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Hello everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s.
The podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our
20s and what they mean for our psychology.
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show, welcome back to the podcast.
New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world, it is so great to have you
here.
Back for another episode as we of course break down the psychology of our 20s.
Before we get into things, this episode does deal with discussions of abuse.
Please just take a moment to assess whether that is something that you are ready to hear
today.
This episode will still be here tomorrow, it will still be here in a week and a few months
when you are in a better headspace to perhaps return to it.
So it is your decision but just giving you a heads up and a reminder to please take care
of yourself.
A really hot topic in the dating realm in the dating world the moment is lovebombing.
And it has been for a while now, you see tiktoks and reels of it everywhere, articles about
how to tell if he is lovebombing you, you hear horror stories from people who think that
they have found the one and discover three months later that it was all a manipulation strategy.
These grand gestures that leave us confused as to whether this person is truly infatuated
with us or just likes the idea of you or is just trying to get something from you.
It can all be a little bit confusing to distinguish between a true connection and lovebombing,
especially in this day and age when there is so much confusion and contradictory information
about what actually constitutes a lovebombing situation and when to be worried.
It's something we see a lot right, you know when a term like lovebombing enters out
collective psychopathal, it can become quite twisted and sometimes misused and actually
leave us with less answers and less clarity in understanding them before.
And the stakes are also really high right when it comes to love, everything takes on
a whole new level of significance because love is such a soft and vulnerable part of us.
And at the end of the day, it's kind of all that we want to be seen and cared for and
adored and spoiled, we probably also know what it feels like to be hurt and disappoint
it, how hard it is to find a real connection amongst dozens of dead ends and duds.
So when somebody comes along and seemingly offers us everything that we've ever wanted
and has no faults, we can fall pretty quickly.
The hard part is discerning when that connection and all those brilliant acts of service and
gifts and affirmations is derived from an organic place or when it is potentially a facade,
a sign of something more sinister that is to come or maybe even a habit that this person
has learned to kind of entice you in and then switch everything around when they have you.
So let's talk about it today.
What is the actual psychology behind love bombing?
Where does this concept come from?
What is it having common with cults and Snapchat?
What are some of the biggest signs and of course the distinction between once again something
real and something artificial?
Love versus love bombing and how can we actually tell?
I also want to talk about what makes some of us more susceptible to these behaviors and
why it is definitely not your fault that you and me and everyone seems to get very caught
up in this whirlwind of romance.
But also some of the questions to really help you discern and determine what's actually
going on, whether you can really trust this situation, you can really trust this person's
actions or whether it's time to maybe get out.
So all of that and more, we have so much to talk about.
The psychology behind this is fascinating at times overwhelming.
Without further ado, let's get into it.
We all have some concept of what it means to be love bombed.
Flowers every day.
I love yous after the first day, promises of marriage by date, three huge extraviking
gifts, meeting the family, wanting to spend every second with you, very much being swept
off your feet with grand gestures, eagoboos and a high level of commitment from the beginning
that you may have always wanted from somebody.
The way I like to put it is that a relationship that contains love bombing appears to be like
a typical relationship timeline on steroids.
And you know what?
It probably feels incredibly nice.
That is the whole purpose of love bombing.
You know, it's to induce feelings of closeness and passion and intimacy and affection as soon
as possible.
And it's only natural that when this happens, you know, all of those logical and rational
centers of our brains are essentially overridden by the very powerful chemical reactions that
are happening in the other parts of our brains that are responsible for processing emotion.
These areas are being flooded with dopamine and serotonin in response to this other person's
affection and admiration.
It is a very biological process at its core when we really examine it deep down.
We respond so positively to displays of love.
We crave so deeply intimacy and affection that when it is given to us, it's like fireworks.
It's like everything in our brain goes into overdrive.
But under that, that pleasant, sometimes even addictive feeling is often a sinister intention.
Love bombing is at the end of the day an attempt to influence a person through demonstrations
of attention and affection that will lower our defenses and our ability to detect red flags,
but also attach and bond us very quickly to that person who is displaying these behaviors.
There is a benefit for them that we are perhaps not seeing.
We are blinded by their extreme kindness and love and that benefit may be to soothe their
own insecurities and abandonment issues.
It may be to create a power dynamic that means we will never leave them and they'll have
all the control.
