- Manipulative people sometimes hook in their victims by "love bombing" them.
- This can mean compliments, public displays of affection, and gifts.
- If you fall for the trap, you might find yourself in a serious relationship quicker than you anticipated, with no way out.
- With Valentine's Day approaching, make sure you know the differences between someone who might be a narcissist and someone who just wants to spoil you.
You think you've met the love of your life?
Stop. Take a step back. Why do you think that?
If you've just met somebody who is saying you're "soul mates" and declaring their undying love for you after a few weeks, you might have just become the victim of something called "love bombing."
According to Dale Archer, a psychiatrist and author, love bombing involves being showered with affection, gifts, and promises for the future with someone making you believe you may have discovered love at first sight. The person is loving, caring, and affectionate, and they seem to just get you. Things progress quickly, and you start to wonder whether this is what you've been missing.
However, it doesn't last, and as soon as you show a hint of caring about anything other than your new partner, they get furious with you and label you as selfish. Their mask slips, and you see someone mean, belittling, and unreasonable underneath. They can't comprehend that you have anything else going on in your life, and they completely turn on you.
It's a form of conditioning, Archer wrote in a blog post on Psychology Today. 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 — it might be a way they were grooming you.
Love bombing is the reinforcement, where the abuser showers the victim with love if the victim acts how they want. If the victim doesn't, then the devaluation stage happens, where they withdraw all their kindness and instead punish the victim with whatever they feel is appropriate — shouting, giving them the silent treatment, or even physically abusing them.
It can be hard to spot
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 quickly falling into a serious relationship where your partner demands lots of your time. Social media, texting, emails, and instant messaging make it incredibly easy to be in constant contact with someone, and an abuser who wants to love bomb you can 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," started making plans to marry you, or even moved in with you.
What makes you vulnerable
There are several reasons 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, says narcissists are attractive because they have traits such as self-sufficiency, confidence, and ambition.
However, sometimes people repeatedly go for the same type of abusive relationships because of their issues they haven't worked through. Deborah Ward, the author of the book "Overcoming Low Self-Esteem with Mindfulness," explains in a different blog post a psychological theory that we are attracted to people who remind us of our parents.
If we have experienced trauma, perhaps with parents or past relationships, we may try to fill the void by dating similar people because we might subconsciously think we can fix the past with a different person. The damaging, toxic relationship may feel comfortable because it is the type you are used to.
Trauma doesn't necessarily make someone weak, though. According to Perpetua Neo, a therapist and expert in dark triad personality types, these experiences make victims of love bombing very kind and empathetic. Abusers can take advantage of this because they know they are with someone who may explain away their negative traits.
"People think often if you are attracted to a narcissist, you tend to be someone quite weak and very passive in your life ... but they tend to be very high-achieving women," Neo told Business Insider. "A very common trait I see in my clients is they're overempathetic ... but you stop empathizing with yourself because you explain everything away for other people."
Breaking free
When the love bombing turns into devaluation, it can be traumatizing and heartbreaking for the victim. Everything they do from that moment on may be to try to bring back the wonderful person they thought they had. In reality, this person never existed — it was a mask.
All the gifts and affection were "transactional," Neo says, because narcissistic abusers are always thinking about what they can get out of a situation. Every move and every choice are calculated. In return, the victim may end up feeling used and like a shell of their former self.
"They love bomb and then they devalue you, so you're always on high alert and you never want to do anything wrong," Neo said. "Because of that your standards are lowering, your boundaries are getting pinched upon, and you lose your sense of self."
If the victim does break out of the abusive relationship, this hopefully will become clear over time. The fog may eventually lift, and it may become apparent what all the love-bombing words and actions were: empty promises.
But there is nothing wrong with taking a relationship slow, and anyone worth being with will respect that. Archer says in his blog post that the best thing you can do is to slow down, take a step back, and remind yourself of your boundaries. If you feel like you're being pressured in any way, you may be the target of a love bomber. So try to avoid getting wrapped up in the moment, and remember to protect yourself.
After all, as the old saying goes, "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is."
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