In the midst of the age of technology and social networking, new terms continue to emerge to identify social relationships and also love, which are increasingly experienced through the network.
Love through apps, social networks, smartphones and computers, where there's room for all kinds of beautiful experiences but also, unfortunately, room for toxic ones. Love bombing, also known as love bombing, is a practice that has its origins in a method of religious persuasion used mainly in the 70s and which has now reached our days to cajole love too. We explain what it is and how to identify it.
Key features
People who apply this practice usually persuade the person they want to conquer with gifts, overly affectionate messages, promises of the future and make them believe they've found their soulmate… but after attracting the person in question and letting them carry them away, they usually tire and disappear without a trace.
A common pattern which is usually carried out by people who, although they project a lot of self-confidence, really don't have any and whose personality is usually identified with that of a narcissistic, ambitious person.
What is love bombing?
Love bombing is a tool commonly used to manipulate someone through emotional and affective overattention dedicated to the person you wish to attract. Thanks to this excessive attention and love bombing, the person usually becomes addicted.
But when this love bombardment suddenly stops, the person in question often feels guilty, usually blaming himself or herself for the relationship having gone wrong. This is when the person who has used love bombing takes the opportunity to manipulate and “punish” at will through emotional blackmail.
As for the origin of this term, it too has a curious history. And that is that, while it may seem like a common concept, the reality is that its origins date back to the 1970s, when members of an American cult known as the Unification Church of the United States began using the technique to attract cult members.
Leaders devoted themselves to cajoling the rest of the membership through these overdoses of affection, so that victims felt safe only within this organization and rejected any hostility from the outside world.
Phases of love bombing
In love bombing, a series of common phases are normally identified. We list them for you:
- Idealization: during the first phase, the love bomber generally creates a conqueror's image, meticulously crafted, so that the person he or she wants to conquer believes he or she is face to face with his or her soulmate and is totally hooked on the person.An encounter in which there is normally an excess of fascination and exaggerated dependence, normally caused by this excess of love bombing through constant details, gestures and affection.
- Diminishing details: details and actions that were previously shown and manifested in an exaggerated, almost cinematic way diminish and begin to become unbalanced.At the same time, hostile comments and behavior towards the person who was initially intended to be conquered set in, sometimes also mixed with manipulation or even blackmail. All with the sole aim of making the other person feel guilty.
- Throw away: Overnight, the person who first conquered decides to put an end to the relationship. A break in which there's no room for explanations or conversations, but in which the other person disappears or is even blocked on all their social networks as if they'd never existed. A kind of ghosting, in which all visual or physical contact is also avoided.
