Love-bombing or healthy affection?

[guineacup]

Maybe I've lived under a rock but love-bombing isn't a term I'd come across until a few months ago reading threads on here.

So my question is, how do people differentiate between someone who is love-bombing as a way to manipulate them, and healthy affection from genuine person?

Is it quantity or quality... or something else?

It’s how you feel.

Do you sense it’s authentic or self serving?

Is the other person sensitive to the stage of relationship you are at and respectful of your personal boundaries?

Or are they being intrusive or OTT on the big gestures?

Trust your gut and your experience.

Ask yourself would it feel appropriate for you to do the same.

Love bombing happens mostly after a big fight … example… my partner causes an argument with me over something I have no control over/something I did years ago when I was not with him. He blanks me for two or three days and I don’t know where I stand. Then he sends a big bunch of flowers to my workplace to say he’s sorry. Everyone thinks he’s an amazing person as they don’t know the context… that’s love bombing. There is toxicity in the relationship with love bombing. If your parter is causing rows or being manipulative or controlling then you know that a big gesture is a bomb in order to maintain control over you and keep you in their pocket.
Genuine affection is giving simply because they want you to be happy.

You don't have to differentiate. You have your own back, always, and especially when entering new relationships. You know, within yourself, that if this all falls through, you will be ok because you know how to look after you. You don't see this relationship as something you rely on for your happiness.

Then, you can enjoy the good times. You're safe. Someone is looking after you: you.

Love bombing can make you feel weird, and it can be weird. It can cross your boundaries. Other times, it can be just like someone falling head over heels with you, and you don't know until it's well established. Which is why it's important to have your own back always, and not just at the start of something new.

Love bombing happens mostly after a big fight

No it doesn't. It often happens then, but it also often happens at the start of new relationships, when an unstable person meets someone new and wants them to think they're stable/perfect/lovely/trustworthy etc. It can seem wonderful for months, no fights necessary.

@Watchkeys eorey to butt in but how do you achieve that? How do you have your own back??

*sorry to butt in

I actually think that focusing on analysing whether it is lovebombing or whatever isn’t all that helpful.

what you should be really asking is:

• am I able to set and maintain the boundaries I’m comfortable with in this relationship?
• am I able to be myself and to feel good about who I am in this relationship?
• do I feel I can disagree with this person or challenge their views or actions without fear of ‘punishment’ or ‘villification’?

The thing about ‘lovebombing’ is that it feels great so you don’t recognise that your boundaries are being eroded or you’re editing yourself to fit what he wants.

I think you can't always tell at the time. So the only way to be sure is to wait. Don't commit too soon to any big steps like moving in together. If it's love bombing he won't be able to keep it up indefinitely.

Make sure you are a whole, robust person with a strong self esteem.

Know your own values, know your boundaries, wishes, future plans, expectations etc and be clear to live them and enforce them.

Any relationship needs to be the icing on the cake. A compliment to yourself - not a dependency etc.

Mutual and reciprocal. Kind and respectful.

Balanced.

I don't think the person doing the love bombing necessarily sees it as a tactic for control etc. More that they have a skewed view of relationships and so go way over the top in the first few months often because they have an unrealistic view of relationships or low self esteem so that they think the way to make a relationship work is to throw everything at it immediately. I don't always think it is pre meditated or malicious but the outcome is that the other person feels confused /indebted to the relationship.

pay attention to the small ‘no’ answers to those questions. In the initial stages of a relationship - especially where there is lovebombing - it won’t be big, waving red flags.

It will be you being the one that cancels on a friend because he was hoping to see you and had made reservations at a nice restaurant, and you feeling guilty for letting him down (even though you weren’t because you hadn’t said you’d be seeing him).

Or him being really vocal about how soaps/superhero films/tik tok videos about rock tumbling are so awful and only idiots could like them and you feeling like you have to hide that you don’t mind watching the odd rock tumbling video or whatever. It won’t be something you love (because you’d realise the incompatibility), but he still shouldn’t be making you feel inferior for liking to catch the odd episode of a soap.

