It can be very deflating to constantly find yourself in a relationship with a love bomber. They will manipulate you into envisioning a happy, healthy, and secure future together, and then pull the rug out from under you with intense levels of emotional and/or physical abuse. Once you have had time to reflect on the situation, you might find yourself wondering why you are constantly finding yourself with love bombers.
The reason that you attract love bombers is because you have an unhealthy perception of love and healthy relationships. This makes you susceptible to the manipulative techniques that love bombers use to seduce you and gives them access to your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and needs.
This article will provide you with all the information that you need to make well-informed decisions when entering new relationships. We’ve also created a short video (see below) that outlines some of the characteristics of a healthy relationship that you can use to help you stop attracting love bombers.
A Short Video With 8 Characteristics of a Healthy Relationship
You Attract Love Bombers Because You Have an Unhealthy Perception of Love and Healthy Relationships
The single most common reason that people get manipulated by love bombers is past abuse that they haven’t processed. This abuse often originates from an unhealthy/abusive childhood upbringing, an abusive romantic relationship, an abusive friendship, and so on.
The reason that this is such a common reason that people are susceptible to the manipulative techniques that narcissists use is because abuse teaches victims to justify, rationalize, and normalize unhealthy/abusive behavior.
How Do Abusive Romantic Relationships Corrupt Your Perception of Healthy Relationships?
Someone who has a healthy definition of healthy romantic relationships would have experienced a relationship with an equal amount of intimacy, commitment, and passion. The person that they shared this connection with would be someone who is capable of commitment, being vulnerable, and truly caring about another person.
Someone with an unhealthy definition of healthy romantic relationships would have most likely experienced a romantic relationship that was purely motivated by passion that was intoxicating, irrational, associated with bad decision making, short lived, and abusive. Without the guidance of experiencing a healthy relationship, they would equate the abuse that they experienced with true love.
How Do Abusive Friendships Corrupt Your Perception of Healthy Relationships?
A person who has a healthy definition of a friendship would have experienced a friendship with mutuality, respect, emotional and physical safety, honesty, and open communication at one point or another.
A person who has an unhealthy perception of a friendship probably experienced a friendship that was one sided, plagued with lies and manipulation, lacked communication, and was very superficial. This will cause them to equate their abusive friendship with true friendship.
How Do Abusive Family Structures Corrupt Your Perception of Healthy Relationships?
Those who naturally have a healthy perception of family relationships often come from childhood upbringings with emotionally available, responsive, and consistent family members who are safe to be around.
If they have an unhealthy perception of family relationships it is common to see them come from a childhood upbringing with emotionally unavailable, unresponsive, and inconsistent family members who aren’t safe to be around. This means that from a very young age they have been taught to justify, rationalize, and normalize the abuse that they experienced.
How Do Abusive Work Environment Corrupt Your Perception of Healthy Relationships?
Someone with a healthy perception of a workplace relationship has often experienced a work environment where they were valued, respected, and encouraged to continue to develop.
If they have an unhealthy perception of workplace relationships they have probably experienced a work environment where people didn’t care about their well-being, asked them to work an unreasonable amount of time, didn’t have a strategic plan in place, and had a lot of favoritism.
How Do Love Bombers Exploit Your Corrupted Perception of Healthy Relationships?
We’ll define each one of these terms in the coming section but the manipulative techniques that a love bomber will use to exploit your corrupted perception of healthy relationships are mirroring and future faking.
The combination of the two, and many other narcissistic behavior patterns that love bombers use, manipulate you into a state of cognitive dissonance where you justify, rationalize, and normalize the love bomber’s abusive behavior
Mirroring
Mirroring is when a love bomber will absorb an extraordinary amount of information about your identity and use that information to create a falsified identity that is designed to fill a void in your life. This void is almost always going to be centered around your perception of healthy relationships under the given circumstances.
What this means is that in a romantic relationship, this void is going to be your perception of the ideal love. In a friendship, the void is going to be centered around your definition of the perfect friend. In a family setting it will be centered around the concept of having an emotionally available, responsive, and consistent family member who is safe to be around. In a work environment this void is going to be centered around bettering your career.
Mirroring is all about the love bomber being exactly who you need them to be. Love bombing is actually an elite form of mirroring. The love bomber spends an extraordinary amount of time and effort using the falsified identity that they created to fill a void in your life to convince you that they are the “perfect” person for you.
Suggested Readings: How Long Does the Love Bombing Phase Last, What Do Narcissists Do During the Love Bombing Phase
Future Faking
A future fake is when a love bomber makes a false promise for the future to get what they want in the present. There are two types of future fakes: verbal and nonverbal. A verbal future fake is pretty straightforward, it is when a love bomber makes a promise that they don’t intend on keeping (e.g. “I see myself settling down and having kids with you.” , “If you keep working hard like this I am going to give you a raise.” , “I’ll pay for you college tuition.”)
A nonverbal future fake is actually the falsified identity that the love bomber created to fill a void in your life. By presenting themselves as someone who is “perfect” for you, they are manipulating you into believing that it is possible to have a healthy, happy, and secure future with them.
The reason that future faking is so dangerous is because mirroring implants a belief or idea that a healthy, happy, and secure future is possible with the love bomber. But future faking, particularly the verbal future fakes, turns that belief or thought into something that is almost tangible.
When you honestly believe that the love bomber wants to live a happier, healthier, and more secure life with you, you are more likely to fall victim to cognitive dissonance when the love bomber begins their abusive pursuit of validation, admiration, reassurance, power, and control.
Suggested Reading: What Comes After Love Bombing With a Narcissist?
Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive dissonance is a theory that suggests when we experience an inconsistency among belief, behavior, and information, it creates a lot of psychological tension. To ease this tension we will change one or more of the elements that are causing the inconsistency to make everything consistent.
In abusive relationships, this is known as the justification, rationalization, and normalization of the abuser’s abuse. It is very common to see victims of love bombing fall into a state of cognitive dissonance because in the beginning stages of the relationship, the love bomber is giving the victim the information and showing the behavior that the victim needs to develop a belief for the future of the relationship.
When the love bomber begins their abusive pursuit of validation, admiration, reassurance, control, and power, also known as the devaluation phase, they change the information that they are giving and the behavior that they are showing, leaving the victim with only the belief that a happy, healthy, and secure relationship is possible.
This forces the victim to choose between holding onto the belief that they are in a healthy, happy, and secure environment or letting go of the belief by acknowledging that the love bomber is an abuser and leaving them.
Unfortunately, love bombers have an insanely powerful techniques that are designed to keep the victim justifying, rationalizing, and normalizing the abuse that they are experiencing. (e.g. Gaslighting “I can’t believe you are being so sensitive. You need to calm down, you are just being dramatic.”) So, they almost always hold onto the belief that they are in a happy, healthy, and secure relationship.
What Should You Take Away From This Article?
The reason that you attract love bombers is because you have an unhealthy perception of love and healthy relationship. It is very common for this corrupted perception that you may have to come from abuse that you experienced in the past.
We highly recommend you familiarize yourself with our article How to Deal With a Love Bomber to learn some of the boundaries that you can set to shut them down.
We also recommend that you seek out a qualified professional for a more comprehensive understanding of the reason that you attract love bombers. They are going to be able to help you develop the emotional skills needed to build a connection with someone who you can truly have a healthy, happy, and secure future with.
About the Author
Hey, I’m Elijah.
I experienced narcissistic abuse for three years.
I create these articles to help you understand and validate your experiences.
Thank you for reading, and remember, healing is possible even when it feels impossible.