Love bombing

I am watching the new victim from a distance. She is nearing the end of the love bombing phase. For those of you who have never had the pleasure of dating a narcissist, I will provide you with the official definition. According to Psychology Today, love bombing is the practice of “overwhelming someone with signs of adoration and attraction…designed to manipulate you into spending more time with the bomber.”  … But at the heart of love bombing is manipulation. A narcissist uses it as a way to control you.

The sweet words and gestures. The thoughtful dates. The compliments. The flowers. The gifts. The vacations. She is being put on a pedestal- only to be pushed off that pedestal with such force that she won’t have time to prepare or recover. I feel sick for her.

She is feeling bad for him because of the sadness in his eyes. After all, he has been through so much. Unfortunately, he is leaving out the facts and the part of the story that shows that what he has been through has been mostly self-inflicted.

His charm is working to keep her around. She is even doing the leg work and planning for their upcoming Caribbean vacation, helping him host the holidays and taking over all of the things he hates to do. This seemingly dumb man is actually pretty ingenious. He is a master manipulator and has managed to reel in another intelligent and kindhearted soul into his fucked-up world.

While he has been love bombing her, he has continued to bombard me with messages. Texts, Emails. Facebook. Instagram. Snapchat. I have since removed him off of all social media but the texts, emails and facebook messages have not stopped. Even though I don’t respond to or entertain his messages other than when I threaten to expose him to his new girlfriend if he doesn’t leave me alone, he still continues or the few times I have lost my cool and reminded him of what a piece of shit I think he is.

Unfortunately, we have a professional connection that doesn’t allow me to block him completely because believe me, if I could remove him from my life permanently, I would.

The constant messages, telling me how he doesn’t want to wake up in the morning/wants to die, begging for “his family” back when he barely participated in my kids’ lives when we were together, telling me how he much he misses me and our life, how he can’t get out of bed in the morning, and so on. He was driving by my old home, and now has found my new home. I have moved 25 minutes away to get the hell away from him but he still manages to try hover in my life and try retain some sort of sick control.

This poor victim is going through what I went through when I was with him. He was with me, but obsessing over another woman. I am now that other woman because since I refuse to be with him, he is obsessing over what we had. He is also still in contact with the horrible person he obsessed over when him and I were together, so she has a double whammy.  He was engaged to me but not taking care of me when I had a brain tumor or dealing with other health issues throughout our time together.  He was verbally abusing me and making me feel inadequate and embarrassing me in front of others.  And there  are the other sick things that came to light that I have kept buried in order to protect the little bit of soul that he has left.  His friends don’t even know the true depths of who they are dealing with.

Somehow, as intelligent as I am, and as I strong as I portray myself to be, I managed to withstand this narcissistic abuse for 7 years. I felt emotionally and mentally trapped. He made me feel that I wasn’t good enough to be with anyone else and wasn’t even worthy to be with him. He insulted my parenting, my cooking and cleaning skills, my body, my nails, my hair, my face, and anything else that could diminish my self-esteem. And it worked.

This of course was after the love-bombing. In the beginning, I was amazing. I was beautiful. I was smart. I was everything a man could ask for. He proposed after a year of dating. It was an amazing proposal, in front of hundreds of people- he cried and promised me the world. It was from that time on that everything went to hell…….

All professional and personal advice I have received has been to not get involved and let his new victim take her own path. It’s hard as a woman to watch and know that this is happening but I think that it’s sadly the most appropriate path. I will however pray for her- that she breaks this cycle long before I did.