Love bombing !

[Willowmartha1]

Never heard of this before Mumsnet !! Please share your experiences......

Oh don't apologise! I get it completely. I also think there's some narc tendencies that accompany love bombing in my case.

Oh yes . I think mine was a narcissist .... And I hate using that label but yes . I think he might even be a really awful one .

Yes I hate that label too but there are honestly some startling things I've learned (thanks MN) that really match how he behaved (and still does).

Just like a PP (@befribgn) I was overwhelmed with ridiculous love letters and poems, declared his love in our first conversation
(I know!!!) Hanging on every word I said, texting and ringing me often when he knew I was spending time with my family.
*" I never really knew what love was until I met you" (He'd been married & divorced twice) Then, when I wore my favourite dress for an event ( a blue shift dress) he told me it looked terrible on me & advised me to throw it away. It's still my favourite dress & he isn't my favourite person.

Yes, I was love-bombed big time. Met him online, he called me over ten times a day and in the night. Texted me almost every five minutes. Told be he loved me before our first date. Put my picture on his Facebook account and WhatsApp as his profile pictures. Wanted to spend all his free time with me. Sent me pictures of his joinery work. Came to stay at my house every weekend and sometimes he would stay all week and had excuses not to go back to his home town or would turn down work.
Introduced me to his family within two weeks of meeting. Turns out he was still living with his mum and still does. He is 39 years old. Told me I was the best he had ever had and all his exes were crazy but I was perfect.
The relationship was so bad we ended up in court with me applying for a non molestation order against him. I have to small children with him, social services was involved, a police report revealed he had a long list of criminal
Convictions including a previous non molestation order from an ex girlfriend before me. He was a heavy drinker, pathological liar, cheater, cocklodger, drug user..
He targets single mums outside his home town because he is well known in his local town as a trouble maker who is banned from many places like bars, shops etc.
I kicked him out when I was five months pregnant with our son, he was in a new relationship with a single mum in a town three hours away from his home town. Her pictures are all over his Facebook and WhatsApp. I was told by his family that he has had so many short term relationships and he does the same thing.He has neglected his outnumber kids, no child maintenance payments as he is self employed, I applied for it but they can't make him pay. The last time I spoke to him was when he was begging me to give him another chance and that he had made a mistake with the new woman and that she had kicked him out. He is always hunting for women on dating websites, as soon has he is threatened with splitting, he starts searching for new supply and is in new relationship with in days. He was in a new relationship before he moved all his stuff from my house...couldn't believe it.
He has hoovered me several times but won't allow it.
I have been throw all the stages of narcissism with this guy

Love bombing
Devaluation
Discard
Narcissistic rage
Triangulation
Hoovering
Future faking
Mirroring
Manipulation
Etc

Wow @hellena37 what a horrible time you had.

At what point do you know it isnt love bombing, and just the way he is? Been with my partner for 10 months now and he was like this in the beginning, but still just about the same. Tells me he loves me multiple times a day, plans for the future, etc I've never had a normal relationship so not quite sure what is normal and what is ott.

Last husband, lovebombed me so much, flowers, protestations that I was the love of his life, etc ad nauseam, big gestures.
Once he'd moved in it turned out his ex partner had chucked him out (he hadn't left her months ago as he'd said). He was a cocklodger and just wanted somewhere to live and I was lonely.
i fell for all the crap and we got married and he spent the next 20 years not working, doing whatever he wanted to do and ignoring me completely unless he wanted sex.
Divorced now and not planning on getting married again because I don't trust anyone.
Love bombing is the work of either very absuive men or cocklodgers, they want something and will do anything to get it.
When I think of the big bunches or red roses and gifts before we got married and then nothing for my birthday or any anniversary or christmas thereafter.
When I refused to pay off his last round of debts he left me for someone else.

Oh gosh yes. Quite fresh here for me too ohnoyesno so I understand completely.

I thought that I had found the one, really. But the expensive gifts were making me uncomfortable so I asked him to stop buying stuff (in one day just for no reason he bought me two bottles of Chanel Parfum, for no reason) . I had 100 red roses delivered for no reason.

He wasnt too happy about that so then it went to expensive weekends and only the best restaurants that we drove miles to get to. Then all these photos were posted all over Facebook. When he saw the amount of likes he got from the first post, it then become a challenge to get more likes from every other grand gesture.

I started to think things weren't quite right, then doubted myself so much, thinking I was just on high alert for red flags as had been in a long marriage that wasn't good prior to this.

Within the first month he TOLD me that within the next few months he will be moved in, he started planning all the changes he was going to do to my house (and would write a contract as he would pay for it and I would pay him back when I sold the house!) . He threw an absolute strop one night as said he wanted to get a tv to put in my bedroom. When I said I dont like tvs in the bedroom he had a hissy fit and told me 'but I do!" .... He didnt speak to me the whole day the next day about that.

