possibility of performance that does not harm.

Symbols of the Fake-Real Divide

Polaroid Photograph: Izzy’s Polaroid at the birthday party captures a fabricated moment—Jack and Elsie looking like a couple. The frozen image is a lie, but it also becomes a talisman of the real connection growing beneath the performance.
Insulin Pump: Elsie’s hidden medical device symbolizes all the truths she suppresses to maintain her performance. It is the physical manifestation of the cost of hiding.
Go Board Game: Elsie and J.J. played Go; Elsie hid her skill to let him win. The game becomes a metaphor for strategic masking. With Jack, she plays without deception, and they end in a draw—a true meeting of minds.
Cherry Jell-O: the forbidden dessert Elsie craves but avoids because of diabetes. In the Epilogue, she makes it for Jack, transforming a symbol of denial into one of shared vulnerability.

Complexity and Contradiction

The novel does not present fake dating or emotional performance as purely evil. Elsie’s skills make her an excellent physicist—reading people, anticipating needs, collaborating. Her fake-dating income saves her from adjunct poverty. The performance is a survival strategy, not a moral failing. Similarly, Jack’s relentless honesty has a cost: his refusal to date casually stems from his mother’s rejection of him, a wound that makes him afraid of causing the same pain. The solution is not total abandonment of performance (Elsie still masks some emotions in social situations) but a deliberate choice about whom to trust with the real self. Hazelwood’s Author’s Note confirms the real-life academic pressures that drive such people-pleasing: job interviews, mentor power, adjunctification. The theme is complex because the emotional performance is both Elsie’s cage and her key to survival.

Study Questions and Answers

How does the prologue establish the theme of emotional performance before the reader understands the fake-dating context?
The prologue shows Elsie in a bathroom stall, humiliated and grateful as Jack lifts her. She reflects on her “poor choices” and denies having a diabetic episode. The scene presents intimacy (physical closeness) and concealment (medical secrecy) together, foreshadowing that her entire relationship with Jack will be built on performances she cannot sustain.
In what way does Cece’s offhand comment in Chapter 2 define the thematic problem?
Cece says Elsie’s “basic misconception” is that romantic relationships succeed only if you “hide and shape yourself into what you think others want you to be.” This directly states the false premise Elsie has lived by since college. The irony is that Cece says this while she herself is about to break Faux’s one-date policy for a client, showing that even the critic is not immune.
What role does the insulin pump play in the analysis of emotional performance?
The pump represents the truth Elsie suppresses: her diabetes requires constant vigilance, but she hides it to avoid burdening others. When she goes into hypoglycemia (Prologue and Chapter 1), her body betrays her performance. The pump is a visible reminder that ignoring reality—medical or emotional—has physical consequences.
How does Jack’s honesty challenge Elsie’s performance, and why is it initially frightening to her?
Jack refuses to accept fake answers. He calls her out for lying to Greg, demands she stop “building observational models of what you think I’ll like,” and later tells her exactly what he wants: “I want to be with you always.” For Elsie, this directness threatens the control she maintains by performing. She admits she fears that knowing her better will make Jack like her less (Chapter 26).
Why is the Epilogue’s Jell-O gift a symbol of Elsie’s growth away from performance?
Instead of a grand, scripted gesture matching someone else’s expectations, Elsie creates a messy, personal, and honest offering: cherry Jell-O, the very food her diabetes forces her to avoid. It references her hidden vulnerability and turns that vulnerability into a shared joke. The act says “this is who I am, diabetes and all,” which is the opposite of performing a perfect self.

Related pages: Characters, Symbols, Full Book Analysis.