What is the psycological term ‘Love Bombing’?
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It basically means overwhelming someone with positive attention. It’s a way of getting them off their guard and disarming them (emotionally) and making them more receptible to your attention and ideas.
Showering someone with constant postive attention, sometimes from multiple people. Say someone tries to kill themeselves, and their family is supportive of their recovery. The family may love bomb the person. It’s also a tactic used by cults to get new members who often feel like outsiders and/or who need human contact.
A tactic used by toxic people like narcissists. They overwhelm you with attention and affection. They seem to be the perfect person. They make you feel special, loved, desired to the nth degree. They do this to suck you in. Then once they know they have you they stop the love bombing and hell begins.
Flattery used for manipulation.
It’s not *just* flattery: aka being kind and sweet and excessively loving to an individual, because you like them. And it’s not *just* being romantic.
People can try to use flattery or big gifts and have it not be received well, but that’s not the same as love-bombing.
Love-bombing is when excessive flattery/kind gestures are used as a tool to make a negative thing seem ‘justified’ or ‘not that big a deal’.
For instance, if someone was excessively doting and sweet and caring, giving you treats and compliments and so on for 2 weeks… and then you find out that they cheated on you 2 weeks ago, then their past behavior was probably love-bombing: trying to make you see them in a positive light, so you’d be more lenient or forgive other bad behavior.
It can also done when the person plans to be cruel in the future, so they use flattery to butter you up ahead of time with kindness, so you will trust them more and won’t be on-guard for the turnabout, AND so you will ‘owe’ them your gratitude and mercy/forgiveness.
A common example of love-bombing is “Huge romantic gestures early in a relationship, as a way to ‘lock in’ the other person so they feel like they *can’t* leave, because they feel they ‘owe’ you.’ <— It’s the same mentality as taking someone on a date at a very expensive restaurant, and then feeling like they owe you sex, because you paid this huge amount to take them out.
In love-bombing, instead of a straight ‘I paid money so you should owe me’ – it’s ‘I did these huge time-consuming and thoughtful gestures, so you should owe me.’
Let’s say there’s a new kid at school. He takes an interest in you, and every day at lunch he gives you a pudding. You think he’s cool and nice and one of your best friends after a week of this, so you invite him over to your house.
While he’s at your house, it’s like he’s a totally different person. He’s rude, selfish, and destructive, breaks your toys and gets you in trouble with your parents.
So you tell him to leave and that you aren’t friends anymore. But then on Monday, he shows up with TWO puddings and the new Transformer toy for you. So you think maybe the other day was a fluke, and you consider being his friend again.
It’s basically that but for relationships. Someone is incredibly loving, showering with gifts, etc at the start of a relationship so that it escalates more quickly and you develop feelings for them/trust them. Once they have your trust, they often drop the ruse and become abusive, take advantage, etc. When that reaches a breaking point they may revert to the earlier behavior in order to get you to let your guard down again.
It’s a setup where people are excessively nice so when they stop being nice, you think it’s something you’ve done wrong and accept their shitty behavior as a consequence of your own failing.
“You can come to me with anything. I care deeply about you, because you’re a really amazing person and you deserve my affection.”
Say things like that, lower their guard and earn their trust, and then proceed to abuse or manipulate them. It’s kind of like flattery but it appears more “intimate”.
Psychology professional here: Love-bombing is a pop psychology term. It’s not a clinical term used by professionals.
I can speak from experience. I went through a divorce about a year ago and before telling my ex that I wanted a divorce, some people I spoke with warned me that she’d more than likely love bomb me after I said it. And they were right. The second I told her, she became the most loving, affectionate woman I’d ever met. I know it was her way of trying to get me to change my mind, but I knew it was an act, and one she couldn’t hold up forever. It made it a hell of a lot harder though.
Everybody seems to be missing that this is most commonly used to describe a parenting strategy. I have 3 small people who compete for my and Mrs. Talldom’s affections. Naturally sometimes they feel they aren’t getting the attention they deserve and start to misbehave, often this is focussed on one parent considered to be at fault for this neglect.
Love bombing is spending some quality 1 on 1 time with them away from their siblings/family stuff doing something they like (trampolining, shopping etc). This works really well as a reset when it’s all getting a bit much, and is usually quite nice for the parent too.
Edit:To stress it’s not about them feeling they owe us/we took you to X now you have to do Y. It’s about trying to maintain a happy home where everyone feels valued.
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