The Love Bombing Cycle: When You Think You’ve Found Your Soulmate
It feels like the deepest love you've ever known—until you find yourself doing almost anything to get that love back.
By Dr. Bindu Babu
In the beginning, it doesn't feel like love bombing.
It feels like you've met your soulmate.
The connection is almost instant. The conversations are deep. The chemistry is intense.
They seem to understand you in a way other people haven't.
They want to know everything about you.
They call. They text. They want to see you.
They shower you with attention, affection, compliments, and love.
You feel seen. Wanted. Chosen. Adored.
Maybe they tell you they've never felt this way before.
And maybe you haven't either.
There is this feeling of,
Where have you been all my life?
Somehow, this person already feels familiar. Safe. Like home.
It's almost as though you can feel them as a part of you.
You think about them when they're not there. You can't wait to hear their voice or see their name on your phone.
You begin imagining a future together because something inside you believes:
This is it.
This is the person I was meant to find.
And that's what makes what happens next so confusing.
Because when everything begins to change, you don't think:
Was I being love bombed?
You think:
What happened to the person I fell in love with?
What Is Love Bombing?
Love bombing is an intense amount of attention, affection, praise, communication, gifts, or promises that can create a powerful emotional connection very quickly.
But an intense beginning does not automatically mean someone is love bombing you. People can genuinely fall deeply in love, feel an immediate connection, and experience incredible chemistry.
What matters is what happens next.
When overwhelming affection is followed by withdrawal, criticism, control, manipulation, or emotional instability—and then the affection suddenly returns—you may find yourself caught in a love bombing cycle.
The love that once came so freely becomes the love you find yourself desperately trying to get back. And each time it returns, even briefly, hope returns with it.
That is what can make the cycle so difficult to recognize—and even harder to let go of.
When Everything Changes
Maybe it happens slowly.
The constant attention becomes less constant. The compliments become criticism. The affection becomes unpredictable.
The person who once couldn't get enough of you suddenly seems distant, irritated, or cold.
And because you know how loving this person can be, you start wondering what you did wrong.
Did I change?
Am I asking for too much?
How do I fix this?
So you try harder.
You become more patient. More understanding. More forgiving.
You watch what you say. You try not to upset them. You stop bringing certain things up. You give more and ask for less.
Maybe you forgive things you never imagined you would forgive.
Because underneath all of it is one desperate hope:
I just want us to go back to the way we were.
When Chasing the Beginning Starts to Feel Like an Addiction
Then, just when you're exhausted or beginning to pull away, something happens.
They come back.
The affection returns. The loving messages return. They hold you the way they used to. They look at you the way they did in the beginning.
And you think:
There you are.
The relief can be overwhelming.
For a moment, you have your person back.
And that can make the cycle feel almost addictive.
The painful periods leave you longing for the loving ones. And when the affection finally returns, the relief can make the connection feel even more powerful.
So you begin waiting for the next good moment.
Living for it.
Holding onto it.
And every time that loving person reappears, hope returns with them.
See? They're still in there.
Maybe this time it will last.
Maybe we're finally getting back to who we were.
So you stay.
You forgive.
You try again.
And when the love disappears, you work even harder to bring it back.
You begin doing almost anything to please your partner just to feel the way they made you feel in the beginning.
Without realizing it, the relationship can quietly change from being loved to trying to earn love.
The Love Bombing Cycle That Keeps You Holding On
The pattern may look something like this:
Intense love → withdrawal → confusion → trying harder → affection returns → relief → hope → repeat.
And this is why walking away can feel so difficult.
You're not only attached to the person standing in front of you.
You're attached to the person you remember.
The person who couldn't get enough of you.
The person who made you feel like the most important woman in the world.
The person who placed you on a pedestal, treated you like a queen, and made you believe you had finally found the love you had been waiting for.
So you're not only grieving the relationship as it is.
You're fighting for the relationship as it was.
And perhaps even more painfully, you're fighting for the future you believed the two of you were going to have.
That's why you may tolerate things you once thought you never would.
Not because you're weak.
Because somewhere inside you, you're still waiting for the beginning to come back.
But somewhere in all that waiting, forgiving, explaining, pleasing, and trying to get them back, you may not realize how much of yourself you're losing.
Healthy Love Doesn't Keep You Chasing It
Healthy love can be passionate.
It can be exciting.
It can feel extraordinary.
But healthy love also becomes something deeper with time:
Consistent.
You shouldn't have to constantly prove your worth to receive affection.
You shouldn't have to become quieter, easier, more forgiving, less emotional, or less yourself just to keep someone loving you.
And you shouldn't have to spend your relationship desperately trying to recreate its beginning.
Maybe the question is no longer:
How do I get the person I fell in love with back?
Maybe the questions become:
How do I feel in this relationship now?
Am I loved consistently—or am I constantly waiting for the love to return?
Am I becoming more myself—or am I slowly changing myself to keep this person?
And perhaps the hardest question:
Am I in love with who this person is today—or am I still chasing the person I met in the beginning?
Because there comes a point when you have to stop measuring a relationship by its most beautiful moments and begin looking at the pattern as a whole.
The beginning mattered.
The love you felt mattered.
Your feelings were real.
But so is what you are experiencing now.
And maybe healing begins when you stop asking what you need to do to get that love back—and start asking why love has begun requiring you to lose so much of yourself.
You deserve a love you don't have to keep chasing.
Dear Women
If you saw yourself somewhere in these words, Dear Women is my weekly letter about relationships, healing, self-worth, and finding our way back to ourselves.
One letter. Once a week. From me to you.
About Dr. Bindu Babu
Dr. Bindu Babu, MD, PhD is an author, speaker, and advocate for women's healing and empowerment. Her work focuses on helping women understand unhealthy and narcissistic relationship patterns, rebuild self-trust and self-worth, and reconnect with themselves after relationships that have left them questioning who they are.
Through her writing, Dear Women weekly letters, and private work, she explores relationships, emotional healing, self-love, consciousness, and the journey back to yourself.
Her message is simple: healing is not only about what happened to you—it is about who you choose to become next.
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