The constant contacting me via message. Having a go at me if I didnt reply straight away. Quizzing me all the time as to where I have been, who else was I talking to as was showing being online etc etc.

He had booked a very expensive holiday, which was a year in advance. When things would get wobbly in the relationship, he would bring up how great the holiday was going to be. Again he had a go at me as he sent me a link of things to do in one of the cities, and as I didnt come back to him with what I wanted to do straight away, he says I was being ungrateful and did I even want to go, do i realise how much its cost etc etc. At the beginning of the discussion I said I would pay my way, he wouldnt hear of it. Then he didnt just want to fly economy, we had to fly business class etc etc.

Anyway, I broke it off as things were just getting worse and I couldnt cope with it. A day after we ended it he starting sending heart likes to other woman on Facebook. He has done a lot of things since to make me out to be a terrible person and has twisted a lot of things.

One other thing that has just happened that has made what was happening, so clear to me. He has moulded himself to be what the woman he has in his eyeline wants. With me he was lazy and if I asked him to do anything exercise related he would laugh at me. He didnt want me doing any exercise stuff either, that was clear. Laughing at me for wanting to go to gym etc etc.

But paying such interest in other things that I like, things I know he had no interest in before. Things like the theatre and similar. He said he enjoyed it, but dont think he did really. We couldnt have a discussion afterwards about it, which was quite telling.

Well, this woman that he seems to have it in for now, does a sport. Like I said he is not sporty at all and made that very clear. He has now gone out and bought all the gear to set himself up with this particular sport, but he hasnt gone and bought entry level starter set up like everyone would usually do, no, he went and bought the top of range item including all the accessories. Its an expensive sport so I reckon he has spent in the thousands on this. When I saw this, it was a mix of hurt, but also relief. Relief as it is now clear as day what he is doing. It was the closure I needed to see I need to move on.

The thing is that I cannot believe as a grown and strong woman I know I am, that i got sucked in by him like this. I have been through some shit in the past and want to just slap myself right now. And it hurt so badly breaking it off with him. Now he has someone else in his sights and I am actually feeling sorry for her. She too is now in exactly the same situation I was in when we met. Recently divorced, lives alone in her house with her dc. I want to tell her, but I know i need to walk away.

Is this something women are more vulnerable to? As a man, I would find that level of interest in the early days completely overwhelming and would think anyone calling me or texting me that many times was a nutter yet it seems from the replies on here that in the early days it can be very addictive to the recipient.

I don't know tbh. I think it's like a self fulfilling prophecy. They tell you you're brilliant so you believe in this brilliant version of yourself.

So much of this resonates with me about the speed of stuff then him getting stroppy. He would go on right move looking at flats for me in a particular area. I said I needed to do that myself and he got all huffy.

The response times to messages were a big deal too.

He got the right arse one day when I said I could not meet him (kids birthday - and I was busy).

By the evening he'd tried 4 different times to try and see me. I said look I really can't. Please stop asking me. He told me to 'get off my high horse' . He couldn't see he was being ridiculous.

I don't think women are more gullible if that's what you mean @Billywizz22, but there's a social tradition that men are supposed to romance/chase women. So women find it more plausible that a man might make big romantic gestures. Whereas the other way around, when a woman does a lot of chasing or sends a man bunches of roses, that would usually just be seen as a bit odd.

Oh god I've just clocked something on another thread about playlists.

Did anyone else get this? Being sent songs?

We didn't have the same music taste at all but I bought into it. I'm laughing at my own stupidity now.

@ravenmum

It wasn’t so much Gullible that I was getting at, more the case of is it difficult to spot a love bomber from a normal guy in the early weeks?

For example one or two posters have said that the had declarations of love very early, sometimes within a few days. Do blokes who are not love bombers do that? I don’t know. I wouldn’t do that for sure. Is it quite addictive at first before the realisation kicks in?

Have already commented, but just wanted to add something.
The lomebomber started buying me gifts quite early on, and, as a previous poster has stated, i put a stop to it almost straight away.
IT FREAKED ME OUT !!
No one else had done this, it was completely alien to me.
Even now, the very idea of it gives me the shudders.

Lovebomber !! Yes lomebomber as well

@Billywizz22 - Every now and then on MN there's a thread asking about how quickly people moved in with or got married to their partners, and there are always plenty of posters who say that they moved in within days, or got married after a couple of months - and often that there were very, very early declarations of love, within days, and they are still together after 10, 20, 30 years. So yes, it's not necessarily a sign that they are total weirdos.

