Love Bombed: My Story of Worship, Betrayal, and No Contact (Part 2 of 32,000,000)
The First Signs of Cracks (Denial & Self-Betrayal)
I didn’t want to see it.
I wouldn’t believe it, no matter how many times people told me. Friends who cared about me saw the signs, even based only on the things I was telling them. But I dismissed it. I justified it. I couldn’t recognize what was happening, even as I described it out loud.
Even when the devaluation started. Even when I felt myself grasping for his attention, for his validation, for the thing I thought we had in the beginning. I clung to the idea that we were different. That what we had was real.
But looking back, I can see the shift—the exact moment the love bombing started to fade, replaced by distance, devaluation, gaslighting, and control.
The Devaluation & The Desperation to Hold On
That’s the thing about love bombing. Once you’ve felt it, you’ll do anything to get it back.
I despaired when he started pulling away, while insisting he was not- when the devaluation began, I scrambled to keep him. I made myself smaller, quieter, easier. I ignored red flags. I suffered unbearable pain, anxiety, and shame. My need for him was the issue, my sensitivity, my trauma—-those exact things signaled him as to my suitbility as a promsing supply- a good prospect.
I told myself that if I could just love him better—if I could be more patient, more understanding, less direct—he would return to me. The version of him I fell for in the beginning.
But that version of him was never real.
Disclaimer: I am sharing my personal experience exactly as I recall it. This is my truth, my story, and my perspective~ to document what I lived through.
