Love Bomb: A psychological technique used by emotional manipulators to exert control over their love interests, by administering intense praise, attention and admiration. Once their target’s emotions have been engaged, the Love Bomber abruptly stops his/her pursuit and becomes distant, cold and may even stop contact all together. This causes the target to have severe feelings of confusion and pain. The abrupt rejection will trigger unresolved childhood traumas in the target and will cause them to engage in obsessive thinking and addiction-type behaviors, all centered around trying to win back their abuser’s affections.
The late Maya Angelou once said, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”If this rings true, then no one benefits more than an emotional manipulator bent on winning the affections of their target.
The feelings they arouse become the addictive focus of their target, for once they are removed, the target will do just about anything to have them back.
How does an emotional manipulator bring about such intense feelings?
They make themselves appear larger than life and they shine their spotlight, attention and focus squarely on their target. They generously lavish the target with praise, compliments and admiration. They place their target way up high on a pedestal and exhibit a worshiping type energy.
It would be difficult for most men and women to escape such a rush of appreciation, especially when the target is usually one who has felt unloved for much of their life. The Emotional manipulator will pay very close attention to what their target reveals. They will encourage them to open up. The getting to know you phase, early on, is when people speak freely and share their dreams and desires for the future. The Emotional Manipulator listens carefully. It’s almost as if they are gathering intelligence to use later.
What they do is they mirror what the target desires back at them, appearing to be the man or woman they’ve been waiting for. They speak the words the target most wants to hear, they appear the savior your life has been waiting for. They are sweet, thoughtful, loving, generous, dependable and full of integrity.
This process is very quick. The emotional manipulator knows they can’t keep up the façade forever and soon their mask will slip and their real self will be revealed, but until then they’ve got to get what they need from the target, so speed is of the essence.
When they engage in love bombing behaviors, they have already determined that they have found the right target. What they are seeking is someone who is a nurturer, a fixer, someone who over-gives and is a good source of supply.
The question most people ask is, “Why would anyone enter into a relationship and fill their love interest with hope, budding love and the promise of a bright future together, only to rip that dream abruptly and cruelly from them without warning?”
Why would someone purposely send someone soaring, only to have them crashing down into a pit of despair, that may take them a long time to crawl out from?
The answer is – someone who lacks empathy. Only someone who’s focus is entirely on their own self-interests and someone who lacks the ability to put themselves in someone else’s shoes, would purposely and without a care, cause the suffering of another.
A healthy person would realize that once what they are looking for, is off the table, there would be no reason to stay in the relationship and they would walk away. If the emotional manipulator has done a good job at selecting the appropriate target, that target would not only stay, but they would jump through hoop after hoop, all in an effort to bring back the person they fell in love with in the beginning. They will absorb the blame for why the emotional manipulator’s feelings have changed and try to convince them that they are still worthy of the intense affections they received during the love bombing stage.
The end game for the emotional manipulator is to secure their love interests emotions. That is what they are after. The moment the’‘I love you’s’ are spoken, the relationship is on the decline. A relationship was never what the emotional manipulator was after. What they wanted was to feel like they were worthy of someone’s love.
They are deeply insecure and cannot regulate their own self-esteem, so in order to attain their ego’s requirements, they must siphon admiration from another. They feel big by making others feel small and if they can trick you into falling in love with them, then they convince themselves that they are good enough, that they are worthy of love. Because their emotions are superficial they don’t concern themselves with whether or not someone’s affections are sincere, they are more interested in the frequency and grandiosity of the declaration. If you are begging and pleading with them to take you back, after they have treated you so deplorably, it further strengthens this belief and feeds their ego.
If you have found yourself stuck in this type of relationship it is the Universe’s way of showing you that there are parts of yourself that need to be healed. If you miss this, you will continue to repeat the mistake, until you get it. Turn your focus inward and heal the childhood wounds that are still plaguing your adult relationships, be mindful of what to lookout for and don’t be afraid to act when your relationship no longer meets your needs or brings you joy.
Your Comments!!!!!!