It may be to create dependence, to control and manipulate or to just they get the exciting
feelings from those early days.
That's what they really want and then when they're bored, they leave.
The sinister or ulterior intentions, motivations of love bombing.
That is a core characteristic of this behavior.
You cannot have love bombing without that second component and we can see that by really
diving into the history of where the term has come from.
This behavior first got its name from a series of cults, including the Unification Church
of the United States and the People's Temple which you might know as the cult responsible
for the Jonestown massacre and also another famous cult called the Branch Davidians which
was responsible for the Waco siege.
You know, a very dark history and the reason that this term was created was because these
cults quickly discovered that excessive positive reinforcement, excessive displays of friendship
and kinship, gifts and incentives, they were a really great way to get new members and
to prevent them from leaving.
This was one of their tactics for winning people over and building trust but also dependency
and allegiance on a very short timeline.
And as awful as it was for their purpose, it was very smart.
They took one of our core needs, love and belonging which sits only above our biological
needs, for food and water and our safety needs, for security and they artificially manipulated
it to achieve what they wanted which was total psychological control.
If it could be used in those circumstances and it definitely is, it can also be used
in everyday and one-on-one relationships like endating or even in friendship.
It's not like they were the first people to discover this but they were the first to
really use it for very extreme, large sinister campaigns to win people over.
Here is the thing that a lot of us don't realise though but what we typically see as love
bombing, the extravagance, the excitement, that is really only the first stage.
So according to the psychiatrist Dale Archer who did a lot of his initial research in his
career on love bombing, he talked to patients, he heard about their experiences, love bombing
actually tends to occur in three phases.
So the idealisation phase comes first, that is what we typically see as love bombing,
your partner really bombards you with excessive affection to draw you in, to let your guard
down, you know I've already mentioned a few signs of this but some others that therapists
often speak of include, you know your partner rushes into locking things down, they're
really jealous of your family and friends, they show up even when they weren't invited,
they like you better when you're alone, they over communicate their love to the point
where it may even make you feel uncomfortable and at first it may seem too good to be true
or too easy and that is the purpose, that is what we want, that is what they want because
what comes after that is the devaluation phase.
And this is where we can really categorize their behaviour as love bombing, when it feels
like the honeymoon period kind of suddenly bursts overnight.
Once you start to let your guard down and get comfortable in this relationship the red flag
start to appear because they've won your trust, they may try to exert control over you in
a variety of ways, being very demanding of your time, being very upset when you make plans
without them, they might limit your access to your friends and family, they may stop
bites just to kind of exert control over you and to stop you from going to events, you
know, a lot of emotional manipulation, a lot of gaslighting, the gifts, you know they
become less regular, the compliments are also mixed in with insults, but we keep thinking
back to those early days and expecting this past version of them and this past version
of our love to come back because of how deeply rewired the idealisation phase has made
us.
In really severe cases we don't just see psychological manipulation and emotional abuse but also physical
abuse and when you confront them what you enter in that moment is the third stage and
the third stage is the discard phase.
When you try and work things through with them when you instigate meaningful conversation
when you attempt to reset healthy boundaries, this person your partner may avoid accountability
by refusing to cooperate, refusing to talk about it, refusing to compromise or by abandoning
the relationship altogether and this can leave you feeling really confused and really
disorientated because a couple weeks ago it was the most brilliant beautiful TV romance
of the century and now here you are, a learn.
There's also likely to be some level of dependence and emotional reliance which means that
we've been so hyped up by these huge feelings and emotions that we can't help but feel
compelled to go back and to try and win them over and to try and see what went wrong
and we really want the relationship to work and that is when the love bombing cycle typically
begins again.
This person attempts to repair the bond or repair the wound that they have left by doing
what they know works which is all of those extreme examples of love.
This is important to note because this might sound controversial but the behaviors we
typically associate with love bombing, those things we see in the first stage are in themselves
and alone they're not evil or manipulative.
Actually they're pretty special, it's not all that impossible that someone may fall
head over heels with you and it could be like a natural and intense reaction, it's not
like you cannot accept flowers because it's lovebubbing.
We might say I love you a little bit too soon because it's just human.
Some people just really do get in their feelings and have no intention of manipulating you
but it's what comes after that.
It's phase 2 and phase 3 that really create the lovebombing cycle and situation.
