✨Love Bombing

Some of you may have heard the term "Love Bombing" before, though it’s often overused. But what does it really mean?

Love Bombing is a form of emotional abuse that can be hard to detect, and it often leads to financial abuse. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to prove until it’s too late.

Imagine meeting someone for the first time. You hit it off instantly—shared interests, great conversation, and the time flies when you're together. You quickly feel at ease with them.

A short time later, they’re bringing you flowers, your favorite snacks, and lunch at work. They go out of their way to help—filling your gas tank, changing a flat tire, and surprising you with small gifts each time you meet.

As time passes, you start dating. They constantly praise your beauty and how happy you make them. It feels too good to turn away, and everyone around you agrees.

After about six months to a year, you're in love. You think, “I’m the luckiest” as they look at you like they’re the luckiest too.

But is everything as perfect as it seems?

You have now become the mouse in a trap.

Now, WAIT. Before you give up hope in people or think I have.

People can be truly loving and expressive in their affection, without any ulterior motive. Many individuals are waiting to find the right person to love and shower with affection and gifts. But remember, love bombing can be dangerous because it’s hard to detect. This is why its hard.

It is entirely possible for someone to fall in love with you, for you to match energy, vibes, and interests, and to spoil each other with affection. And you deserve that.

However, this kind of connection takes time. It’s built over shared memories and experiences, not in a matter of minutes or days.

You’ve probably heard the saying: “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.” Well, also consider this: “If it seems too soon to be true, it’s probably creepy.”

It’s unnatural and unsettling for someone to appear so in love and devoted to you in such a short period.

Ask yourself: How could anyone, in a healthy state, become so desperately attached to another so quickly?

Yes, people can be similar, but identical?

This kind of behavior is not healthy, even though it’s often cleverly disguised as pouring love, effort, and money into a relationship. You might feel like a fool for not accepting such love, or even feel paranoid if you question it.

This is what makes love bombing so hard to identify at times. It can be confusing, especially if you’ve experienced both love bombing and genuine love. Even then, you’ll find yourself constantly asking, “Is this real, or is it just a game?”

And when your gut instinct tells you something’s wrong, it’s difficult to step away. How do you leave someone who claims to be a manipulative narcissist when all they’ve done so far is love and spoil you?

This is what makes love bombing so hard to detect, avoid, or escape from.

Love bombing is often used by narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths (referred to here as the "bad guys" 😤).

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“Love bombing is characterized by excessive attention, admiration, and affection with the goal to make the recipient feel dependent and obligated to that person,” says licensed therapist Sasha Jackson, LCSW.

“And as the recipient, love bombing feels really good because of the boost of dopamine and endorphins you receive. You feel special, needed, loved, valuable, and worthy, which are all the components that contribute to and increase a person’s self-esteem.

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This tactic of Manipulation works on a biological level too, bonding you together with the Highs of dopamine

Dopamine plays a vital role in the brain’s ‘pleasure and reward systems.’

The reward center in your brain releases dopamine in response to pleasurable experiences.

This part of your brain is also closely linked to memory and motivation

Remember how good you felt when he first surprised you with lunch at your job? or the feeling of him revealing that beautiful necklace that happened to be expensive? Or that all-expense paid trip?

Yeah, your brain remember, and it felt good, you felt good. You felt as if you did something good and your brain released a bunch of dopamine into your system, which you felt over and over again each time you remembered those events or thought of him.

Because of these dopamine releases, people in love may experience euphoria, cravings, dependency, and even withdrawal from their partner.

Along with Dopamine, there is another chemical in your brain that reacts to these moments.

Serotonin

When you are happy, you create serotonin. These higher levels of serotonin not only boost your mood but also help regulate your diet. making you feel overall better.

Serotonin is sometimes referenced as the “happy juice” for your brain and works together with Melatonin to balance your sleep schedule.

Melatonin is the “Sleepy Juice” for your brain.

If Serotonin and melatonin are imbalanced, your sleep schedule may be out of whack, up all night, tired and drowsy in the day.

Many then suffer symptoms of insomnia.

So before you know it, your pleasure chemical, your happy chemical, your balanced diet, and Good night's sleep all become biologically dependent on this them.

They controls you.

Was that too Extreme? Well, that’s just how far narcs, socios, and psychos are willing to go. To the extreme.

How does a narcissist use love bombing to gain control?

The narcissist creates massive excitement and happiness to release dopamine through all the surprise gifts, trips, and dates.

They create a steady reliance on their presence with excessive time spent together, all day, and all night.

Then they create little gaps where they stop giving you 110% of their love and attention, to 0%. This is during disagreements where you’ll suddenly lose all his affection, and receive the silent treatment, where you are ignored for hours, even days, over something relatively small and unimportant.

This is to cause your body to crave with every withdrawal.

Then, suddenly he's replies, or visits again and goes back to spoiling you and loving you and can’t stop apologizing for how bad he felt without you and wouldn’t want to do anything that would stop the love. 

This cycle can continue and become more dangerous as the narc becomes more extreme in each act,

The cycle usually only breaks when the narc becomes bored enough to move on to a new target. Then discarding you.