I Wasn’t Ignoring Reality—I Was Conditioned to Doubt It

I do not think it is that I was stubbornly holding onto false hope—I was being actively manipulated, fed contradictions, and caught in a cycle designed to keep me confused. I didn’t choose to ignore reality; I had been conditioned to doubt my own perception of it.

Intermittent reinforcement was one of the most powerful psychological traps I experienced. It kept me waiting for our next “good moment,” convincing me that the relationship could be what I was promised it would be—if only… And with the mixed messaging/ gaslighting, reality became harder to grasp because my instincts were constantly being challenged.

Looking back, I see how I wasn’t just struggling to leave—I was struggling to see. The mixed messages, the highs and lows, the carefully timed affection—it all kept me tethered to something that was not actually there. Hope wasn’t the issue—being conditioned to doubt myself, my perceptions, and my reality left me believing the illusion.

Sorry I slapped you

I wonder if there’s a medication and also a dose high enough that could help me have felt less affected by the CVS cashier. He wasn’t just ringing me up; he was theatrically overperforming the role of one who works a cash register—projecting his voice as if addressing an auditorium, while tossing a ball high in the air from one hand to the other. As sensory overload set in, I felt trapped. He stretched our interaction longer than needed, demanding my attention while chattering in the brightly lit, warm, and humid store. I teetered on the edge of desperation, longing to pay and leave—to unhook from him.

I recognize that managing my nervous system is my responsibility. What if we all collectively focused on or even considered kindness as a way of being in the world? Kindness doesn’t require an audience—unlike friendliness, which often thrives on performance. The cashier was indeed friendly. I chose kindness by exercising restraint and not pointing out how his ball tossing and repeated errors due to distraction from his own behavior were unprofessional.

Call me uptight and sensitive, but—of the two of us, I. was. the. more. kind. one.—within that exchange of an unwanted and protracted transaction, which I experienced as more of an extraction. If you’re currently experiencing judgmental thoughts about my sensitivity, please consider this: you’re not kind, though I imagine quite friendly. It may be useful to know that the opposite of sensitivity is not strength, but INSENSITIVITY.

The Sudden but Slow Fade

Love Bombed: My Story of Worship, Betrayal, and No Contact (Part 9 of 32,000,000)

The Slow Fade: How Devaluation, Distancing, and Discard Unfolded

For the first five months, we spent an average of 30 hours a week together—during workdays, evenings, weekends. We never said goodbye without a plan our next visit. Our communication was constant, immediate, and deeply connected. We shared memes, recipes, vacation ideas, hiking trails, and songs that felt like the soundtrack to our love. He mirrored my interests so perfectly – proof of how in sync we were. If I brought something up, he responded with curiosity and enthusiasm, adding layers to our conversations. It felt natural, effortless—like real intimacy. I now understand this as mirroring, a technique that builds fast attachment by reflecting back everything I love, making me feel seen in a way that seemed magical.

Then, both suddenly and slowly, things changed. The specific, intentional initiatives and responses disappeared. No more Tumblrs, no more playlists, no more discussions about what we’d cook together or where we’d travel. His texts became so generic they could have been sent to anyone. He stopped planning ahead and looking forward. I was left  to ask, When will I see you next? The consistency left me high from feeling so connected, cared for, chosen, prioritized, vaporized.

Letting go of him—without wasting energy attempting to explain myself, change him, or force a shared reality—was a huge step toward claiming dominion over my own life. Even on the heels of a week of vertigo and then battling COVID, and all that time spent in my head and in bed, I’ve been gifted something incredible: the ability to sleep. I’m currently averaging 7 hours a night, deep enough to reach the dream state, something I haven’t experienced since childhood. Feeling rested has shifted everything —it’s allowed me to focus, plan, choose, and do so much more than just survive- and maybe best of all, a rested mind is one which allows me to pause rather than just (over)react immediately to triggering people and situation. I could not have guessed that peace and clarity would be the what was immediately awating me on the other side of life without him.

What Can I Do for You?

In the two years since my boys’ dad started his on-again, off-again relationship with this woman, she’s attempted a number times to get on my radar. I don’t fully understand it. I try not to assume motives because, I can’t know what’s truly going on in someone else’s mind.

Now that my sons have their own cars and can drive themselves between their dad and me, there’s no need for communication with him. I have no reason to engage with her—I’ve never met or communicated with her. Yet, it seems important to her to get my attention.

I can’t know if she wants to share something, or simply needs to be noticed.

If I sensed that her interest in connecting with me came from a place of wholesomeness, or if there was a chance that a conversation between us could bring healing to either of us, I’d be open to it. I will always be happy to participate in healing, especially with someone who impacts my children’s lives.

