Is It Love or Love Bombing?

Scrolling through my Instagram feed I bumped into a video of dating coach Matthew Hussey talking about love bombing and how typically, when we end up in a screwed up relationship, it’s because we completely misread the signals at the beginning of something new.

I know how this opening sentence sounds, I have just re-read it: scrolling through Instagram and dating coaches…I agree.

That said it got me thinking: when we are in the meanders of feeling enamored, when everything seems fantastic and we idealize the human in front of us, how can we distinguish what’s amazing from shit?

How can ‘amazing’ and ‘shit’ be so similar that one can be mistaken for the other?

Let’s define what love bombing is and why it is so dangerous.

Love bombing is a tactic used by narcissists and avoidants as emotional abuse. It looks something like this:

Your partner is giving you excessive attention, admiration and affection right at the beginning of your relationship making you crazy about them and dependent on their affection.
At the beginning everything seems perfect, too perfect to be true.
They want to spend a lot of time together, and they are so wonderful that you immediately feel the same way.
They talk about your future together in the first couple of months of your relationship.
They will persuade you toward making a commitment to them very early on in the courtship.
Once they feel like they ‘got’ you, they become manipulative, more distant and all of a sudden you feel anxious for no tangible reason.
They provide you with the validation you always wanted.
They make grand romantic gestures.
They make things move so fast you don’t even realise what’s happening to you. It feels like a dream.
Something just does’t feel right. You get a weird vibe from them sometimes and you experience emotional highs and lows.

Where was I at in life?

I thought I was in the best relationship I had been in for a long time. My boyfriend (yes, he had made it official right away) was one of the hottest living men alive, I am quite sure. He was also smart, generous, kind with me, well travelled, financially stable, attentive and insanely good in bed.

Bingo. I got the full package.

That said, as we returned from a 10 day holiday comprised of 3 rainy days in the British countryside and 6 days in Ischia and Procida on the Amalfi Coast where it also rained for most of our vacation and still managed to have an excetpional time, I was filled with a sense of anxiety.

Was there something inherently wrong? No.

Did we leave anything left unsaid that was bothering me? No.

Did I receive any mixed signals from him on the way home? No.

I exploded with happiness and now I was exploding with stress. This got me wondering…if everything was going so well, why was I feeling so anxious?

When love bombing happens to you.

I had no idea what love bombing was before writing this article, nor the type of person who would actually do something like this could be. Turns out it’s a person who appears to be splendid, smart and who is all about your happiness.

This person can completely destroy (surpass) any other date or partner you’ve ever been with with in the past their incredible manners, charm and with what you begin to think must be love.

Everything tends to move extremely fast: they jump straight into the relationship, they open up in a seemingly vulnerable way, they listen to you as you do the same. They may meet your friends and family — who also immediately love them — they put a toothbrush at their house on day 1.

The message you constantly receive is: you are special. You are the one.

As you fly off on vacation, you completely ignore work as your life becomes a full blown dream, you don’t have any time and mental space to stop and analyze what is actually happening. What’s there to analyze as you’re dancing in your hotel room overlooking the Amalfi Coast? What’s there to analyze as you sing in the car and explore a new island or when he stands attached to you at the breakfast cue at the chateau he booked for the weekend? What’s there to think about when he is holding you for an hour in silence while you dream of your future and look over the Ischia bay from your hotel terrace at night?

The answer should be nothing. Yet the answer is everything.

What’s the difference between love and love bombing?

When you experience love bombing you are so overwhelmed with attention and excitement that you have no way to actually realize that this person’s emotions may not be sincere, nor there at all.

Love bombers sweep you off your feet directly because once you are in the air you have nothing to hang on to, except for them. And they’ve been on this same exact trip many times before. They already know that this is a circular flight, they make you believe that it’s a one way endless flight towards a beautiful unknown destination you will pick out together, however in reality you are just circling around to land at the exact point where you took off. This is if you’re lucky, because if they decide ahead of landing that it’s not even worth accompanying you for the landing strip they will drop you wherever it’s most convenient for them.

You won’t know what hit you.

I was there, flying in his arms, it felt like the happiest place I had ever been to, I didn’t want to land ever.

In my case, he picked me up at my place, no one else around. He took me with a black cab to what felt like his private jet to happiness, there, parked for me. When I landed he was gone and a flight attendant took me straight to the ‘lounge of other women who had also taken the same flight and were waiting to see if there was another flight ahead or if that was simply it’.

A land of women branded as insane, made to think they were too attached, women who were subconsciously told after all of this that they were simply not good enough to be his forever partner. Sure, at some point he thought they could be but — no. He’s so much better than them.

Truth is , they stood no chance, I stood no chance.

I am sure inside this airport lounge that he dressed up beautifully and comfortably to ease his own sense of guilt and to ensure some women would stay around for his entertainment, there are beautiful strong and interesting women that deserved so much better. Frankly, I know I do.

Why would someone go through all this trouble if they don’t have actual feelings?

I wish I could give you a straight answer, in psychology there are so many theories: childhood trauma, there is the theory that they do experience feelings however the feelings they experience are immature ones a child would experience, not an adult.

Or maybe, this person was simply put — an asshole.

How can you navigate love bombing?

I am not sure I have recovered enough to impart knowledge however I will share what I have learned from this experience:

Love comes with time because you cannot know a person in a month, ever when it feels like you’ve known them forever.
Intensity is not love. Excitement is not love.
Don’t take the other’s feeling for granted, they may not be feeling exactly the same thing (even if they seem like they are).
You can never forget to love yourself first, the moment you do, the other person will also forget to love you.
Trust your gut instinct, it typically tells you if something is wrong.
Listen to your body, anxiety or pain is typically a bad sign.
Take time for yourself in the middle of the storm of happiness, this will give you greater clarity.
When your intentions are pure, you cannot imagine that someone else’s may not be in the same place. You will never be able to enter the mind of a shit person when you aren’t, so don’t blame yourself, instead, thank yourself for being able to love and to believe again.

Was it worth it to experience something so beautiful and fall from such a high altitude? No. I actually don’t think so.

Did I really need another learning experience? Unpopular answer but no. I don’t think so.

I thought about getting a revenge body, about small things I could do to get back with him or to get back at him and I came to one conclusion: I won’t plan any revenge. Going through life hurting people and being incapable of love is punishment enough.

This post was previously published on medium.com.

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