Narcissistic Abuse ~ The Love Bombing Phase
Once the narcissist has decided that you are to become his target, he will systematically and consistently ‘love bomb’ you.
I will use ‘he’ as this is what I relate to personally although there are certainly many female narcissists that are just as toxic as the males.
Love bombing is when he will literally smother you with affection, constant text messages declaring his love, compliments, gifts, restaurants, days out, holidays and all manner of romantic surprises. The aim of this is to make you feel so special and so loved by this person who has suddenly and unexpectedly shown up in your life like a knight in shining armour, who is seemingly more than ready to whisk you off into a fairytale sunset of sheer bliss and you will be together forever, needing no one but them.
Of course, you will not realise what he is doing at the time as you will be so caught up in the excitement. Remember, this is like nothing you have ever experienced before and because the love bombing is so intense, you are soon completely infatuated with this person who has placed you high on a pedestal. Nothing else will matter. You won't have time or energy to ground yourself because as soon as one romantic gesture is made, another even bigger and better one appears. Before you know it you're hooked and all your energy is directed in their direction.
You feel you are experiencing true love in its finest form and this person treats you like a princess.
No one seems to understand. Friends and family become suspicious and will be telling you to take your time but you wont take any notice of them~ to you right now, they must be jealous so this just pushes you more into the arms of your dream person. You don't need your friends and family anymore so you push them away, the narcissist encourages this ~ they don't support you and he will say he doesn't like them because they don’t treat you how you deserve.
There are many ways in which you will be love-bombed and this phase will generally last around three to six months. Most narcissists follow a similar pattern so here are a few of the most common tactics they use. A narcissist will want to impress you and make themselves feel important in the process.
They will invade your mind and your every thought so will often send hundreds of text messages throughout the day, especially first thing in the morning and lastly at night because that way you go to sleep thinking of them and wake up thinking of them. Within a very short time, you're obsessed with them.
They will send unexpected and lavish gifts, ensuring that others will be there to see how ‘generous’ they are. I remember getting the biggest bouquets of the most beautiful flowers delivered to my place of work on several occasions. I was overwhelmed as I had never experienced anything like this before and colleagues would say how lovely and thoughtful he was, as well as obviously being very well off financially. I would find out later, he was none of these. I also received expensive chocolates, exquisite cakes, clothing, designer makeup and ‘I love you’ cards through the post ~ it was never-ending.
Days and evenings out are another common tactic. I was taken to such exciting places( or so I thought! where I had never been before and also had romantic weekends away, both in Europe and the UK. At the time, I thought he was so extravagant but now realise that Groupon had a large part to play in it all and also his hugely extended overdraft! I did offer to pay for myself a lot of the time out of politeness and he would ‘begrudgingly’ accept! However, our romantic getaways would be cheap flights on budget airlines with hotels that had been heavily discounted on the internet. I realised none of this at the time because I was having adventures for the first time and I was loving every minute of it.
Narcissists will tell you that you are the most amazing and beautiful woman they ever saw, their soulmate, their twin flame, the one they've been waiting for their whole life, you are each other's destiny and they will probably say you've even had past lives together. I was told all of this ( and much more) and at the time it made complete sense but now I know it's utter nonsense because a person who cares for you genuinely will never hurt you intentionally.
All of the promises of marriage and living happily ever after never materialise either, it's all cunningly and carefully planned to infatuate, manipulate and before long, traumatise you.
I will be writing a lot more on this subject in the near future as it is such a complex topic.