I imagine we probably have more in common than either of us would care to admit. I was tall, thin, attractive, doing well professionally, with more resources and assets than he had—yet still filled with enough self-loathing to try and make it work with someone who made me feel terrible. He’s driven to gain access to women with low self-esteem, who will trade being single for being with a man who takes everything they have, offering nothing good in return except for consistent cycles of intermittent reinforcement—just enough to keep them hanging on and trying harder.

I do feel for her.

Okay, I’m officially aware that I really need to get a life so I can have genuinely interesting things to write about.

Starved

Love Bombed: My Story of Worship, Betrayal, and No Contact (Part 8 of 32,000,000)

Learning to Love Myself?
I have been tasked with imagining loving myself rather than seeking love elsewhere.

But how? Starved for connection my entire life. I have gone without nurturing, protection, or the kind of love which would alllow me to exist without fear of it vanishing. Granted, I would benefit from taking better care of myself. And while that might prepare me for healthy connection with another, it will not satisfy my need for intimacy and connection.

In my world, love has been conditional— withdrawn when I failed to be useful or pleasing, which was much of the time.

I don’t know what it means to love myself. I survive myself. Each day, I wake up, and there I am—by myself with myself.

People who love themselves seem to have learned what love feels like because someone has showed them.

And this man who showed me what it was to feel cared for, considered, loved, treasured—wasn’t who he claimed to be.

Was It Real?
Was the love we had real? I mean, it wasn’t not real. But it was crafted and designed by him, executed by him—and then, intermittently retracted by him.

I don’t know. I feel stuck and disturbed by the idea that I’m supposed to now learn to love myself.

My therapist said, “Buy yourself flowers. You don’t need someone else to buy you flowers.”

But it was nothing to do with the flowers. It was about him/us—the consideration, effort, presence. He made me feel seen, heard, chosen. And ultimately, dependent on him making me feel those feelings.

I became emotionally reliant.

Fuck Self-Love
I am devastated by the belief that “no one will love you more than you love yourself.”

If true, and I was indoctrinated to hate myself, then does that mean everyone else will hate me too—forever?

It’s as if love is generational wealth or generational poverty. Some people inherit it. For others, it remains out of reach.

How does that work?

Connection
I am wired for and starved for connection. Not association. Not status. Not proximity.

I crave shared direction and flow—someone to hug, call, listen to, and be initiated by. Someone to laugh with, cry with, cheer for, and fight for—just as they would for me.

I’ve spent my life surviving, on my own. And I reject that healthy connection is hostage to my self-love. I cannot accept that as truth.

My lack of self-love didn’t just make me vulnerable to this love bomb—it made me perfect for it. I was groomed for this. Though I hesitate to use the word, I now recognize a pattern of behavior that feels predatory. Before learning about the two other women, I would have been offended to hear him referred to this way. But patterns don’t lie. I am one of four women devastated by him in just one year, not to mention his wife and daughters. Data and harmful patterns cannot be denied. Even if harm was not the intent, it remains harm.

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.

Harm Without Malice

Love Bombed: My Story of Worship, Betrayal, and No Contact (Part 7 of 32,000,000)

Reconciling Harm Without Malice

I feel like the absence of malice has to count for something. I truly believe this man is a highly empathic, loving soul. I think the idea that he has caused pain—pain he cannot magically make disappear or convince the hurt person that it isn’t real and if it is, it is not due to his intentions or actual choices—is deeply upsetting to him. 

He does things which happen to be deeply harmful because he needs to, because he’s good at it. And when faced with his culpability, he will do anything to deny it or smooth it over—not because he wants to harm, but because he doesn’t want harm to exist. This man is just doing the thing he loves, and it happens to be devastating.

But if harm keeps happening, and his response is to deny it rather than take accountability, what does that say about his version of empathy? Does he care more about not feeling like a harmful person than about actually not being one? It does seem so.

It’s strange to hold two truths at once: that someone can be deeply loving and also deeply harmful. That they can hate the idea of causing pain while continuing to cause it. And that, in the end, the absence of malice doesn’t undo the damage.

I’m realizing now that love without accountability isn’t love that can be trusted. Unwavering trust and safety matter more than the high of feeling adored. Both – And! I really thought I we had it ALL.

“One doesn’t have to operate with great malice to do great harm. The absence of empathy and understanding is sufficient.” ~Charles M.Blow.

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.

Love Bombing: Lies Before Hello

Love Bombed: My Story of Worship, Betrayal, and No Contact (Part 6 of 32,000,000)

The Story He Told Me

When we met, I was deeply moved. How he soldiered through the last 13 years of his 30-year marriage – cold and disconnected—no affection, no gratitude, no shared experiences. He spoke of serving well and faithfully as a parent, provider, and fixer, but never feeling like a true partner. And realized he needed more. I was the more.

