Love vs. Love-Bombing

I spent a lot of time wondering where I should start, but I suppose the logical place to start is from the beginning. I met the man I would marry (we'll call him XK) in the summer of 2008. I'd gotten out of a long-term, long-distance relationship overrun with lying and cheating just a few months before and had no intention of settling down any time soon. Looking back now, much of where I was at the time not only impacted how I viewed my relationship with XK in the future, but also how he felt he had the right to treat me.

I didn't value myself very highly. I wasn't eating, I slept entire days at a time. I spent most nights out drinking myself into oblivion with my roommates, was seeing a therapist weekly to try and fight through depression, and almost failed one of my summer classes. The night I met XK was just another Saturday night out at the bar. He walked in and I recognized him immediately. I'd seen him out a lot of times that summer and when he sat down at our table I felt, as silly as it seems, starstruck. Before I knew it, we were taking shots, dancing, exchanging numbers, kissing. He came back to my place and we stayed up until 5 in the morning talking - it's funny because even 9 years later, I can still remember bits of that conversation vividly. I also remember thinking - wow, this guy is interested in me? If I could travel back in time, I'd love to tell 21-year-old me that low self-worth is never a good start to a relationship.

My typical activity 5-6 times a week.

After all of the reading I've done in the last year or so about narcissists, it's amazing how early on there were signs that I missed simply because I didn't know such a thing existed. One common tactic narcissists use is placing you upon a pedestal from an early point in the relationship. While it seems sweet, romantic even, it's also a way to foster dependence on that person. If there's one thing my relationship with XK was, it was intense - from the very start.

I traveled home the morning after we met and was out of Ohio for 12 days, but we talked on the phone every day that I was gone. After two days, he told me he had all kinds of good ideas for how to propose to someone, but that he wasn't going to tell me what they were - "just in case." When I came back to Ohio, he picked me up from the airport and it was more than a year before we spent a night apart after that. The night I arrived back in town, he suggested that we skip the "dating" part and just be in a relationship - I agreed and we quickly became inseparable. Within two weeks he told me he was in love with me and that he knew I was "the one". I remember feeling a little nervous - I didn't say it back right away and was concerned things might be moving too quickly in the back of my head, but his constant attention and compliments already had me too hooked to back away. I felt like this is what I'd been missing - this must be normal and I just didn't know how to handle it.

Since then, I've learned that what was happening is actually something called "love-bombing". By making you the center of his/her universe, you become highly - and quickly - attached. For me personally, it was nonstop texting, spending every night together, and sometimes even showing up at my house unannounced or sitting in his car outside, watching for me to come back from class. It was also intense public displays of affection and complete alienation of his friends by his own choosing.

This isn't to say that romantic gestures and a kiss in public aren't ever good for a relationship - they absolutely are if that's what works for you. But it's easy to cross the line of obsession or reliance without even realizing it. That's the goal of a narcissist - and often the first step into a trap that can feel impossible to escape. It's this love-bombing technique that makes the devaluation stage of a relationship with a narcissist so traumatizing for the victim (but we'll get to that in another post).

Perhaps the most important thing I've learned from thinking back to the beginning of our relationship (what I used to think was the "good times") is the importance of self-love. Knowing your worth and valuing yourself is the key to finding a partner - your energy attracts similar energy, whether you're aware of it or not. By not giving yourself the love and credit you deserve, you're opening up the door for someone else to come in and give you less than you deserve, too. When you truly love yourself, your spirit will connect with another who will also truly love you - without ultimatums, no strings attached.

Power in Healing

When my ex-husband and I first got divorced, I put almost nothing about it on social media. I was embarrassed. I'd failed and I didn't want anyone to know. Despite making a career out of helping others use social media, I hesitated to put those kinds of emotions out there for everyone to see. Being vulnerable is terrifying - especially when the six years leading up to that moment it had been so heavily discouraged. But one day, I opened up a little bit about my story and the results were unbelievable.

People who I didn't know had struggled or were struggling with an emotionally abusive relationship reached out to me privately to thank me for sharing. I was connected with strangers, reconnected with old friends. Many people said "you should write a book." Something scares me about the thought of having everything I went through on paper, but somehow this seems less intimidating.

After a lot of back and forth, I decided that maybe a blog was the place to start. I've always been
better at expressing myself through my writing, so perhaps the experience would be cathartic. Maybe I would reach someone who needed to know they aren't alone. So here we are. I'm not sure where this will go, but I can promise everything I write will be completely genuine. Because of that, I know it may be hard to read at times. But if there's anything I've learned, there is power in healing through your story.