Humans have a deep need to be loved. Manipulators are experts at exploiting others’ needs for selfish gain. That’s why love bombing even occurs. It’s a manipulative technique where the manipulator bombards you with attention and affection. The goal is not to build a healthy relationship but to gain power and control over you.
Like a person with an addiction, when you’re high on a love-bomber’s manipulative love, you become dependent on it. You want more of it. Your entire happiness starts depending on the bombardment of the affection. When they’ve gotten what they want from you or their techniques fail, they drop you as swiftly as they’d lifted you. And the drop hurts. The higher the lift, the harder the drop. You miss all the love, attention, and affection.
You wonder:
“How did I come to rely on this person for my happiness and self-worth so much?”
The answer is: You were likely manipulated.
Before we contrast love-bombing with genuine interest, let’s dive into what love-bombing is not.
What love-bombing is not
The reality is that it’s hard to tell when you’re getting love-bombed. People want easy-to-detect signs to label someone and quickly make sense of their experiences. Without knowing someone’s intentions, it’s almost impossible to figure out whether or not they’re love-bombing. I say ‘almost’ because there are still some clues that can point to love-bombing. They indicate a greater likelihood of love-bombing.
Just because you’re not instantly declaring someone a love-bomber doesn’t necessarily mean you’re rationalizing their behavior.
Let’s first get things that are not love-bombing out of the way:
1. High-intensity loving
People love with different intensities. This primarily comes from their family backgrounds and the early conceptions they formed of love. Your idea of love may be less intense than someone else’s. For instance, if you were raised in an emotionally deprived and neglectful family environment, you may have intimacy issues, and someone loving you normally may seem too much. It’s out of your comfort zone. They’re not love-bombing you. They love you how they know to love
Similarly, people love in different ways. This is why we have different love languages. Based on how you view love, acts of service may make you feel loved, but words of affirmation may seem too much or uncomfortable. So when you’re praised, you might mistakenly think you’re getting love-bombed because it’s so uncomfortable and overwhelming.
2. Normal relational ups and downs
Romantic love comes with lots of expectations. Part of it is human nature, and part is societal conditioning. Think “happily ever after”. Most sane people know it’s unrealistic to think you can live “happily ever after”. Yet, the expectation is deeply wired in humans.
So, you will likely be disappointed and disillusioned when something violates this artificially inflated expectation. You’re high on feel-good chemicals when you’re in the honeymoon phase. Then, the phase ends, and the relationship becomes more emotionally flat.1Chmielewski-Raimondo, D. A., Shamsollahi, A., Bell, S. J., & Heide, J. B. (2022). When the honeymoon is over: A theory of relationship liabilities and evolutionary processes. Journal of Marketing, 86(6), 32-49.
At this point, it’s tempting to think:
“I was deceived. They’re now a completely different person.”
In the honeymoon phase, people naturally put their best foot forward. This isn’t manipulation. When the phase ends, you see your partner for the human they are, with all their faults.
Other than that, ups and downs are regular in any relationship. When you hit a low point in your relationship, you can’t expect your partner to be enthusiastic about you and your interests. This doesn’t mean they were faking their interest in you and your interests when the relationship was good. They weren’t love-bombing you.
3. Different rates of warming up
People warm up at different rates after a conflict. Someone who’s dismissive-avoidant, for example, takes a long time to warm up after a conflict. So, when their more anxious partner warms up quickly after conflict, that seems fake to them.
“How can they get over it so quickly? It probably meant nothing to them. The relationship probably means nothing to them.”
When you conclude they don’t care about you or the relationship at a low point, it’s natural to conclude that the high points were fake and you were getting love-bombed.
4. Black-and-white thinking
Humans are prone to black-and-white thinking. It’s especially pronounced in people with personality disorders.2Strutzenberg, C. (2016). Love-bombing: a narcissistic approach to relationship formation. It means that you see your partner as either good or bad. There’s no in-between, no grey areas. Only people who’ve sufficiently worked on themselves can overcome this tendency.
So, if your partner thinks you’re an angel when you’re nice and a demon when you’re not, it’s not necessarily a sign of love-bombing. It’s more likely a consequence of black-and-white thinking.
Detecting love-bombing: Key questions
You must think out of the box to separate love-bombing from genuine interest. While most people are focused on how they feel, focus on how your partner feels.
1. Context
Ask yourself:
“How do they feel when they’re love-bombing you?”
“How do they feel when they devalue or discard you?”
If their feelings mirror yours, they are likely genuine about their feelings for you. They’re emotionally attuned to you. If you feel up, they feel up. If you feel down, they feel down. Manipulators have to maintain emotional distance from their targets. They’re more or less unaffected by how their targets feel.
Advanced manipulators can even fake attunement. They’ll mirror your emotions to show you they’re attuned to you. To test this, watch how they behave with others during your relational ups and downs (happily or sadly?). If they behave the same with everyone else the way they behave with you, they’re truly emotionally attuned to you.
2. Goal
Ask yourself:
“What is the goal of their behavior?”
Don’t just observe their current, momentary behavior. Observe it in its full context. What comes before and after this behavior? When manipulators love-bomb, their goal is to control you or get something out of you. You can better understand their plans by observing what comes before and after their manipulative behavior.
For example, do they always make an unreasonable demand after they’ve flattered you and put you in a good mood? It’s harder to say “No” when in a good mood.
Why do their requests always follow flattery?
Why don’t they make any requests when you’re in a neutral emotional state?
If this keeps happening repeatedly, there’s a good chance they’re manipulating you.
People are likely to make requests when you’re in a good mood because they know you’re more likely to comply. This isn’t necessarily manipulation. Pay attention to how the request is made. Are they throwing it upon you, creating urgency, and deaf to your input? Or are they gently making those requests and considering your input as well?
3. Pattern
Ask yourself:
“Who’s recreating the relational patterns?”
Manipulators study you. They know what works in manipulating you and what doesn’t. So they’ll use the same strategies repeatedly because they don’t know any better. If you find that specific patterns keep getting repeated in your relationship and you’re not the initiator of those patterns, you’re likely getting manipulated.
For example, they’ll strike up a conversation about X because they know talking about X makes you feel bad. When you’re feeling bad, you’re vulnerable to getting manipulated.
4. Change
Ask yourself:
Have they changed?
Manipulators will constantly change to fit what you expect them to be. Those who are not manipulating you are their own person with unique interests and values. They’re unlikely to be manipulative if they’ve maintained their unique interests and values over time. When manipulators love-bomb you, they mirror your personality. All your interests become their interests. They agree with you and tell you precisely what you want to hear. You’re like:
“Wow! This person’s perfect for me.”
Until they’re not.
If you suspect you’re getting love-bombed, you can use this fact to test them. Turn what you’ve told them about yourself upside down and watch how they react. For example, if you’ve told them you like sports, tell them you hate it now. If you’ve told them you’ve told them you like healthy homemade food, tell them you’re more into fast food now. If they’re manipulating you, they’ll change their previous preferences to match yours.
Advanced manipulators will wait a while before they modify their preferences to match yours, so you don’t detect the abrupt change. That’s why I recommend changing multiple aspects of yourself. So they fear you might see them as too different from you to be compatible. That way, they’ll be forced to adjust quickly.