Love bombing refers to showering someone with excessive affection and flattery at a rate that’s not congruent with the current level of their relationship in a bid to manipulate the person they are seeing into committing to them quickly.
According to a study conducted with a sample of 484 adults, love bombing behavior correlated with people who have narcissistic behaviors, low self esteem and insecure attachment styles.
Love bombing happens quite fast and is designed to make one fall for the person hard, you may end up bein g emotionally invested in your significant other before you realize that something’s amiss.
This is the first stage of love bombing where the person pursuing you tries to gain your trust and affection. This pace of this stage moves rapidly and includes:
During this stage, love bombers display great acts of affection like showering you with expensive gifts or whisking you off to extravagant vacations.
If the person pursuing you displays grand gestures in the early stages of a relationship, it likely indicates an attempt to speed up the relationship and create a bond with you.
Future Faking
This involves discussing future plans like travelling together, moving in together or getting married within a few weeks of dating. This may create a false sense of security as you may have not seen if the person’s words match their actions.
Excessively Flattery or Words of Affection
When someone is love bombing their goal is to speed up the pace of the relationship with the person they are dating in a bid to make their target emotionally invested. At this stage, you may hear love bombers say words like, “You are the most beautiful person I’ve ever met.”
” Nobody ever made me feel this way before,”
You are the most beautiful person I’ve ever met
If you hear such statements from a person who’s pursuing you during the first few weeks of knowing each other, then you ought to be cautious as you pursue the relationship. Such statements show that the person is speeding up the connection prematurely.
Expecting to contact or meet you frequently
During the idealization stage, expectations of communicating constantly are very common .A love bomber seeks to lock you down and become exclusive very quickly so that they may overwhelm you with constant communication and or time spent together. This therefore leaves very little room for anything else in your life.
This tactic benefits the love bomber in that it secures a deep bond and isolates you so that if other people express concern over your relationship, you will find it difficult to end your relationship since you are deeply invested and immersed in it.
Devaluation Stage
During the first stage of love bombing, the relationship tends to move quite fast and the attachment occurs quickly. Once the love bomber realises that you are deeply immersed in the relationship, their masks begins to peel off and begin to devalue you and display a hot and cold behaviour. This is the same stage of your relationship when you begin to notice that your significant other’s acts are not aligned with the things they tell you.
Criticism/put-downs
Love bombers will firstly idealize you as they try to create a picture of closeness very fast. When they know that you are fully immersed in the relationship, their true colours will start to show.
Once the switch is flipped, they start to criticize and nitpick you with an intention to erode their self-esteem so they can take full control of you. Out of nowhere, you may begin to feel like nothing you do is good enough and sets you up to work extra hard just to get their approval and validation.
Hot/cold behavior
The love bomber begins to breadcrumb you and withdraw their affection as well. You may feel like you are experiencing a relationship high one moment and feel miserable the next. At this point, the love bomber alternates between being passionate and being cold.
Trivial things may appear to trigger your partner resulting in them withdrawing their love in a bid to punish you without any warning. At this moment you are conditioned to fight for their love and work in order to earn their approval so that the relationship can go back to the way it was during the idealization stage.
Manipulation
At this point, anything that goes wrong in the relationship, is blamed on you. Therefore you may start to second-guess yourself as it involves various types of psychological manipulation including giving you the silent treatment, gaslighting and guilt-tripping you in order to shatter your self-esteem and maintain control over you and keep you compliant over them.
Discard Stage
The discard stage occurs when the love bomber suddenly terminates the relationship or decides to end the relationship or avoids contact with their partner. This stage includes:
Your Partner Appears Indifferent
They appear to be stoic and cold. They also seem to care less about your feelings and their affections affect you.
Your Partner Doesn’t Take Accountability
They hardly take accountability, unless it’s a manipulation tactic. Whenever you catch them red-handed with wrong doings, they use you as a scapegoat for the ending of your relationship.
They Move on to The Next Target
At this stage, the love bomber feels that the relationship has already run its course and it no longer serves its purpose. They move quite fast to the next target restarting the same cycle again with them. This stage feels detached and cold and is done without any remorse for the other partner.
How Do You Prevent Yourself From Love Bombing?
Discourage excessive gifts and attention in the early stages of a relationship. Keep in mind that if the relationship is too good to be true, it probably is. Here are surefire ways to prevent yourself from love bombers:
Recognize and Stay Away From Narcissists
Learn to recognize narcissistic tendencies. A person with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) exhibits a lack of empathy for people, an inflated sense of importance and need for attention. Such a person often has troubled relationships.
Beware of Your Vulnerabilities
You may be vulnerable to love bombers if you hail from an emotionally unavailable home or your only love language is receiving gifts. In such a case it’s right to proceed with caution and take your time to heal from the hurt.
Shirin Peykar, LMFT, a licensed marriage and family therapist explains,
” Run down a checklist of what a healthy relationship looks like. A thriving established relationship, says Peykar, should include listening, empathy, regard, compassion, and respect. These are important values and things a narcissist cannot authentically do.
We don’t always know if someone is love bombing us, but we can stay focused on the reality of the relationship by looking at the big picture. Don’t make red flags green flags because you’ve been love bombed.”
What to do If You are Being love Bombed?
Prioritize Your Well-Being
Make your emotional and mental health a top priority. Recognize the early signs of love bombing and acknowledge that abusers use this manipulative tactic. Thereafter, remove yourself from any abusive situation as soon as possible.
Seek Guidance and Support
Reach out to friends and family members whom you trust with giving you valuable insights from an objective perspective. They will help you navigate through the confusion and will offer guidance on how to handle the situation.
Initiate a Conversation About It
If it’s just early in the relationship and you are unsure whether they are displaying infatuation or they are love bombing you, have a conversation with your significant other about it. Choose a neutral ground to discuss your feelings and the need to establish boundaries within the relationship. Express yourself and see how they respond to your concerns.
Avoid accepting expensive gifts in the early stages of your relationship
Be Ready to Walk Away
If your person shows no respect or genuine respect for your boundaries or genuine care for your feelings it’s a clear indication that they don’t have your interests at heart. Prioritize your wellbeing and walk away from the relationship.
Cut Ties and Seek Their Support
Recognize that it’s not your work to change a love bomber’s behaviors. Cut ties with them and surround yourself with a robust support system. If need be, seek professional help so that you may process your emotions and heal from the hurtful experience.
Takeaway
What’s The Difference Between Love Bombing and Genuine Affection?
In a genuine relationship, there’s no manipulation. If you are in a potential love-bombing situation or you want to know if your significant other’s feelings come a genuine and not manipulative space, it’s important to take things slowly.
Take note of how you spend time together and how much information you offer the other person. If they continue pushing for more, or break your boundaries, that is possibly a red flag.
What Does Subtle Love Bombing Look Like?
Even if the actions of your relationship aren’t over the top in the initial stages of the relationship, it may turn into a very controlling partnership. If the initial stages of the relationship are marked by excessive affection that may lead to control you later, that’s considered love bombing.
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