The Narc Narc

Narcissism Exposed

Love Bombing

If you feel like those two words don’t sound right being said together, you would be correct. Love Bombing is another tactic used by narcissists in order to undermine another’s sense of self-worth, self-esteem and self-confidence.

While lavishing one’s partner with praise and adoration can occur in a healthy relationship, narcissists display over the top acts of attention and do this with ill-intent and plans of manipulation. Love bombing can include compliments, gifts, declarations of love, usually early on, and taking steps to spend increasing amounts of time together.

This type of abuse is used to gain the upper hand and increase dependence on the abuser. You may not pick up on it right away because on the positive side they will lavish you with over-the-top gifts, say all the right things, and try to get to know you right away. The goal is to overwhelm you, the victim, and make you believe they have found a true connection.

You might start feeling that something is awry, however, when you start receiving non-stop texts and excessive flattery, you notice a lack of boundaries and emotional neediness along with early declarations of love, for example, “You are my soulmate.” If you don’t notice these red flags, most likely you will spend more and more time with the narcissist, and inevitably less time with your friends and family resulting in isolation.

After the “Idealization Phase,” the abuser starts to engage in more aggressive and harmful tactics and begins to withdraw affection when angry. The “Devaluation” stage begins in which the abuser casts insults, tries to control your appearance, berates you for small mistakes, and may even become physically abusive.

The perpetrator then reverts back to the Idealization Phase to make up for their bad behavior. This cycle continues in order to keep you invested in the relationship. Eventually, in true narcissistic form, you are discarded when you no longer meet the narcissists needs and aren’t valuable or desirable anymore.

This type of abuse is incredibly damaging and results in victims isolating themselves due to feeling they cannot trust people. Some feel they’ve lost their identity. Recovery is not easy, but is possible, often with the help of a therapist.

Here are a few personal examples of Love Bombing:

Example 1: First Christmas with my ex while dating – gift: Travel Journal with homemade “Ticket to Anywhere in the World.” First Christmas after married – gift: Nothing

Gifts for other special occasions varied and ranged from a flower picked from the front yard (because store bought flowers die anyway) to nice store-bought gifts with no apparent rhyme or reason. He never felt the need to give me a gift or celebrate me for Mother’s Day because I was not his mother. This strange pattern of gift giving put me in a position of feeling guilty; either guilty for all the time and effort he readily told me he’d expended for the nice gifts, or guilty for feeling sad or forgotten when I received a note on a torn piece of paper, a flower picked from our own bush, or nothing at all. He would say, “I just don’t know what you want. I don’t know how to make you happy.”

Example 2: He said he loved me, yet it seemed like everything I did irritated him. I was constantly wondering what I was doing wrong and what I could do to make our relationship better. He was constantly moping around, never happy. I tried so hard to make him happy, but nothing was ever good enough. I was so frustrated. This was because at the time I didn’t know he was a narcissist. Once I figured it out, it made sense. Nothing is ever good enough for the narc. In a way this is good news! It takes the pressure off. There’s no need to try when it’s not going to be good enough anyway!

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Sources for this article are personal experience, the Psychology Today article “Love Bombing,” the Choosing Therapy article “Love Bombing; Definitions, Signs and What to Do.”.

2 responses to “Love Bombing”

  1. thenarcnarc Avatar
    thenarcnarc

    Thanks for your reply, Natasha. I’m so glad you listened to your intuition! It’s our internal guidance system!

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  2. nffussell Avatar
    nffussell

    I have ran into this more than once and it always scared me away. I wasn’t familiar with this term until recently. Thank you for explaining it in more detail and it reiterates I was right by being scared of this behavior!

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