Love Bombing

I recall the early days of our relationship. Was it whirlwind stuff? Was I swept off my feet?
Honestly, I wasn’t. Things were good, great at times but was it the stuff of fairy tails? No. The word “soulmate” was used though.

I hear that some people experience some serious soulmate, whirlwind, madly-in-love stuff in the early days of their relationship before it turns into chaos.

One thing I’m certain of now however is that she was “mirroring” me. I.e. She was pretending to like the things I liked and pretending to have the same interests and values as me.

Love bombing, while it tends to feature in the beginning of the relationship it also appears every other day, every other hour, every other minute of the relationship.

It’s simply when Susan is nice to me, she’ll buy me something, or she’ll be supportive, or she’ll be kind (no, generally not genuine). Even now that I’m wise to it, I still like to participate in the fantasy sometimes. Its’ nice to pretend that everything is good and things are normal.

Unfortunately, it’s not to last. It’s one of the four sides of the relationship. I’ve heard them refereed to as “cycles”. In my experience they’re not, we just seem to vacillate from one to the other in no particular order except that for every kind gesture she gives me, a massive amount of conflict and agro will follow.

1. Love bombing
2. Devaluing
3. Discard
4. Hoovering

Like I said, we toggle between love bombing and devaluing minute to minute. Discard is like a prolonged intense version of devaluing. I hear some people actually get discarded during this phase. Lucky them. Not me, we flip back and forth all the time.

Some nice gesture = love bombing.
Some horrible gesture = it almost feels like the love bombing was only thrown in there to provide enough relief from the horrible to prevent me from dying on her. I don’t believe it’s conscious, I don’t believe she does it on purpose, it just kinda happens in response to other things.

Staying Hooked

I mentioned that I like to hang out in the fantasy that is the love bombing It’s peaceful there. I like to pretend. And at times, I forget and it feels real until it all comes crashing down again as we move into devaluing. This is the intermittent reinforcement that keeps us hooked, that keeps us stuck, that keeps us in check.

Manipulation?

I’m not convinced that it’s always a manipulation. Jocob Skidmore, The Nameless Narcissist talks about this in some of his content. He talks about how when he love bombs, it’s genuine infatuation. The emotional dysregulation causes him to fall head over feet for a person, the love bombing is a consequence of that rather than a conscious manipulation. Observing Susan, when she’s doing these micro love-bombings, I think some of it is manipulation and some of it is genuine (when I’m painted-good during a splitting episode that may last for a few minutes). When she buys me designer deodorant, that is love bombing. Then when she inevitably confiscates it days later as punishment it brings into question, did she buy the deodorant just so she could consciously weaponize it like that? Answer: it was probably far more about extracting some praise and gratitude from me (a need to feel special, external validation, external emotional regulation) rather than a malign manipulation.

Bottom line

It’s never straightforward but in any case, for whatever reason, love-bombing is a thing.