Early & Alone #87: Love Bombing
(Minor spoilers for Ted Lasso ahead)
This week’s episode of Ted Lasso featured an interesting conversation between Rebecca and Keeley. Keeley is gushing about her new relationship and all the gifts she’s getting. Rebecca smirks and says it sounds like she’s being “love bombed.” She cautions that it’s how her relationship with the walking caricature of evil man, Rupert, started.
The New York Times defines love bombing as: “lavishing a new romantic partner with grand gestures and constant contact in order to gain an upper hand in the relationship.” In Keeley’s case, this means an office full of daisies, a signed first edition copy of Sense and Sensibility (yes, this part made my stomach turn), and lots of other grand gestures. She listens to Rebecca and agrees that the shoe fits, but she sticks up for her partner, saying they’re a good person and she trusts them.
As I watched, I felt a little sick. I’m not sure I ever really considered that the beginning of my relationship (well, honestly, most of my relationship) with my ex-husband was a kind of love bombing. There were no signed first editions, but there were personalized playlists, long emails, a constant string of gifts and lavish meals and trips. He wrote me poems, told me I was perfect.
And I ate it up, despite the fact that I believed none of it—not really. I knew I wasn’t perfect. I thought I didn’t deserve all of these gifts. How could I pay him back? I felt in constant debt. He had more money, more resources. He was the more sentimental of the two of us—he was the poet and I was the cynic. He was my first real love and I knew I was lucky. I felt such immense gratitude that I think it put me at a disadvantage. I told myself I wasn’t worthy of this kind of love and attention. How could I be? It was too much.
The theory of love bombing is that the bomber, usually male, does it to manipulate their partner into loving them back. Many love bombers are narcissists. All these years later, I’m still not really sure what happened to my marriage or whether my ex was a narcissist or manipulative or sociopathic, as people have diagnosed. Maybe he was. That would make things easier to stomach. Because the thing about love bombing that is so devastating is the switch that happens when it’s over.
In classic cases of love bombing, the bomber can isolate their partner, demanding more and more attention and gradually robbing their partner of a sense of independence. That wasn’t my situation. I did sincerely believe my ex was my soulmate. But we were both social people with our own interests and our own friends. The switch came when the love just went away. Literally, he wrote me a poem and sent me flowers at work the week he left me. I never saw him again except for an awkward hour when we met to finalize terms of our divorce. All the love was gone and I was left buried in rubble.
It’s taken me a long time to rebuild, to reimagine what it means to be loved. For so long, I’d believed that it meant grand gestures and gifts and flowery words, scavenger hunts on Valentine’s Day and trips to Napa and tickets to the ballet and a perfect wedding. Now I know those things are nice, but they’re not what love is. Love is honesty and steadiness and communication and compromise and time together. It’s meeting the other person where they are, loving them for who they are.
This season of Ted Lasso has been uneven, to say the least, so it’s not the norm for me to have this kind of revelation while watching, but I’ll be thinking about all of this for a while. Always rebuilding, trying to understand a little bit more with every day that puts me further away from the explosion.
Bright Spots
🩰 As a kid, I dreamed of being a ballerina, even though I never took dance lessons. So I really loved this episode of the Articles of Interest podcast about pointe shoes. Totally fascinating.
👂 This Slate essay by Merritt Tierce is long but worth it—she delves into the algorithms and dating apps and loneliness and questions whether the internet is listening to everything we say.
👨💼 I quit watching Succession after the first season because I just couldn’t stomach the cruelty of the characters. But as the buzz continues in its most recent season, I can’t help but feel left out. So I’ve restarted, picking up with season 2. I’m only a few episodes in, but it’s kind of all I want to talk about now.
💇♀️ I treated myself to a Shark Flexstyle during the Sephora sale and I’m having fun with it. I’m not sure it’s the miracle I’d hoped it would be, but I think it will improve my life a little bit since I really dislike drying and styling my hair, ESPECIALLY in the summer humidity.
💄 I also picked up this Merit lipstick in Cabo and the Merit tubing mascara during the sale. So far, so good!
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I'm always learning from your experiences! So glad you've gone to a regular schedule for Early & Alone...I look forward to each edition. I haven't gotten around to the current season of Ted Lasso, and like you, after a couple of episodes of Succession, Season 1, I let it go. I felt as if I knew exactly where it was going... but unlike you, I did not care enough to see if perhaps I was wrong.
I hope you're not spoiled for this season of Succession! There was a plot twist a few episodes in that I was dying to talk about the next day. I was very annoyed when my friends who also watch the show told me they hadn't seen it yet.
This doesn't apply to your ex (he was just a piece of shit), but recently on Love Letters, the Globe advice column I read religiously, someone wrote in and confessed to being a love-bomber- they said for them, it's a form of ADHD hyperfixating. https://loveletters.boston.com/2023/04/this-is-the-reason-i-love-bomb-people.html