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It's a tactic manipulative people use, and is in fact a form of abuse. If you are dating someone with dark triad personality traits — narcissism, Machiavellianism, or psychopathy — then it is probably a way they were grooming you.
It's a bit like training an animal. Love bombing is the reinforcement, where the abuser showers you with love if you act how they want you to. If you don't, then the devaluation stage happens, where they withdraw all their kindness and instead punish you with whatever they feel is appropriate — shouting at you, giving you the silent treatment, or even physically abusing you.
It's difficult to pinpoint love bombing in the short term, because all new relationships are exciting. There is promise, and potential, and getting to know someone you like gives you butterflies. The emotional highs and feelings of giddiness are normal, and not necessarily cause for alarm. What isn't normal, however, is how quickly you to fall into a serious relationship. What isn't normal is the amount of time this new person is demanding from you.
Social media, texting, emails, and instant messaging make it incredibly easy to be in constant contact with someone if you want to, and an abuser who wants to love bomb you will easily take advantage of that. You may have gone into the relationship with the intention of taking things slow, or keeping things casual, but somehow you found yourself forced into a corner to do the exact opposite.
You're talking to them so much you start to believe you were made for each other. Before you know it, they might have declared you "the one," be making plans to marry you, or have even already moved in with you. There are several reasons why you might fall for a love bombing abuser. In a blog post in Psychology Today , Joe Pierre, a Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences Professor at UCLA, explains how narcissists are attractive because they have traits such as self-sufficiency, confidence, and ambition. However, sometimes people go for the same type of abusive relationships over and over again, because of their own issues they haven't worked through.
Deborah Ward, author of the book "Overcoming Low Self-Esteem with Mindfulness," explains in a different blog post that there is a psychological theory that we are attracted to people who remind us of our parents. If we experienced trauma in the past, whether that's with parents or with past relationships, we may try and fill the void with dating people who are similar. This is because we might subconsciously think we can fix the past by repeating it with a different person.
The damaging, toxic relationship you build may feel comfortable because it is the type you are used to.
Love bombing is the practice of overwhelming someone with signs of adoration and attraction — think flattering comments, tokens of affection. Love bombing is an attempt to influence a person by demonstrations of attention and affection. It can be used in different ways and can be used for either a.
Going through trauma doesn't necessarily make someone weak, though. According to Perpetua Neo, a therapist and specialist of dark triad personality types, these past experiences make victims of love bombing very kind and empathetic. Abusers can merely take advantage of this because they know they are with someone who will explain away their negative traits. When the love bombing turns into devaluation, it can be very traumatising and heart-breaking for the victim.
Everything they do from that moment on will be to try to bring back the wonderful person they thought they had. In reality, this person never actually existed. It was a mask all along. All the gifts and affection were "transactional," Neo says, because narcissistic abusers are always thinking about what they can get out of a situation.
I could tell he was intelligent from his writing — lengthy letters filled with information and stories about his life, and questions about mine. When could we begin to talk, he wanted to know … when could we meet? My response was to feel a bit overwhelmed; I was six time zones away in Florence, and he was writing from a small town in Maine.
His eagerness to know me was flattering, but time- consuming. Had I forgotten how to be swept off my feet?
Had I become too jaded to enjoy the infatuation phase of falling in love? I had moved to Italy five years earlier and now split my time between Utah and Florence. As Scott and I moved to not just daily emails but Skype calls as well, he quickly made it clear he had the same vision. Scott was a practicing attorney, but thought nothing of a three-hour conversation during his workday. He could work while I slept, he said, because nothing was more important than our knowing each other better. Flowers, gifts, plans of luxury travel were liberally offered, along with constant assurance that he could and would provide anything my heart desired.
But during our daily chats, time seemed to disappear. The expression "love bombing" was coined by members of the Unification Church of the United States in the s [4] and was also used by members of the Family International. The discard is staged in a way that is excessively painful and humiliating for the victim. If you do manage to break out of the abusive relationship , this will — hopefully — all become clear over time. It took every detail from my past struggles and validated and helped make sense of everything. He immediately ordered and read my memoir, and our emails flew back and forth across the ocean daily.
When he learned where I planned to eat on Thanksgiving, he had an enormous bouquet of flowers sent there. Living solo in a foreign country had heightened my awareness that I, alone, was my safety net. But during our daily chats, time seemed to disappear.
We discussed everything from politics, religion and family —and we laughed a lot. I wondered if this was, perhaps, the real deal. What begins as a whirlwind romance soon gives way to an all-consuming relationship where the victim has been groomed to acquiesce to the demands of the love bomber. What makes this particular behavior difficult to identify, initially, is that all new romance is exciting — full of butterflies and potential. It is narcissistic behavior, and distinctly different from true adoration and respect of another.
The ability to spot love bombing is easy once you know the signs. Early declarations of love and commitment are given as well as quickly cementing a future together. An easy way to distinguish whether you are being love bombed or just truly adored is to have a difference of opinion, need some time away or criticize the perpetrator. All will be met with immediate disapproval and a withdrawing of affection and attention. Never underestimate the intuitive feeling in your gut that something is just not right.