Vanessa and Xander Marin explain love bombing: when someone showers you with intense affection, gifts, and constant attention early on to create control and indebtedness. The pattern cycles into withdrawal and abuse. They advise getting therapy and putting distance between yourself and the person doing it.
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Love bombing. Ooh, sounds innocent enough.
Yeah, sounds pretty fun and peaceful.
Maybe kind of cute.
A lot of love.
I get love bombed by these guys, no problem. But it is not actually so cute in reality. It is a tactic that is used by abusers and narcissists that can be extremely hard, harmful. So today we are talking about what love bombing actually is, how you can identify it, and some steps that you can take to prevent it. But before we get into all of that, we first want to hear from you. Is love bombing a term that you've heard before? Let us know in the comments or if you've experienced it personally. I think it's really important for us to start talking about it more openly. So let us know if it's something that you've been through.
Well, if you're brand new to our channel, first we just want to say, hi. We're Vanessa and Xander Marin. Thank you. Vanessa here is a sex therapist. I'm a regular dude, and we've been together for 14 years. Also, these cute faces to the side are our pugs, Maggie and Winston.
And our account is all about giving you the tools, tips, and techniques that you need to create a truly extraordinary relationship inside and outside of the bedroom. So if you are interested in that, just go ahead and hit that subscribe button.
All right, so first, what exactly is love bombing? So really what love bombing is, it is giving excessive flattery, attention, affection, adoration to somebody that you've just met or just struck up a relationship with. So typically, this is done really, really quickly. Kind of like over the top quickly. Like within the first couple days of meeting or the first few weeks of your relationship. Like, really hot and heavy.
Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of us have this idea that when we find the right person, it will move quickly and.
Yeah, it'll be like a fairy tale.
Yeah. But love bombing, you'll have this sense of, like, this is really, a lot, really quickly. Like, it's gonna likely set off some alarm bells for you. So let's talk about, what is the purpose of this? Why is this person bombing you in this way?
And why is it a problem? Because some of those things on their own sound kind of nice. Right. Like you might be looking for that.
Yeah. Okay. So the purpose of love bombing is actually a lot more nefarious than it might sound like.
Good word.
What somebody is trying to do when they are love bombing you is make you feel indebted to them. What, overly attached to them or even obligated to them. So they're Kind of creating this whole narrative for you. Like, they want you to believe that your whole world is all about them. Maybe they're the only person that you can trust, the only person who really sees you or loves you. They want to do this so that they can ultimately control you. So, really going over the top like this and making you feel like, nobody's ever treated me like this before, like, that is a purposeful thing.
All right, so let's give some real life examples of what love bombing might look like. So it could be showing really intense emotions really quickly. Like, you know, in the first week of meeting someone, you're like, oh, my God, I think we're soulmates. Or it could be really excessive gifts or spoiling of. Of your partner. So if you're feeling like, oh, my God, this person is giving me all these gifts, like, really fast. Nobody's ever done this to me. That could be a sign of love bombing, because all in all, when someone is love bombing you, you can really feel overcome or overwhelmed with feelings of attraction, and it can make it really difficult to see some red flags or the warning signs, because, you know, you're like, oh, my God, this person really cares about me. They're giving me so many things. Nobody has ever done this before.
Yeah. Another thing might be if they just want to spend all of their time with you, they want to be together, like, every waking moment. What they actually might be doing in that moment is isolating you from your friends and family so that they can have more control over you. Another thing can be constantly checking in on you. What are you doing? Where are you? Who are you with? So, again, this is a way to control you. They're trying to normalize being overly informed about everything that's going on in your life.
All right, so what happens when someone has started to love bomb you or you are in the midst of a love bombing? So it typically happens is the love bomber starts to withdraw once you become super attached to them. So they start out really hot and heavy. They make you feel like you kind of owe them something. You got to catch up with your affection. And. And then once you do, they flip the switch, and all of a sudden, they might start gaslighting you. They might start insulting you or invalidating you, but by then, you've kind of already been hooked in, and you're feeling like, oh, well, this person is so nice. I know how nice they can be. That you don't really notice the negative impacts of the things that they start doing to you.
Exactly. So it's like, you don't notice the red flags. Or even if you do, you already have so many positive associations with them that you might feel like you can kind of write off what they did. It's easier to, like, defend their actions or say, well, that's not really who they are or what they mean.
Oh, they were so. They've been so nice to me. Like, this must just be a fluke. Or like, you expect, oh, it was because they had a bad day or something.
Exactly. And this can really start a cycle of abuse.
Yeah. So the bottom line with all of this is that love bombing, it sounds really innocent. Each of the individual things at the beginning kind of sound good on their own, but the reality is it is a form of emotional abuse, especially when you kind of play out the whole sequence of events that tends to occur.
Okay, so what if you do if you're realizing, holy crap, I think I'm in the middle of being love bombed. So this can obviously be a complex situation, and we definitely want to encourage you to see a therapist so that you have some additional support to figure out what to do in that moment and really what's going to be safe for you in that moment. But the bottom line is that you're going to want to find a way to distance yourself from this person and cut them out of your life. So, again, therapy can be really beneficial for this. But we also want to encourage you not to beat yourself up for this. Like, this is a very stealthy tactic. And a lot of people who are very intelligent, kind, you know, wonderful people have fallen for being love bombed. So please don't feel ashamed about it, and don't let that shame keep you in the relationship with this person. You really need to find a way to get out of it. All right, so that wraps up our video on love bombing.
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