Before me, he engaged a woman who requested of him to hit her hard enough to leave marks, who called him Daddy and insisted he call her Baby, Daddy’s Baby Girl, who threatened suicide if he upset her. But again, he did not speak negatively of anyone outright. He artfully shared in ways which allowed me to draw my own sympathetic conclusions.

I felt heartbroken for him. How is it possible for someone so awake, intentional, and generous—so full of love and light—to have only experienced misfortune in love?

The Little Lies

He found me on a dating app, and the lies started small, but immediately. I clearly indicated my preference for a man my height or taller—he lied about his height. I wanted someone politically aligned—he lied about his politics. I wasn’t a fan of thick Southern accents—he assured me he didn’t have one. But he was from South Georgia. Of course he had one. He explained it all away when I called him on it. So charming, who could be mad? Fuck it be short. Vote for the enemy. Speak like someone from the woods of South Georgia. Who even cares because you are soooooo good for me, so good for my nervous system. An emotional and sensory delight.

Initially, I tried to decline: I don’t think we need to talk or meet.
He replied, What’s it gonna hurt?
And so, of course we spoke. Then, met. And it went all the way, full tilt, everywhere. Immediately.

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.

When Love Fades

Love Bombed: My Story of Worship, Betrayal, and No Contact (Part 5 of 32,000,000)

Denial

I could not see it.
I wouldn’t believe it, no matter how many times friends begged me to look and listen. They saw the signs as glaring, in only the details I readily shared with them. I just couldn’t recognize what was happening. All I knew was that I loved him and felt loved in his presence. Loved, spoiled, seen, chosen.

Even when the devaluation started. Even when I felt myself grasping for his attention, for his validation, for our original way of engaging. I believed in what we had – that it was real and profound.  Legit, on many occasions over those months, laughing joyfully, I was exclaiming, “I literally think we have invented the greatest love ever, THIS has never been done before.”

Looking back, I recall the chill —the moment cool distance and mixed messaging replaced love bombing. More time between responses and initiatives. Less present and engaging communication in texts. Almost like courtesy responses, obligatory, detached. no longer a steady rally. Previously, all of it was expansive— effortless, shared rhythm- FLOW. Then… constriction. The energy changed. Where there was once unending enthusiasm and warmth, now there was hesitation—something muted, measured, fading.

The Devaluation & the Desperation to Hold On

Once I felt that high, for months on end, I was hooked–addicted, desperate to get it back.

When the devaluation began and he started pulling away, he graciously and REPEATEDLY showered me with gorgeous words of assurance. The mixed messaging compounded my anxiety. I scrambled and held on tighter. I attempted to get smaller, quieter, easier. I ignored red flags. I discounted myself.

I begged myself to believe and rely on his beautiful soothing words, though they differed from his energy and actions. If I could just be less needy, less pawing, just less, he would burn for me again. He would return as the man who once couldn’t get enough of me—the version of himself he had shown me, the one who stole my heart.

But that version of him was gone-  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.

The Two Truths

Love Bombed: My Story of Worship, Betrayal, and No Contact (Part 4 of 32,000,000)

The Two Truths
I’m struggling to reconcile two truths. One truth is what I directly and consistently experienced: our time together was effortless, joyful, and deeply connected. We did not fight or argue, though we did not always agree. We shared adventures, laughter, navigating hardships, and what felt like genuine emotional intimacy. If you judged our relationship by our times together, it would appear an A+—fluid, fun, and safe, kind, caring. CRAZY in love, envisioning our beautiful future.

And then there’s the other truth: what I didn’t experience directly, but pieced together from mixed messaging and inconsistencies, hollow texts, and now the stories of these two other women, deeply distressed and pursuing him legally with charges of abuse and physical harm (which took place in August, when I sensed something was off and blocked him—because his insistence that – all was and would be well – was in direct conflict with my lived experience and my gut—but I was desperate to believe him). It was not possible to believe him and stay sane because he was gaslighting me and engaging two other women, apparently in ways which left them suicidal and in need of pressing charges. His betrayals weren’t directly observable; they were sensed, uncovered, and explained away. His deceptions are insidious—and for me, defy articulation.

I was left with one option: stop communication. Blocking him feels childish, but there’s nothing else to do but hold on to what’s left of myself and close that door.

I hate it, but it’s the truth. The best I can do is heal from all that groomed me for exactly this relationship, and then grieve the loss and do the work to recover. I was first crazy for him and now crazy from him. I do not mean to suggest that I was clearly not NOT crazy before we met.

I wish it weren’t true. I wish it made sense. I wished it hurt less.

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.

Recognizing Love Bombing Signs

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.