Real Love Vs. The Narcissist’s Love Bombing

Every great relationship has a spark. A moment when the world grew brighter and more consequential. For too long you had a sense that you were merely wandering. Existing. Floating in space. Surrounded by people, yet unable to reach out and touch them. Until they came along: Your soulmate.

Suddenly your world became imbued with meaning. You felt infinite purpose emanating from within. Anything was possible. You were finally ready to take on the world, and you had your soulmate to join you for the ride.

Sinister Motives

We are all high during those heady first months. This is not a figure of speech. We are literally being flooded with dopamine and norepinephrine. We might as well be on drugs.

When in this state, it is nearly impossible to see the reality in front of us. Who the other person is beneath the surface, what their true intentions are, what dynamics are developing between you and them; none of it matters. And even if it did, you have no way of gauging the truth. You are high. Except rather than your hands looking weird, it is your entire life.

If in reality you have met a psychopath, then you are being groomed to give sex, money or status to them, to serve their cold-blooded agenda. You are being instrumentalised so that the psychopath can get what they desire. There is no ‘love’ on the psychopath’s side. You are being used, plain and simple.

If you have met a narcissist, then you are being lulled into their fantasy world. The narcissist seeks perfection, and they have projected that perfection onto you. The narcissist is recruiting you as a co-conspirator who will feed their grandiosity. The narcissist is on the run, not from the law, but from their internal reservoir of toxic shame. They have been looking for the Bonnie to their Clyde, and you gladly step into the role.

If you have met a borderline, then you have been cast into a saviour role. The borderline is a helpless victim, and you are going to save them. This person needs your presence and attention during every waking minute. Their mood fluctuates from ecstatic to anxious to sad and back to ecstatic. Their life is riddled with misfortunes and failures. Yet none of it matters in the rapture of your shared high. You love being needed. Yet little do you know that you are being used as an emotional tampon, a kind of therapist who keeps the borderline’s emotions or life from veering out of control.

On The Road To True Love, Or Driving In Circles?

While each of the above cases is unique, they share one crucial trait: You are being showered with attention based on a lie.

Even though all love stories start with a glorious bang, the ones that last tend to have a healthy dose of reality. Sure, both of you are high, but this will eventually fade. Rather than the initial phase being the entire premise for your relationship, it merely fades into the past and becomes the ‘mythology of us’ — the beautiful story of how you met.

In a healthy union, what remains after the high fades are shared values, mutual respect, commitment, loyalty, acceptance of faults, compromise, struggle, steps toward building a future, and a true love that deepens over time. You quickly come to understand that the initial high was merely the spark for the actual fire that is true love.

In an unhealthy union, nothing matters but the high. You have mistaken the spark for the fire. In contrast to a steadily-building healthy relationship, you will find only urgency. Rather than moving comfortably through a courtship and dating phase, you end up in constant contact with this person. You are bombarded with messages and calls every waking minute. When you wake up and look at your phone, you are greeted with a morning declaration of love. You are together during every free minute you have. You cannot keep your hands off each other. You make glorious, audacious plans. Suffocation gradually seeps in, yet you push it away. You are high.

What you don’t realise in your drunken stupor, however, is that you are being love bombed, softened up to be used for an insidious purpose. And to top it all off, it is not love you are experiencing, but rather limerence.

A Counterfeit Love

Limerence is irrational infatuation and obsession. It is your heart bursting with joy and amazement at the mere thought of the other person.

Limerence is characterised by the following:

• Intrusive thoughts: The person is on your mind when you wake, and as you fall asleep. You think about them constantly throughout the day, whether you like it or not, and feel an irresistible need to be with them when they are not around.

• Dramatic change in priorities: You put aside your hobbies, your friends, even your long-term plans in order to align your life with this person.

• Emotional dependence: You do everything you can to keep that person’s approval, feeling incredibly anxious about ‘doing something wrong’ which might upset them. You read into every communication, decision, boundary or facial expression, terrified that this ‘perfect’ relationship might suddenly fall apart.

In a romantic relationship, limerence is often mistaken for love, as we believe we have finally found ‘the one’. What we fail to realise, however, is that limerence is a powerful holdover from childhood; an immature form of love. When fused with trauma, limerence carries into adulthood, where we project perfection on someone and ignore their flaws.

The core difference between love and limerence is that love comes from abundance, whereas limerence comes from lack. That is, when we meet someone who seems to possess traits that we ourselves lack, limerence emerges to compel us to merge with them. This can be in romance, friendship, business or in our personal development. In all such cases, we feel limerence because we believe that person will somehow make us whole, and we do everything in our power to maintain this feeling.

Seeing Reality While High

Narcissists and borderlines are wounded people. Their childhood history was so painful, so deeply sad and tragic, that they dissociated from reality. Their True Self is flooded with immense shame, trauma, guilt and grief. To cope with this, they cut themselves off from their True Self and used their imagination for pain relief. Their every act flows out of fantasy.

The psychopath is also deeply wounded, yet they are not exclusively driven by fantasy. They see the world clearly while lacking a conscience. As a result, they have no shame in turning a person’s limerence against them for their own gain.

Remember that the first phase of every relationship is similar for everyone. A spark is needed to light the fires of true love.

This raises a crucial question: How do you know if the other person is demonstrating the first sparks of love, or merely love bombing you to soften you up for manipulation?

The short answer to this is time.

Love Takes Time To Burn

It is only when the initial high fades that you can see reality clearly. Even if you understand how limerence works, once you are in it you will likely shut off your intuition and reason all of your doubts away. Once your grip on reality is severed, you will likely not get it back until after the collapse.

Limerence is a supernova, a blinding explosion that quickly fades and leaves nothing but emptiness and darkness. True love is like a steadily burning sun which grows brighter over the years.

To understand if you are being love bombed or are on the cusp of a great, mature love is to keep this crucial thing in mind: Every person demonstrates their true colours within 18 months, often within the first 3 months.

When meeting anyone new, remind yourself that they are on probation. If you have declared your love and moved in together within three weeks, then you have been taken over by your trauma-based fantasy response. You are no longer living in reality.

If you can maintain boundaries and healthy caution and scepticism for a minimum of three months (but ideally eighteen), you will have all the information you need.

Most people quickly know in their gut when they are with a toxic person, they just choose to ignore the facts because of their overwhelming limerence, their need for love based on childhood wounds. In many cases, a person needs to go through the cycle multiple times before they awaken to the underlying reality and heal sufficiently.

Rather than lose hope, you can see this repeated failure as a part of a greater journey leading to higher states of consciousness and the correcting of painful wounds from a distant past. Self-forgiveness and self-compassion are key. Paired with knowledge, courage and diligent healing work, they can carry you to a better, more grounded future. And who knows? Perhaps also to true love.