First of all, this might be the wrong community to post this on. I would appreciate it if someone could point me to a more appropriate one were it the case.
I’ve been made aware of this manipulation technique on social media and I sort of saw some of my behaviours, so now I’m wondering: have I “love bombed” someone? I am looking at this with hindsight as our relationship is now over.
I’ve met this person online and we really hit it off, we had fun chatting and we did a lot of it, any free time we had was a good time to talk. After some time we started dating (long distance) and I complimented them a lot, I said “I love you” a lot and we spent a lot of time in calls and texting.
I never got mad at them for any reason, we only fought towards the end and I never felt bad when they went out with friends or spent time with somebody else. I did have the chance to hang out with their friends as well and I enjoyed it.
So how do I know if all those compliments and all those “I love you” were somehow manipulative? I loved them a lot and I grew to depend on them. How do I know if the things I said were actually hurting them psychologically and, if they were, how can I get better? How can I make sure to never do such a thing again?
If you have any questions I will do my best to answer
So afaik love bombing requires you to be trying to get something out of it. Like if you were an asshole, and threw a chair through a window, and raged for an hour and stormed out of the house. Then you come with flowers, and candy, and some big elaborate date, in order to get them to forgive you and stay. That’s love bombing. You’re manipulating the person into thinking you’ll never do it again, and you’ll change, and all that BS.
IIRC it also applies to people who neg others. Say a whole mess of shitty things to someone, to bring their self esteem down, and then throw a compliment every so often, to keep them hooked.
It sounds like you really felt the way you said, and didn’t have an ulterior motive, so love bombing doesn’t apply.
That’s not love bombing. Did you love them as a means to an end? Did you try to get something specific from them in return? No? Then don’t worry. Seems you just loved them, that’s life.
No, I never wanted anything in return but as things started to get bad, past the point of no return, I have been told by a few of their friends that I was manipulative and that they didn’t believe I had good intentions, and I have been wondering if there was truth to it since then
It sounds like you were simply in love, doing loving things. Maybe you panicked a bit when you realised it was ending and tried for things not to end? It sounds very human and I think you are being too hard on yourself.
It is great to be introspective and want to identify any potentially toxic traits we may have. In this instance, you wrote that you loved them. You told them exactly how you felt about them. If you were intentionally acting a certain way only to act completely differently later on, that would be a different story.