Do you need to talk? Click here to find out how you can Skype with Savannah.
Image courtesy of digitalart at freedigitalphotos.net
Hi Savannah,
I have a question about the people that do this extreme love bombing. Do they ever heal or evolve? Or do they just go through life repeating this process; use the partner up and spit them out and on to the next.
For my example, he was 53. To me that seems kind of old to be playing these games, maybe that’s why I was susceptible too. So at any age a man could come along to use a partner that way? I was constantly listening and building him up. He didn’t use me financially or sexually, or anything else a narcissist would do.
Until I read this article I thought I had done something wrong to make him dump me. Thank you for your help!
Laura, some people get it and learn from it, some people never get it and some are incapable of getting it.
Great article, spot on! Right on Vera too!
My hurt inner child from my mother’s narcissistic tendencies was a magnet to his hurt, victimized inner child from alcoholic parents.
It started off nice, we were friends then a few months later jumped into a serious relationship, we are both early 50s. He was complimentary, kind, attentive, responsive, always made me feel like the center of his life. I started to pull back a bit because it felt odd that he didn’t have any friends, but had a father he was co-dependent with. He was a victim his whole life, could recount detailed stories repeatedly from grade school on, through relationships, his job, everywhere he was a victim.
I got tired of listening and hearing the negativity. I’m a positive energetic person. Once I showed limited interest in that, guess what? He became MY victim. Everything I did in his mind was wrong and I was inconsiderate. The last 2 weeks we were together he complained about me and all that I did and didn’t do. I thought he was just tired, like he’d always been.
Once he figured out I wasn’t going to move him into my home to live it was done. (he had recently got an apartment after staying at his dad’s in between relationships). He ghosted me. It was devastating. After 8 months of talking about a future, what we were going to do, how great we were together, he’s waited his whole life for me, he looked at engagement rings, etc.etc.etc.
He didn’t respond to my calls, texts, emails, nothing. After ruling out any emergencies, I realized it was over for him just like that. No explanation. Darkness. I had no idea what I did, what happened, nothing. Looking back now, I see that I fulfilled a role in building him up and he discarded me in an instant, a relationship vanished.
I see now it was all too good to be true. Constant love bombing. But he was all talk, little action. And when I started asking for action, he was gone.
“A relationship was never what the emotional manipulator was after. ” That really hit me. I don’t know why but that was a completely new thought for me. Given how hard I was pursued, asked for marriage, convinced to even get into a relationship, my head was spinning. It never occurred to me that he didn’t even want a relationship. With his words he said his deepest desire was to have a relationship but his actions show that he can only sustain about a two year relationship, three if the person is like me and takes on all the blame. Interesting. They are two very different things, a relationship and admiration. Admiration only happens for a while and then the part I like begins, the comfortable friendship part. A relationship with anyone or anything has a honeymoon period and then the less exciting familiarity and sustaining part. I like how you said once the I love you’s have been said the relationship begins to die. Mentally, I understand it now. I get that the admiration is a brief bright honeymoon that is the addiction for the narcissist. It has been very good for me to work on the wounds that make me just as addicted to the honeymoon as a narcissist. In fact I have a kind of uncomfortable thought: I think we codependents are sold the same addictive idea as the narcissists: that if we are what the other person needs and finds ideal, we will be loved. I guess healthy people are more realistic and patient, but I did want what my N promised, the adulation and love-bombing hit me like rain in a desert. Once it stopped I worked three times as hard to get my drug back. I swear I slept for a year once I moved out. I’d stripped all my gears trying and trying and trying. Which, is exactly what my childhood was like so I can see why I returned to my painful comfort zone of overgiving—it was all I knew for most of my life.
Thank you Savannah, so incredibly spot on as usual!
In my case, my wounded inner child recognized and was attracted by the wounded inner child she saw inside the narcissist.
After all these years and work on myself I hope my inner child has healed, and the next relationship, if it will ever happen, will be between adults. I don’t know if there is a way to know for sure that our childhood wounds have healed.