this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
13 points (88.2% liked)

Mental Health

4680 readers
70 users here now

Welcome

This is a safe place to discuss, vent, support, and share information about mental health, illness, and wellness.

Thank you for being here. We appreciate who you are today. Please show respect and empathy when making or replying to posts.

If you need someone to talk to, @[email protected] has kindly given his signal username to talk to: TherapyGary13.12

Rules

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

  1. No promoting paid services/products.
  2. Be kind and civil. No bigotry/prejudice either.
  3. No victim blaming. Nor giving incredibly simplistic solutions (i.e. You have ADHD? Just focus easier.)
  4. No encouraging suicide, no matter what. This includes telling someone to commit homicide as "dragging them down with you".
  5. Suicide note posts will be removed, and you will be reached out to in private.
  6. If you would like advice, mention the country you are in. (We will not assume the US as the default.)

If BRIEF mention of these topics is an important part of your post, please flag your post as NSFW and include a (trigger warning: suicide, self-harm, death, etc.)in the title so that other readers who may feel triggered can avoid it. Please also include a trigger warning on all comments mentioning these topics in a post that was not already tagged as such.

Partner Communities

To partner with our community and be included here, you are free to message the current moderators or comment on our pinned post.

Becoming a Mod

Some moderators are mental health professionals and some are not. All are carefully selected by the moderation team and will be actively monitoring posts and comments. If you are interested in joining the team, you can send a message to @[email protected].

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

[–] NineBrowsing 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

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.