Love Bombing: Definition, Examples, & Psychology
Love bombing is overwhelming someone with gifts, attention, and affection. While that might sound like a nice thing to do, love bombing is actually a warning sign of unhealthy boundaries.
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I am not a fan of romantic comedies. I find them formulaic throughout, but especially in those moments when the (usually male) romantic lead starts to go overboard in his courting of the (usually female) other romantic lead. We can probably all pull up a memory like this: the improbably cute and thoughtful date that just keeps going, from the handpicked restaurant to the flowers on the bed. The hero obsessed with doing whatever it takes to prove his love. |
My complaint is that it just all seems too good to be true. And while the on-screen couple usually waltzes off into the sunset with “happily ever after” vibes, it turns out that in real life, this behavior is often the first step down a very different path. Not sure you believe me yet? Let’s look at the science of love bombing and see what the research says.
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What Is Love Bombing? (A Definition)
I do not want to pathologize a whirlwind romance. It is a beautiful thing to fall quickly and deeply in love, and to throw oneself into a relationship out of pure affection and joy. But love bombing is different—it is manipulative, calculated; it has the purpose, whether the love bomber is conscious of it or not, of getting the recipient of all that “love” hooked on it.
Once that pattern has been established—once the recipient has come to expect and perhaps even rely on the love bomber’s displays of affection—the stage is set for very different interactions. Love bombing prepares the recipient to be coerced into behaviors they would not otherwise allow or engage in (Reid, 2016). This could look like an abusive, controlling romantic partner asking his partner to cancel plans to go out with her friends: Doesn’t she want to have another awesome night out with him? Or it could look like a teenage girl experiencing homelessness being asked—just this once, of course, so he can keep taking good care of her—to sleep with the friend of her new, much older boyfriend (Reid, 2016).
As we will see, love bombing is often part of a coercive pattern of behaviors. I do not mean to say that all extravagant displays of affection and excitement are ingenuine and manipulative—far from it. Many of these displays of love are truly felt, or just the result of being overzealous. But we should all be aware of what it may mean when somebody overwhelms another person with an unsustainable amount of affection and attention.
The Psychology of Love Bombing
The stage is thus set for the love bomber to exercise control over the target of their manipulation. Imagine you are single and encounter someone you find powerfully attractive. They are visiting from out of town, and they drop everything they’re doing to spend as much time as possible with you. These hours are enchanting, thrilling—as are their subsequent visits to your home city. Over time, they start to think aloud about how great it would be if you lived where they did and they could express their love like this all the time. If you move to their city, uprooting your life, you are suddenly in a place where almost all of your meaningful interactions and social connection come from that person. If they were to start trying to control you, while also showing flashes of that old intensity of love, it might be hard to leave (Hennessy, 2012).
Signs of Love Bombing
Examples of Love Bombing
Love bombing is also prevalent in situations where a person can be easily exploited through such apparent kindness (Duron et al., 2021). In the world of sex trafficking, for example, a teenage girl with very few resources may experience great relief when a young man offers, seemingly without any strings attached, to give her food, shelter, and clothes. The dependency this creates will make it hard for her to say no when he asks that she do something in return for him (Duron et al., 2021).
For some more real-life examples of love bombing and its effects on a person, I recommend watching this video:
Video: 5 Signs of Love Bombing
How Long Does Love Bombing Last?
In abusive contexts, love bombing is often seen as the first step in a pattern of establishing coercive control over another person (Fox, 2013). In this sense, a period of pure love bombing lasts until it has served its purpose. Once the emotional attachment has been formed, an abuser can shift toward using other behaviors to control the target of the love bombing. However, they may resort again to these manipulative displays of affection and attention if they sense the target is losing their dependency on the abuser.
Is Love Bombing Always Bad?
Love bombing is generally understood to be a manipulative or potentially abusive behavior. There is one intriguing situation that departs from this. One therapist has written about using powerful and sustained displays of love as a way to help a child who is very fearful of connection to feel safe and loved. In other words, the idea is to create such a powerful (but safe and well-intentioned) display of love that a child lets their caregivers get close to them (James, 2018). My two cents on this idea is that it holds promise but should be done with as much authenticity and emotional presence as possible.
Love Bombing Cycle
It could also look like gaslighting the person: For example, the abusive partner might start behaving in ways that are incongruent with their stated love for their partner, such as flirting publicly with other people, but then accuse their partner of “acting crazy” and “making stuff up” when they point out the flirtation. After all, hasn’t the love bomber shown again and again how much they love their partner? Who could question that?
The final step in the cycle is to disengage from the partner. If the love bomber has gotten what they wanted from their partner, they may abandon that person and move on to somebody else whom they can try to control. Or, if the relationship continues to meet their needs, they may return to their love bombing tactics to try to maintain the relationship longer.
Love Bombing and Gaslighting
Love bombing and gaslighting go hand in hand in abusive relationships: Both are used to control the experience of the abused person (Leedom et al., 2019; Strutzenberg et al., 2017). For the recipient of the abuse, it is a very disorienting place to be: This person who has gone out of their way to express love and care now behaves in belittling and dismissive ways. If the effect of the love bombing does not wear off, the abused partner may remain in the relationship, hoping to regain that sense of being special and desired.
Love Bombing vs. Genuine Interest
I want to be clear that love bombing is not driven by genuine interest in a partner. When we express love from a place of genuine interest, it is not with an ulterior motive of getting the person to feel a certain way about us. Many, if not most, expressions of love come from an authentic desire for the other person to know how we truly feel about them. It is just important to be aware that a few people will take these expressions of love overboard in a manipulative way.
Love Bombing vs. Honeymoon Phase
The honeymoon phase is an initial period of feeling head over heels in love with a perfect new person—a phenomenon that happens because hormones and neurotransmitters are running high and we don’t yet know all the quirks and warts of our new love interest (Chmielewski-Raimondo et al., 2022). This period of time could feel like love bombing. Again, the key difference is whether the expressions of love feel genuine and appropriate. Are each of you behaving in ways that are sustainable in the long term?
Love Bombing Then Breadcrumbing
Breadcrumbing is a relatively new term for the act of mixing demonstrations of interest with periods of little or no contact (Khattar et al., 2023). The effect is to string the target of the behaviors along, leaving them desiring more contact but not quite getting enough. This may be done by somebody who relies on the target of the breadcrumbing but is afraid to commit to them (Rodriguez-Garcia et al., 2020). In this sense, breadcrumbing is similarly manipulative to love bombing. In fact, someone could combine these behaviors by showing great interest when they are together but then disappearing for stretches of time.
Love Bombing Then Ghosting
As noted above, somebody who love bombs another person may then ghost them—simply stop communicating—if they are no longer able to achieve what they want through love bombing. The combination of the two can be especially upsetting because ghosting is usually done without any clear explanation (Freedman et al., 2019).
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Books Related to Love Bombing
Final Thoughts on Love Bombing
I hope I haven’t scared you away from dating, or made you overly cynical, with this article! Thankfully, most of us will go through our adult dating lives without manipulating or being manipulated in this way; the expressions of love we receive and give will be genuine and heartfelt, and will come without strings attached. I encourage you to stay optimistic, but just a little wary: If somebody’s displays of affection and investment seem far too intense to be genuine, they might have a different motive in mind.
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References
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