As I've already mentioned lovebombing can become also a part of a cycle of abuse whereby
it's not just that they use these activities and behaviors to entice you but they use
them to control you and they use them as a way of reconciling with you after arguments,
after incidences of abuse.
There was this really amazing article about this by a women's aid group which I'll put
in the description and in that article this is what they had to say.
Lovebombing becomes an effective tool to abusers as they exert coercive control over a partner
because it is intended to keep you still hopeful even when it all grows bad and it's that
hope that causes people to sometimes stay.
So let's move on, let's talk about why it is that people love bomb, what's going on
in their brains, what's the need here?
Here is a concept here that we haven't spoken about yet that really needs to be brought
up when we're having conversations about lovebombing.
You cannot talk about lovebombing without also talking about narcissism.
Narcissism for a quick catch up describes basically a network of personality traits that
center around an extreme sense of self-involvement and self-importance.
A person displaying narcissistic traits or who has narcissistic personality disorder is preoccupied
by their own interests and needs even if they are at the expense of somebody else.
The only thing they want from you is what you can give them.
They want your attention, they want their admiration, they want everything is for them.
That's basically what narcissism is.
A person has only focused on what they seek to gain from a situation.
So I don't think that it will come as a surprise that there is a significant correlation between
narcissistic personality traits and lovebombing.
In a really fascinating study published in 2017, researchers observed almost 500 college
students, their personalities, their relationship formation and they found that lovebombing was
used as a way to form relationships, especially and specifically amongst individuals who reported
a low self-esteem, be an insecure attachment and see narcissistic personality traits.
This makes a lot of sense because as one researcher put it, the psychological reasoning behind
lovebombing is I need to get you to trust me.
I need you to only want me and not somebody else.
I want to get on your good side.
I want to build your trust so that when I discard you later you're not going to know it's
coming and I will never be the one who feels abandoned or rejected.
I always get to be the one who is in control because that way I and the one who always gets
my needs met.
By overwhelming somebody with positive reinforcement, the lovebomb creates a sense of dependency
and the recipient may feel that they could never find such an intense affection and validation
anywhere else.
What makes it very hard makes it very difficult for you to want to leave even when the relationship
turns sour.
Lovebombing is manipulation for personal gain but it's also a way to protect their ego.
They get to have you and your affection as quickly and when they want it, they get to play
the game, they get to keep you invested and then when they're done, they get to end it
when they want.
The root of lovebombing is manipulation but it's also control and power.
It's not just narcissism that drives this, you know, to organise an insecure attachment
also plays a role.
So the authors of that same paper I just referenced also mentioned it briefly but people with
an anxious attachment style may find themselves engaging in some of the behaviours that look
like lovebombing and not always for the purposes of control but because of an innate insecurity
and fear, the causes them to speed up the relationship out of a worry that the other person will
leave if they are given the chance.
If they apply all of these tactics for bonding somebody to them, if they shower them in
praise and gifts and feelings, there is less chance of rejection or heartbreak.
It is still manipulative, it is intended to influence the situation but for very different
reasons, does it make it healthier?
Absolutely not.
Because it does still involve creating a false environment and artificial circumstances
that make them seem like the perfect match until they start to feel better about the
situation until they start to feel secure until they have you.
So it is just another explanation for why somebody might instigate this pattern of behaviours.
A final explanation, you know there are quite a few more but these are the big three.
The final explanation I want to mention for why people lovebomb has to do with what we
might call intensity addiction.
There are some people out there who just love the honeymoon phase.
That's all they're here for.
And so they have a brief window to squeeze in all the deep emotions, the love, the ecstasy,
the beauty of falling in love, before things start to get too serious and then they can
evacuate.
Fast tracking a relationship through lovebombing gives them the intense high that they
want without the commitment.
It is a great way to get all the highs without never having to experience the lows because
they leave after only a few months before the honeymoon phase is over and the whole time
they've had a lot of the power.
I will give these individuals some level of grace.
Often they have no idea that this is what they're doing.
It is a subconscious relationship pattern that has been ingrained in them for a long time,
maybe because they were once hurt, maybe because they just are too scared of commitment.
And often the feelings are somewhat real.
And if you ask them for a relationship timeline, they do care about the people they dated.
But there are these almost gaps in their memories around why the relationship ended.