Love bombing generally makes you feel amazing, especially at the beginning... so that later when you get the punishment of silent treatment you scrabble you try and get it back to how it was. It's like setting a standard that you then continually try to get back to to stop you 'misbehaving.'

@GloriousD post answers this really well.

For me, it's being broadly happy with my life before starting on the relationship, so if it doesn't work, I'll be sad of course, but I won't be dreading returning to a single life. And it means always having a sense of identity that isn't defined by your relationship, with interests and friends of your own.

In my 20s I wasn't like that...Now I'm in my late 40s, I am (I was in a LTR in the intervening period).

Thank you all - interesting and helpful comments!

Not sure this makes sense.

It implies that love-bombing isn't particular ways of behaviour or actions, but you retrospectively define it whether that person ends up being a twat or not down the line.

I think it’s more that lovebombing becomes recognisable as love bombing retrospectively. It turns out that it wasn’t genuine.

It’s a perspective thing. Close up, you don’t realise what it is. But looking back, it’s obvious what it was.

This is self serving behaviour though isn’t it?

It’s solely meeting their own insecurities and not paying attention respectfully to the reactions, boundaries or needs of the other.

It is intrusive and actually controlling if not consciously so - they are driving the relationship dynamic to meet their own needs -

I experienced love bombing with an ex, I believe he enjoys the rush of a new relationship, flowers, gifts, expensive hotels, declarations of love all happening in the first month of dating, it feels like a whirlwind, in hindsight, if they hardly know you, a false persona they can't keep up for too long, then it's like they don't like you anymore once they've won you over, suddenly they feel 'pressured' in a relationship and before long, doing it to someone else.

Easier said than done to avoid it, heart over head, we can't always make totally sane choices, if we never trust, we never love but we live and learn.

In a healthy relationship, you won't feel rushed, it's not too much too soon, no hot/cold confusion.

Love-bombing is generally like a very very intense honeymoon period at the start of a relationship, though not in a healthy way. It's when a partner says and does all the right things but to the nth degree. It's used as a tool of abuse as the love-bomber typically uses it to manipulate their partner to gain control over them by making them dependent on the love-bomber before their true and abusive nature.

One thing I've noticed on here with people describing being love-bombed and then they turn out to be giant shits, is that it's often all words and very little action beyond flowers or a nice dinner. It's all 'I've never met anyone like you' 'we've met in a previous life', stuff that doesn't cost that much but makes the person feel very special but crucially indebted to the other person. A person who is into you will say nice things, but they don't act like they are in a Disney movie, they might be really understanding if you have to cancel or bring stuff over if you are sick, or come with you to a hospital appointment. In other words, they seek to exhibit love by being loving, whereas the love-bombers tend to say ridiculous things too early on, and are all words, but would make you feel guilty for cancelling on them, for example. Words are cheap, I always think, I look for behaviour over the longer term.

I guess, but then lots of behaviour in a relationship can be viewed as self serving. I was trying to get across the fact that we often describe abusive people as 'they do this because they want this to happen'. I think it's less clear cut than this. There will be people out there who absolutely think that getting off to a good start in a relationship means throwing everything at it. It's not healthy but that's what they think relationships should be (emulating films or other relationships they've seen).

I'm not excusing any behaviour as I've been subject to it.

Yes, that is what I think. There may be nothing wrong with the behaviour in itself (buying you flowers for no reason, telling you that you're the most amazing person they have ever met etc). But if it only lasts for a few months, then it wasn't really genuine, was it?

@GoalShooter

Yes, that is what I think. There may be nothing wrong with the behaviour in itself (buying you flowers for no reason, telling you that you're the most amazing person they have ever met etc). But if it only lasts for a few months, then it wasn't really genuine, was it?

It could have been genuinely meant - feeling can change... I think excessive shows of affection and super-quick and intense expressions of love are love-bombing whether or not the relationship lasts or is ultimately happy.

is it always men that do this or do women do it too? Ie is it sex specific or type of personality specific?

It can be carried out by men or women,