There’s nothing worse than trying to be close to an unreliable person. It’s almost impossible to have a healthy connection with them because you just can’t count on them when it matters. These people tend to talk a big game about how they will always be there, but in reality, they are overcompensating.
They know they aren’t reliable, but they also know that they can’t maintain connections without some reliability, so they make out that they are.
Rather than waste time figuring it out the hard way, you can look for some of these tell-tale signs that you are dealing with someone who just can’t be counted on.
1. They always have an excuse instead of taking responsibility.
An unreliable person knows they will not meet the expectations that other people have for a meaningful relationship. Most of the time, that person will not want to own up to that and say what they truly think or feel. Instead of telling you something like, “Well, I just don’t care enough about you to remember,” they will instead give excuses like, “Oh, I just didn’t have the time!”
That’s a problem. As Dr. Susan Krauss Whiteborne, APBB, reminds us, an excuse is often just a lie meant to protect us from our bad choices. Excuses communicate to other people that they cannot trust our word. Granted, sometimes things happen. The important thing is that a person is honest about why they can’t follow through.
Honesty is the difference between a reason and an excuse. Like, how many times can you coincidentally be sick when you agree to do something?
2. Their words don’t match their actions.
People who know they are chronically unreliable often overcompensate by promising the world and more. They may tell you things like “I’ll always be there for you” or “You can absolutely count on me.” However, they’re nowhere to be found when it comes time to actually make good on those promises.
The thing that stands out about it is the absolutism. There are very few people who can make a concrete statement like that and fully stand by it. It’s hard to always be there for someone, particularly if either of you has chronic struggles to overcome. It’s far more reasonable for someone to tell you that they’ll do the best that they can for you.
Absolutism is always a red flag that should not be ignored.
3. They won’t take responsibility for their actions.
An unreliable person will often try to avoid accountability for their wrongs. Instead of accepting accountability, they will shift the blame, make excuses, or find some justification as to why they’re right and you’re wrong. As therapist, Dr. Sharon Martin, informs us, people try to avoid responsibility out of a fear of failure, judgment, and the shame of admitting a mistake.
Naturally, that makes it impossible to trust that person.
Accountability is just a part of responsibility, and many unreliable people are trying to avoid responsibility. They make those excuses because they don’t want to be held to a particular standard or be expected to consistently do what’s right in their relationships. Instead, they want the benefits of those relationships without all of the pesky work that’s required.
4. They do not have consistent priorities.
Unreliable people are often inconsistent. One day, they may be all in. The next? They’ve moved on to something else entirely. They just don’t have the kind of consistent focus that is necessary to have a healthy, long-term connection or commitment. That makes it difficult for them to do things like maintain healthy relationships or consistent employment.
That’s not to say that priorities don’t sometimes shift. Life is like that. Sometimes you just can’t prioritize the things that you really want to because you’re focused on what you need to. What will stand out is the frequency of the priority shift. It typically shouldn’t be happening all the time. A person should be able to see their priority through to the end more often than not.
5. They are inconsistent with more than just you.
The inconsistency is typically not just limited to you and your relationship. Instead, an unreliable and untrustworthy person will be inconsistent in other areas of their life. They may do things like ghost chats, forget birthdays, be consistently late for work, be hard to reach, or otherwise bail on their responsibilities with some excuse or another.
In many cases, unreliable people may have a mental health condition that is fueling that kind of behavior. It’s not necessarily about you or your relationship with them. Instead, it’s more about how their brain is handling the responsibility and expectations put upon them.
It may also be that they are unreliable because they are just unable to focus and remember things. This can be a common struggle for neurodivergent people, such as those with ADHD (or AuDHD). In this instance, unreliable behavior is a result of executive function challenges rather than a character defect. In both relationships and work situations, they need a little leeway and may benefit from some accommodations or strategies to help them manage.
6. They consistently overpromise and underdeliver.
In many cases, a person with low self-esteem or low self-worth may overpromise and overcommit because they are trying to be liked. They want other people to think favorably of them, so they opt for a transactional approach because they don’t feel they have value.
Because they are coming from a place where they are lacking, they often overpromise and can’t live up to their word. They may regularly talk about how it’s absolutely no problem, there’s never any issue, and they can certainly help you out with everything you ever ask them for without so much as checking their calendar.
That’s a pretty good sign that you can’t trust that person. Their need to be liked outweighs their need to be reliable.
7. They often cancel or reschedule their commitments.
There are few things more annoying than someone who cancels their commitment at the last minute and lets you down. Unreliable people often don’t want to appear to be unreliable, so they will commit without any intention of following through. As it gets closer to the time of the commitment, they will have some kind of excuse or explanation why they can’t.
In many cases, they will use the same excuses, and it stands out because it happens over and over. Again, the important thing to keep in mind is that it happens often, not just once in a while.
Personally, I was terrible for this for a long time because I didn’t necessarily see the value and importance of what I was doing. In many cases, I would just feel relieved when someone cancelled their plans on me. It wasn’t until I was really examining my relationships and why they weren’t working out that this problem came to the forefront.
I had to learn the hard way to be true to my word. Be there if you say you’re going to be there; otherwise, don’t agree to go if you have no intention of following through.
8. They disappear when you genuinely need them.
The hard times are when we truly need the people we feel close to. Unfortunately, an unreliable person will tend to disappear when times get hard. They’re nowhere to be found because they don’t want the responsibility of trying to help out at that time, or they want to avoid negativity. It’s an incredibly shallow, self-centered perspective that is totally self-serving.
In many cases, they will pop back up when the hard time has passed, acting as if nothing happened and they didn’t just bail on you when you needed them. They may act offended when you call them out on it, trying to turn it back on you, that your expectations were too much.
But, the truth is worse than that, because the real answer is they just didn’t want to, so they didn’t.
Final thoughts…
It’s hard to be close to someone who is unreliable. Life gets hard. When life is hard, it’s so much easier when you have a support network to fall back onto. However, you can’t build a support network on unreliable people because you can never be totally sure if they will be there or not.
And you especially don’t want to get into a relationship with an unreliable person. A life partner needs to be consistent and reliable so that you can be certain they can be counted on. If you don’t, you’ll find yourself unhappy and alone at the times when you really need someone to be there. At the times when it matters most.
Unreliability is just not something you can tolerate in people you want to be close to.