Because acknowledging that perhaps it was most likely them would mean that they would
have to recognize that their acceleration of the timeline was actually what caused it
to crash and burn.
And it's often us that are the casualties because they've already clocked out.
They've already checked out of the relationship as soon as it wasn't fun anymore.
I think from this we can kind of determine a little bit of a lovebombing spectrum or
scale.
At one end we have narcissism and individuals who are deliberate and planned about their
desire to have us to control us, to manipulate.
And then we have people at the other end whose relationship habits and patterns are just
completely chaotic and careless.
But the thing is we are still the ones who get hurt in the process.
And here's the thing, even if their intentions aren't malicious, even when it feels good,
we really we want to love that loss.
That's what we want.
We want a healthy, sustaining love, not one of instant gratification.
Not a temporary or artificial feeling that is built on the basis of acceleration and
fast-paced emotions that will eventually fade.
And it's hard to tell sometimes.
Let me tell you that is especially hard to tell when you have maybe spent a good deal
of time dealing with people who give you absolutely nothing or the bare minimum.
You know sometimes it is refreshing for somebody to come along and wine and dine us.
And you deserve that.
You deserve great deep love.
It's just about distinguishing between when that is a real sign of love, when that is
a real connection versus love bombing.
So that is what we're going to talk about.
Next, what is the distinction?
How can we tell and how can we protect ourselves after this short break?
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Love is meant to feel amazing and you are meant to be spoiled and treated well.
You really deserve someone who wants to make your life better and thinks that you are amazing
and gives you little gifts showing you that they're thinking of you and sees a future
with you.
The healthy version of this comes with time.
It's something that I've definitely realized the order I've gotten, the more relationships
I've been in, the more relationships I've seen my friends being and I've observed.
Those that are built slowly are built on real feeling.
Those that emerge overnight are often built on impulse or something artificial and short
lived.
There are a few key relationship characteristics that I think distinguish or differ between
lovebombing and love.
Is it typically pacing?
Lovebombing involves an intense and rapid escalation of the relationship.
The lovebomb will push very quickly for commitment and intense closeness very early on.
You know, love on the other hand takes time because closeness comes from experience and
shared memories and values and growth as a partnership.
The other component is inconsistency.
Love should be consistent.
Yes, you know, sometimes there are bumps in the road but you know that the road is always
going to be there and you know that the road will continue on.
With lovebombing, you might not know.
Underneath the bright, brilliant feelings is often the twinge of anxiety and worry.
Most people call that intuition but we can confuse it with passion.
Anxiety and excitement are very similar on a physical level.
In both situations, our heart beats faster, our cortisol searches, our body is prepared
for action, everything feels bit tingly.
It's how we interpret that emotion, our cognitions and our perceptions that determine what
we see it as.
It is very easy to ignore our gut feeling about a situation when it just feels so sweet
and good.
But I think as the saying goes, if it feels too good to be true, maybe it is and maybe
it is valuable to interrogate the origin of that feeling.
Another distinction, idealization and promises.
Someone who has good intentions won't over promise.
They won't make commitments.
They can't keep.
Not just because they don't want to disappoint you because but also because they also want
to be sure themselves.
They don't want to get caught up.
That's really mature and it shows respect and a natural level of caution.
On the other hand, lovebombs are not going to hold back.
Marriage next month, let's do it.
Should we move in together?
Yes, absolutely.
Are you the love of my life?
Yes.
No doubts about it.
We've only known each other for a week.
I still know you get the picture.
It's incredibly grandiose.
And another factor in which these kind of relationship types, I don't know whether to
call that, in which love and lovebombing differs is power.
Is power, isolation and control.
It is my belief that healthy love isn't just sustained by what happens between you two,
but also what you allow to pursue beyond the relationship.
It's sustained by the things that exist outside of your kind of union.
You have your own friends.
You have your own interests and lives.
But with lovebombing, the relationship is all consuming.
It is the center of your universe.
If this is sounding very similar to codependency, that is because it is, there is this very
similar concept when we talk about codependency called affection flooding.
And I heard about this from a podcast called relationships made easy.
And the host talks about how affection flooding occurs when a codependent person is engulfing
their partner with an avalanche of affection and attention driven by their deep-seated
need for validation and external affirmation.
It is very similar to lovebombing.
And the outcome in both situations is that you do become almost conjoined or attached
to your partner.
Everything becomes, you know, just them.
