Irini Georgi

Irini Georgi

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Avoidant Love Bombing

What does love bombing look like when you can’t see or recognize it—until you find yourself in the wreckage, from where you least expected it?

Love bombing isn’t just about gifts, lavish dinners, roses, and trips. The grand gestures and the early “I love yous” are the obvious signs. But there’s also a kind of love bombing that’s more subtle, and therefore more insidious, because you don’t realize it’s happening.

We’re talking about emotional love bombing. It can look like intense closeness and intimacy, like hints that you’re made for each other (even as a joke in the beginning), or that your connection is meant to be. It might involve pretending to be a couple, like a game, planning your future together “just for fun.” But after enough of this, you start to believe it could really happen.

It can look like deep sharing and vulnerability, way too much for how little time you’ve known each other. They might express complex emotions and existential fears on the first date, dive into childhood trauma, talk about how broken or damaged they are, how much they’ve been hurt in the past, that they’re people pleasers and need to stop doing everything for others and learn to care for themselves too.

It can make you want, more than anything, to protect them, to save them, to never leave or betray them. You promise: I’ll be different. I’m here now. It can look like them giving you their undivided attention, showing genuine interest in your every thought, focusing on everything you say, and then, two weeks later, once the sparkle of novelty fades, they suddenly cut it off or start breadcrumbing you. And you’re left chasing those crumbs, because compared to what came before, the loss feels devastating.

At first, they may seem to meet all your emotional needs, especially if you come from a background where you were ignored, neglected, or overlooked. You feel like you’ve finally found what you were looking for. So when they pull back and you feel it slipping away, you lose your mind trying to get it back. You’re willing to do anything, sink to any depth, just to reclaim what you had in the beginning.

Only… what you had in the beginning wasn’t real. The tragedy is that the person doesn’t need to be abusive to do all this. It would be easier if we could just label them, make a diagnosis, point the finger, but unfortunately, reality is more complicated.

Some people do this without realizing it, because they’re avoidant, or simply emotionally unavailable. This is how they show up when they first meet someone and idealize them, convinced once again that this person will solve all their problems.

Gradually, as they get to know the other person better, they’re disappointed to find they’re just human, no matter how amazing that human may be. They’re not a god. They’re disappointed that even this person can’t save them from themselves. That’s what it means to be emotionally immature and unavailable. They may wish they could be in a relationship, an idealized, fantasy version of one, but for now, at least, they can’t.

That’s why we often talk about the “honeymoon fortnight” (which might last longer), and then suddenly, they disappear. Or they go from being present and consistent to acting distant, slow to reply, making no plans to see you. They let the connection fade while telling you they’re “just really busy,” and that you’re overreacting. But in every cell of your body, you know that something has changed. And you feel like the whole thing is collapsing—or was a lie. But it wasn’t necessarily all a lie. It just wasn’t the whole truth either.

And that’s what hurts the most, because you believed it in your heart you could finally have that magic of the honeymoon stage. You can’t bear the idea that it wasn’t real. Sadly, now the only thing that’s real is the crumbs.

Look at the reality of it. Ask yourself: are crumbs enough for me? And how long can I stay emotionally starved?

It’s so much harder to walk away when the other person isn’t a villain. But still, they’re not right for you.

Forgive yourself for falling for emotional love bombing. It’s incredibly, incredibly hard to resist. It feels like the most wonderful confirmation and sense of completion you can imagine. Trust me, I know.

 

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Intermittent Reinforcement & “why doesn’t she leave?”

Did you know there’s a reason our brain becomes addicted to abusive relationships? 

First, let’s remember that no abusive relationship starts off as abusive. It’s wrong to assume that victims are naïve or foolish. Every abusive relationship begins with love bombing—a phase that can last for months. During that time, it feels like complete happiness and deep emotional fulfilment. An incredible, almost heavenly connection, and the sense that “finally, I found my person.” The future abuser presents themselves as the Ideal, the one you’ve been waiting for your whole life.

When the abuse starts, it begins as psychological violence (and in most cases, it stays there, though psychological abuse rarely makes headlines). It’s subtle at first. It’s a test. And almost without realizing it, the victim goes from experiencing an unexpected burst of criticism, rage, or contempt, back into a phase of affection and balance. It feels like a small hiccup in an otherwise perfect relationship; nothing to worry about.

That was the first time. And the first times are spaced out. They don’t happen often enough to form a recognizable pattern. The abuser doesn’t suddenly turn into a monster, and they don’t stay a monster all the time. The shift is gradual. And in between, at random intervals, they become again the person you fell in love with.

This is a manipulation tactic known as intermittent reinforcement.

 It’s why victims stay in abusive relationships, whether the abuse is physical or “just” psychological. The periods of abuse are surrounded by moments of deep affection, closeness, and care. At first, this causes confusion. But over time, it makes the victim want to try harder, working tirelessly to follow the abuser’s rules or behavior in hopes of receiving that “reward” again.

 Intermittent reinforcement traps the victim in a constant cycle of seeking the abuser’s approval and praise, settling for crumbs of occasional positive behavior, desperately hoping that the abuser will return to the honeymoon phase of the relationship. Like a gambler at a slot machine, victims get hooked, continuing to play the game despite devastating losses.

And the gambling analogy isn’t just metaphorical, it’s psychological. There have been animal studies using slot machine-like setups: at first, treats were dispensed consistently, then they stopped, or started coming at random intervals. In the first case, animals (and humans) eventually stop trying. But in the second, where the reward is unpredictable, addiction forms. After a while, you don’t know if you’ll win, and the odds are low, but the anticipation itself becomes addictive.

In abusive relationships, the “reward” is when the abuser says sorry, shows remorse, or acts kindly. That intermittent kindness is what makes abusive relationships so hard to leave.

When rewards are predictable, our brain produces less and less dopamine each time. It loses its high. But uncertainty? That hooks the brain. It fuels the trauma bond, an emotional attachment formed through cycles of abuse.

What’s worse: the victim starts to intensely value even small acts of kindness from the abuser. In threatening or survival-mode situations, we become hyper-attuned to signs of hope, and we see them as evidence that things might get better. So when an abuser gives a birthday card, flowers, or a gift after harming their partner, it feels like proof that they’re “not all bad,” that maybe change is possible.

Eventually, the victim finds themselves admiring the abuser and feeling relieved or even grateful when abuse doesn’t happen in a situation where they’d usually expect it.

Intermittent reinforcement keeps hope alive. The hope that the person who’s hurting you might become who they were at the beginning. And unfortunately, hope dies last.

That’s why we need to recognize not only the signs of abuse, but also the signs within ourselves. These should be our compass, because abuse isn’t always obvious.

If you constantly feel anxious or fearful about how they’ll react, if you feel blamed or guilt-tripped over things that aren’t your fault, if you experience brief moments of relief where you think “I wish he’d always be like this,” but it never lasts, then you know what’s happening. The sign is you.

 

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