Love Bombing is a term rooted in religious cults. The Church Of Reverend Sung Myung Moon, known as the Moonies, practised what was also going on in many new religious movements but their members had a cynically coined name for the active recruitment technique, ‘Love Bombing’. A newcomer to one of their meetings or church services will often be greeted by ever-smiling, ever cheery young people, have his or hand shaken vigorously and possibly even get hugged a lot. The love and affection can get touchy-feely, overpowering and intense. The newcomer’s story of how they came to the church will wow the listeners as will everything about the newcomer. They will hear you first came in after meeting say John, or Jane. This will be treated quickly as very special. John and Jane only know ‘the bestest people’, and they are great judges of character. You must be so privileged, charming and special. Everyone is thrilled to be in your presence. You can end up feeling like an A-List movie star surrounded by adoring fans, even though it is people who have literally only just discovered you even exist. You’ll be asked about your life and work. If you have a job, it’ll be the bestest, and they may play on someone in the group doing or having done similar work. (it also gives them clues to your income that will help them decide your true financial worth to the cult). Your hobbies will be the best, whether you say you only watch football on TV or go out kite-surfing every weekend. The love bombing saturates you in excessive often cloying flattery, and affection. They will fall over themselves to do you favours, buying you a beer, or a meal, carrying your luggage for you and if you don’t drive, they will go out of their way to give you a car ride home (which also lets them clock your address). Everyone is suddenly your new best friend. If they don’t see you for a few days they will say they really missed you and got worried you might not come back, or indicate distress that they somehow offended you. It’s all faked manufactured sincerity. This can be maintained over months.
Another side of it will be the confessional one, where members may see you as someone they can tell their troubles too; confiding in you about having taken drugs, feeling bad about a terminated pregnancy, once self-harming or attempting suicide, though seeing the cult as having rescued them from all that.
Their candid stories can make you open up to relate similar stories from your own past, recent or distant. This will move them to further hugs (and in some,but by no means all cults the flirting can extend to full on sexual intimacy though it remains all faked and controlling).
Your confessed material is relayed covertly to cult elders, and can later be used to guilt trip you and in some cases even as outright blackmail material.
The often glorious ego massaging honeymoon period that is love bombing wil stop, sometimes suddenly and brutally to be replaced with angry rebukes. You will be made to feel as if you have let everyone down after all the love and sacrifice and self-honesty they have shared. You are then trapped in trying to recapture that magical love-atmosphere, and it will then be switched on and off like a tap, as a system of carrot-stick punishment and reward to engineer you to where they want to be. That is in a nutshell how many cults operate.
A Narcissist love bombs in a similar way; they gain friends with flattery, affection, showering someone with gifts, putting you on a pedestal. A romance can be a whirlwind. Many (but certainly not all) love at first sight relationships are actually results of such control and love bombing.
In a cult, a group controls the individual. The Narcissist flips that by being an individual who can love bomb a group, though with particular individuals singled out for more attention than others. He will become the life and soul of the party. He might use clever tricks, even actual magic conjuring tricks to get everyone watching him. He is a supremely cool dude, but a smooth talking con-man, the kind of guy who could sell you the Brooklyn Bridge. Suddenly, he owns the room. If he’s invited to parties, other friends will agree to attend on the promise that he is coming, and offers to show more of his clever tricks and offers generous gifts to some guests. He necomes an indispensible assett, a selling point.
The Narc will quickly notice that some guests at the party seem less impressed by his hard sell self-promotion, the ones who see only a shady used car salesman selling a brightly striped sports car with a busted gear box. That person is then treated as the party-pooper, the one not getting, or in on the joke. The rest of the group starts to ignore the individual, or even rebuke them. The Narc will play on this to the max. The individual single out will be made to feel detached, secondary, or even full on excommunicated. It isn’t paranoia, as they are out to get you. It can fuel paranoia and suspicion though. A Narc gaslights, and makes you doubt your own sanity. You don’t fit in, the group likes the narc and you don’t so you assume you are the one who is wrong and not fitting in is your fault. It’s actually your saving grace, not a fault. You are seeing through the scam. You know the emperor has no new shiny clothes, and that he is actually just naked.
With a one to one relationship, the love bombing might be maintained right to the wedding, but the object of the narc’s control expresses doubts, disagreement, or shows a wish to do something other than the narc desires, the affection is withdrawn, replaced with silence or possibly some other punishment up to actual violence, but also with a sliding scale of name calling, blaming, guilt-tripping, insults, withdrawal of favours, exposure to peer group pressure from others (the flying monkeys in particular), emotional blackmail, and a threat to separate or divorce entirely. The Narc may well start love bombing others, sharing the affection once exclusively given to the partner he claimed he only had eyes for. As the love bombing is withdrawn, it is replaced with a vacuum or with abuse, both of which amount to hate bombing which should be a cue to the victim to get out of there but the desire for a return to the happier times runs strong and other ties, through family, friends, finance, home ownership, children, etc and possibly threats of retribution, if not actual acts of retribution, can trap the victim for the long run, if not permanently or until pushed too far, they finally escape. The important thing is for you to get yourself out. You want to help the other victims but you can’t any more than you can get someone free from quicksand while you are also sinking into it.
Youtube – Narcissistic Love Bombing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKEjiyDivcc
Arthur Chappell
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