When I got together with my lovebomber I was not looking for a relationship - it was my first attempt at dating after the end of a long marriage, and I wanted someone sexy and fun, the end of the marriage having been the opposite of fun. So some teenage hearts and flowers were fine with me, and I didn't care if he meant it - I thought he was just infatuated and it wouldn't last, and I was totally fine with that as I didn't want anything long-term.

Later on (after we broke up) I realised that he does this to multiple women - in his case I think as a means of proving to himself how desirable he is, as he has a bit of a complex about that. By the sound of it, other men do it as a form of control. But I would imagine there are men who really do act like this simply because they are infatuated, with no darker motives.

This is happening to my friend right now. The messages, gifts, popping in every day. She is totally immersed in the excitement and the attention. Is there anything as her friends, we can do to help her or do we just have to wait it out? We just want to rescue her before she gets hurt but I know it's not that simple.

@totallymortified just remind your friend that she still needs to get to know him better before getting too carried away, with lovebombing they won't keep it up for long before they stop and start showing bad traits.
There is genuine men (I hope) out there that do just want to show their love early but will obviously be long lasting, only time can tell...

Just a thought but I think traditionally people did meet and declare love quicker because of a whole range of reasons , it was expected to be settled down and married much younger , people weren't really expected to stay in their parents home after the age of 18/19 maybe ? And it was just what's done . And I agree that declaring your love and moving quickly isn't necessary always a red flag ... But lovebombing to me is more than that ... And if anyone lovebombed me again I would be gone . It's a deal breaker for me now . Totally and completely .

I was love bombed - friend of a friend, we started dating and he was smitten straight away, wanted to see me all the time, laughed at my jokes, found me fascinating, sent me cards (pre mobile phones). It’s hard to resist, because it makes you feel that finally, finally, someone has come along who “gets you”.
Anyway, after a couple of months he inexplicably cooled off and dumped me.
We stayed friends and I watched him do the same over and over again to other women. When he met his now wife it was like finding the last piece of a jigsaw - they were (and still are) made for each other.

He wasn’t a bad person - he just really really wanted to find his soul mate, and that desire made him briefly see a soul mate in everyone woman he dated .

I'm glad you have the strength of self to see all that Minty . For me I believed it all , he told me he'd never felt like this before ... So many lies .... I would have done anything for him at that stage .... and the lies for me kills me a bit . Because he gets to walk away because for him it wasn't real , he used me and then to add even more pain he was cruel and manipulative and abusive .

People have so many options today , they should take their time finding love . But they shouldn't lie to test ride a relationship . That is immoral .

Mmmm Has happaned to me a few times.. worst one.. turning up outside my house with flowers/ chocolates.. turning up as I’m leaving for work to just see me and ‘give me a kiss’ wanting to stay over all the time very early on . Turning up at work to bring me lunch.. writing apology letters leaving notes on my car when we had a slight disagreement.. leaving gifts on my door step or with neighbours. Showing me screenshots of him telling his family about me really early on.. telling me he wanted me to ‘give him a daughter’ que year and a half later I got pregnant he fucked off left his mum to pick up the peices (He was 31) and didn’t come with me to the abortion or even ask how it went

I can relate to so much of this. I was in a relationship with someone who lovebombed (and a narcissist). It was only afterwards that I realised what he was. Having come out of a marriage where I was cheated on and then a relationship with a cocklodger I was completely taken in by this man who promised he was different. He went down on one knee and asked me to marry him on about the third date (with some weird ring he happened to have). The texts and constantly phoning really got to me. Sometimes he would phone and ramble on when he knew I was getting ready to go out with girlfriends (because he hated me having any sort of live apart from with him). He often bought me small gifts or stopped and bought a single rose when we were out. I thought these were lovely romantic gestures at the time. And then he complained that I never bought him anything. He had no friends or life of his own outside of our relationship. When we argued he would criticise me, say I had MH issues, put on weight, body odour (so not true), and even worse stuff. I can look back and see this behaviour for what it was but didn't realise it at the time. When we broke up he contacted various some of my friends (and my ex husband) and made up stories about me! He also accused me of physically harming him and was going to report me to the police. I hadn't! I am so, so glad I'm well rid now. One whole year of my life wasted (but lessons learned!).

I’ve been loved bombed about three times, never knew what it was until I read about it here on MN. I would say just be very aware, keep your feet firmly on the ground. One of my love bombers turned out to be a gambler and owed thousands of pounds. The last one I now live with and I divorced my husband for him. Been with him for nearly three years, He’s a goodun, works really hard and treats me very well, although in the beginning it was very fairytale, and explosive. I’m fully aware that I need to look after myself, but I couldn’t wish for a better man.