The Hidden Logic of Love Bombing: When Idealisation Becomes an Assault

The Hidden Logic blog series offers a deep exploration into the psychology underpinning relationship patterns and behaviours, investigating their psychological functions and the potential root causes in childhood experience.

In this first post, I’m diving into the psychodynamics of emotional abuse by examining its most seductive, yet destructive, opening move. Love Bombing.

A Note on Terminology

Throughout this series, I will use the term perpetrator instead of abuser. This choice reflects the core focus which is analysing the unconscious psychological function of the behaviour, which often stems from the perpetrator's own early trauma, rather than focusing solely on conscious malice. This perspective allows for a deeper understanding and compassion for the wounded child within, without ever excusing the harm done in the adult relationship.

What is Love Bombing?

Love bombing is the intense and overwhelming affection and attention the perpetrator initially directs at a potential partner. The behaviour is aggressive in its speed and volume.

What does this overwhelming affection look like? It can include:

• Buying frequent, lavish gifts or flowers.

• Telling the victim they are "the only person for them" or that they have "never met anybody like them before."

• Accelerating commitment rapidly (e.g., suggesting living together or marriage within days or weeks, not months).

The crucial difference is timing. This rush of intensity occurs in the very early stages of a relationship - days and weeks - dramatically shortcutting the natural, gradual pace of healthy connection.

The Explosive Effect on the Victim

For the victim, this attention feels incredibly flattering, triggering thoughts like, "Wow, if someone likes me this much already, this must be something special."

However, this intensity acts as a blinding mechanism. Even when the victim notices red flags or feels an internal lack of connection, these concerns are often overlooked. The victim may internalise the discomfort, concluding, "They feel it so strongly, there must be something wrong with me for not feeling the same."

The victim begins overriding their own internal warning system. This is where the emotional assault truly begins. This tendency to ignore their own feelings and instincts is a direct assault on their capacity for reality testing.

Key Concept: Reality Testing

Reality Testing is the ego function that allows an individual to distinguish between their internal, subjective world (wishes, feelings) and the actual, objective external world. When the victim is confronted with the perpetrator's overwhelming subjective feeling ("we are soulmates!") and their own internal, cautious reality ("I barely know them"), they suppress their reality in favour of the perpetrator's idealisation. This compromise sets the stage for future manipulation, such as gaslighting, a topic I’ll be exploring in a future post.

The Metaphor of the Bomb

The term "love bomb" is, unfortunately, accurate. A bomb is destructive. It shatters what was there before. This initial stage of emotional abuse is quick and instantaneous.

Crucially, the intense idealisation suddenly stops once the perpetrator feels they have psychologically captured their partner. The victim is left shell-shocked, obsessively trying to regain that initial feeling of being "the only one in the world." They are left wondering, “What did I do wrong to make the love stop?” This begins the cycle of constantly amending and adjusting behaviour to try and chase the initial high - a love that will never be found because it never existed in the first place.

The Hidden Logic

To understand the perpetrator's behaviour, we must accept that their actions are driven by unconscious compulsion, not conscious intent.

Both the future perpetrator and the future victim emerge from childhoods marked by emotionally unavailable parents, which fundamentally impacts their sense of self and their capacity for object constancy.

Key Concept: Object Constancy

Object constancy is the ability to hold a complex, steady view of someone. To know they are fundamentally good even when they disappoint you, or to know you are fundamentally safe even when they are physically absent. This capacity typically develops by age three. Due to early parental unavailability, both individuals developed an impaired capacity for object constancy, forcing them to rely on the primitive defence mechanism of splitting.

Key Concept: Splitting

Splitting is the inability to reconcile contradictory qualities (both good and bad) in a single person or object. Because of their impaired object constancy, both individuals are forced to see people (and themselves) in polarised terms: all good or all bad.

The crucial difference lies in how they unconsciously organised their inner world to manage the unbearable pain of this early abandonment.

Perpetrator vs. Victim

We see two diverging paths based on childhood survival strategies, driven by the unconscious mind as a shield against emotional pain.

The Future Perpetrator: Externalising the Pain

The perpetrator's primary defence was to externalise the pain, shame, and feelings of worthlessness by projecting them onto others.

• Survival Strategy: They learned that control is the only guarantee against being abandoned again. Love bombing is not love; it is an attempt to capture psychologically and subordinate their partner through idealisation. The adult relationship becomes a frantic, unconscious attempt to master the early feelings of helplessness by making someone else feel helpless.

• Defense Mechanism: Projective Identification. The perpetrator cannot tolerate their own unbearable feelings of self-hatred (the neglected child). They unconsciously evacuate this toxic psychic material and force it into the partner, who is then made to feel and express it. This is why the victim often ends up feeling the anxiety, worthlessness, and rage that the perpetrator cannot tolerate in themselves.

The Future Victim: Internalising the Blame

The victim's primary defence was to internalise the blame for parental unavailability, seeking emotional survival through appeasement and the pursuit of external validation.

• Survival Strategy: The child concludes, "My parents weren’t available because I wasn't good enough." This creates a punitive, highly active internalised critic (Superego). They accept that love is conditional on their perfection and self-sacrifice.

• Defense Mechanism: Repetition Compulsion. This is an unconscious, powerful drive to return to the traumatic relationship style in a desperate attempt to rewrite the ending (e.g., "If I sacrifice more, this time I will finally earn the love that was withheld"). This makes them highly susceptible to the idealisation of love bombing, which perfectly fills that childhood void.

The perpetrator, driven by a fear of abandonment, is unconsciously attempting to force the world - and by extension, the romantic partner - to pay for the pain of their childhood neglect. Conversely, the victim, conditioned to self-blame, is pathologically attempting to earn their way out of that same early emotional deficit.

This dynamic is the hidden logic revealed. Two deeply wounded individuals whose survival mechanisms align to trap them both in a painful, mutually destructive pattern. Understanding this logic, that the relationship is a re-enactment of childhood trauma, is the first essential step toward disrupting the cycle and reclaiming one's emotional reality.