Just when you think modern dating couldn’t get any worse, psychiatrists have coined a new phrase to explain humans being dicks to one another.
Did your new love dump buckets of attention on you and then abruptly vaporize or get all distant? You were probably “love bombed.”
Da fuck is love bombing, you ask? It’s a new dating trend where a manipulative a-hole tries to control you with “love bombs” of affection, attention, presents, and promises about the future.
Then you get all cranked up on feel-good hormones and endorphins from the rush of new romance. Your horny infatuation cock-blocks the part of your brain responsible for discrimination so you don’t realize that you’re being worked over. Worse, you become co-dependent on the goddamn narcissist and/or sociopath.
Then there’s an abrupt shift in the type of attention—from affectionate and loving to controlling, angry, and making unreasonable demands.
Narcissists can seem attractive due to desirable adaptive characteristics—high levels of confidence, ambition, and self-sufficiency—but don’t be fooled, love bombing is straight up psychological abuse, yo.
Healthy relationships take time and build slowly. They also don’t destroy your other relationships with friends and family. Healthy relationships don’t destroy your life quickly, either. They do it slowly, over decades and decades.
Just ask your parents.