Here are the three stages of love bombing and how you can avoid being love bombed.
What is love bombing? Love bombing is a manipulation tactic that is used—whether it’s a narcissist or anybody else—where they give you an inorganic amount of attention, admiration, and affection to win you over. By doing this, they become the center of your universe.
Stage 1: Idealization.
The Love Bomber is going to do everything they possibly can to become the center of your universe. Showering you with gifts. “You’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met. Let’s go on a trip. I wanna be with you. I wanna be in a relationship with you.” After one date.
The pinch doesn’t match the ouch. The amount of attention, admiration, and affection they’re giving you doesn’t match the amount of time that they’ve known you. They’ll say you are their soulmate, or they wanna rush and expedite the stages of a relationship. They’re texting you and calling you non stop. “You’re just the love of my life.” Everything is happening so quickly.
And for somebody with low self esteem that’s been just wanting this, they’ll look at this as, “Oh my god, finally somebody sees me for who I am.” Without understanding that that takes time for that to happen. Love bombers can seem so genuine that often times it’s hard to see the manipulation.
Stage 2: Devaluation.
Once the Love Bomber has you, once they know that they have you, that your boundaries are down, and that you trust them, and that you love them—this is when the manipulation starts. And this is also when you start to see their true colours.
This could be passive aggressive. This could be criticism. They’re putting you down. They start to make snide comments. The behaviour starts to change. All of a sudden, they’re not as charming and incredible as they were in the beginning. Now they’re nitpicking.
And it’s so confusing because it’s such a jarring difference from the person that they were. The recipient of it is wildly confused and doesn’t understand what’s going on, and is constantly questioning themselves.
Essentially, they wanna control the other person—and that’s exactly why they’re doing this. So that they can end up saying whatever they want. And that’s where the abuse can start to begin. Because you trust and love this person, you think that they trust you, but at the end of the day, you barely really know this person.
Stage 3: Discard.
Whether it’s somebody that maybe starts to set boundaries with this person or calls them out and they start to realize it—or if the person that was love bombing realizes they have no use for this person anymore and they wanna move on to somebody else—they’ll drop them like a bad habit. Because again, they were never after you. They were after the feeling that they got from the chase, the high. They were after what it made them feel—not how they felt with you or about you.
How to avoid being love bombed.
Set boundaries. It’s super important to set boundaries. Trust your gut. If somebody is saying something to you after one date—they want you to meet their family, or they want you to become their girlfriend, or they want exclusivity—and something feels off, say it. “Hey, this feels a little rushed to me. I barely know you. I’d like to go a little slower and get to know each other authentically.”
By going slow, taking your time, setting boundaries, and trusting your gut, you’ll at the very least be able to see if they’re full of shit. If someone’s gonna show up consistently over time, great—then you can start to trust them a little bit more. But when they come in hot and they give you a toothache because they’re being too sweet, that is something to look out for.