All thoughts lead back to them.
All actions or behavior or choices lead back to them.
I want to quickly stipulate I don't blame anybody who has ever been lovedbombed and
stayed because it would be so hard to turn down.
Especially as I said before, if you've gone through a number of situations or relationships
in which all you ever wanted, what, you know, was exactly what this person is now giving
you.
Commitment, excitement, generosity, love.
It's even harder when our sense of self or our self-esteem has already been diminished
by a previous situation that has just made us feel really undeserving or unlovable.
This person, you know, when they come along and they have all these grand gestures, they
can seem like our white night.
But here is a series of very important questions to help you discern whether that is love or
lovebombing.
How does the pace of the relationship make you feel?
And where do you feel these feelings in your stomach, in your heart, in your body?
Is there a difference between what you're feeling and a similar feeling of anxiety?
Are you feeling stable and sure and confident or excited and bubbly and perhaps anxious?
If you went away for a month and came back, would the relationship change?
Would you be worried about the passion fading?
What do you have in common?
Do you have shared interests?
Do you have shared values?
Is there a genuine foundation to your relationship?
Does it feel like there won't be a future if the future doesn't happen now?
If you slowed everything down, would they still be there?
And finally, is your life still yours or is your life your relationship?
Is your relationship and your attachment to this person taking over?
These questions are important because they give us a chance to pause and really assess
what we are experiencing based on what we have established are the distinctions between
love and lovebombing.
It kind of gives us a bit of a brief time out to switch on that critical thinking and
logical part of our brain and just explore whether this is all too good to be true or
made to last.
If it all keeps coming back to that one explanation only, this is lovebombing, there are a few
things that we can do.
Firstly, I get wanting to just like, wait it out and see if things change because it's
really hard to not want to bathe in that glow of feeling really wanted and feeling really
loved.
But I want you to remember, the more time you stay is time that you will continue to feel
connected to this person.
The feel good feelings are kind of the poison, they are the weapon in the situation they
are, a manipulation strategy.
And it's the thing that will keep you attached even if you think that you can keep some
emotional distance.
Sometimes we just don't have as much control as we think.
And so the best thing to do is to kind of firstly pull back and check their reaction and
practice setting some boundaries.
You know, just say to them, I'm sorry I can't see you this weekend, please don't say
me gifts at work, please don't show up and announce, set a boundary and see how they
respond.
If they get incredibly aggressive or defensive or upset, I think that's a pretty clear
sign that what's happening right here is something that is going to eventually turn into
something much worse.
If you find that this person is not responsive or respectful of your boundaries, get out,
get out of that situation.
Remember those three phases that we spoke about before?
Yeah, I think the second and the third stage is really where once they have their claws
and you, they know, they know what they have.
And it becomes really hard for you to leave.
Psychologically, emotionally, socially, physically.
It becomes so much harder because they do have the control.
So I do just really want to remind you firstly, it's not your fault if that is something
that you are going through right now.
It is only natural that you felt really compelled and attracted to this person, but please don't
confuse chemistry with compatibility.
Chemistry will have you feeling amazing, but it's short lived.
Compatibility is a slow burn.
It is an alignment.
It is a bond that grows over time.
It has shed values.
It has shed experiences and it's real and love bombing is artificial.
So just a reminder that what feels good now is not going to feel as amazing in three months
or six months.
And you could have had that time to really resettle into yourself and find somebody who, yeah, we'll
do all the really nice things that will also be committed to staying and staying because
they love you and care about you, not because they want to control you.
So I hope that you have at least learned something from this episode.
You've taken something away.
Thank you for listening.
Thank you for coming along for the journey.
If there is somebody in your life who you think might benefit from hearing this episode,
please feel free to share it with them.
It also allows us to reach new ears, reach new people.
Make sure that you are following along.
And if you want to, it only takes a couple of seconds to leave us five stars.
It really makes my day if you want to leave a review as well.
I read them all and they are quite special to me.
So thank you so much for, yeah, considering it.
I would love to hear from you as well.
If you have anything else you want to contribute to this episode, if you have an episode suggestion,
we're always open to hearing feedback, to hearing ideas, topics that you want us to explore.
To make sure that you are following me at that psychology podcast or you want to see
behind the scenes, you can follow me at GemisBeg.
And until next time, be safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself and we will talk soon.
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