Storytime: How Therapy & My Toxic Sibling Prepared Me For My Encounter With a Love Bombing #Narcissist

Calling people a narcissist is all fun and games until you really encounter one. I would scoff at people who threw around the words narcissist and toxic. I always said, “Everyone is not a narcissist. Some people are just assholes.” I am not going to “google diagnose” folks. However, I recently extricated myself from a situation with a person who fit the pattern. I read a list of traits of a person that had NPD or Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The person I was involved with had most of those personality traits. I admit that I am not a doctor, and I Googled their behavior. So I can’t say with 100% certainty that they were a Narcissist. However, I do know I’m not about that life, meaning Byyyyeeeee.

OK Storytime:

As you all know, I went to therapy for fifteen months. Those sessions allowed me to unravel most of the things hindering me through life. It honestly helped me get free. A part of those sessions involved me exploring expanding my pool of people in which to date. At one time, my options for dating were limited. After working through these sessions about relationships, I decided to dip my toe in the dating pond after being happily single and not looking for a while.

As therapy was winding down last year, my therapist suggested I think about dipping my toe in the dating pond. So, I ventured on to the dating sites. I’d had good luck in the past with them. So, I thought, what the heck, I’ll try my hand at this once more. I made profiles on three different dating sites. Sidenote: There’s DOOKIE in the dating pond. ANY.WHO.

So, after a few months, I got an email about new folks who had just signed up on one of the dating sites. After months, I found a person that piqued my interest. Attractive in a quirky sort of way, as I like. I said hell yeah multiple times before, saying yes on the site. They responded YES too.

We talked on the platform, then moved quickly to chatting off the platform. I am always cautious online. So, I always use a burner number instead of providing my primary telephone number. Well, we chatted and then moved to video. I thought it was so cool that I’d met myself a real deal Covid Bae.

We talked, laughed, and had so much fun talking by phone and video chat. All while Covid was raging around us, we were getting to know one another, or so I thought. We talked about life and meeting in person after we were vaccinated. We also talked about things we wanted to do and places we wanted to see when Covid died down.

We got vaccinated and then planned to meet. We lived three hours apart. So we met halfway between our towns. It was a great meeting. However, in retrospect, I’m sure I missed a lot of red flags leading up to this point. We continued to talk and video chat. We also talked about doing things together in the summer. They called a LOT. They video chatted a LOT. These are some red flags that I didn’t realize were red flags until recently.

It was lovely until it wasn’t. It’s all fun and games until your getting “LOVE BOMBED.” That was happening without me knowing that LOVE BOMBING was actually A THING.

Love bombing is when a narcissist literally bombards you with overwhelming compliments, attention, gifts, and more.

• They never met anyone like you.
• They are very connected to you.
• They love how you treat them.
• They want to build a future with you. 
• They LOVE you.

While this was happening, I was thinking um, ok. I just thought they were overly enthused. The gift-giving didn’t phase me much because I have never been bowled over by gifts or materialist things. I buy my shit as I need it all year long. I’m just saying. ANY WHO. I just figured they were enthusiastic and happy they met a person to rock with during the darkest days of COVID. WELP, it’s all fun and games until your Covid Bae turns into a full-blown Narcissist.

I never thought I would ever benefit from growing up with my narcissistic sibling. I truly believe that experience helped me come away from this only a bit bruised instead of broken. Additionally, my 15 months of therapy helped. I was in such a good place that a lot of things flew right past me because I was so busy focusing on living life and enjoying being free from all the baggage that I unraveled in therapy.

It gets crazier. Stay tuned for Part 2 and Part 3 coming soon. In the meantime, I’ve posted some information about Narcissistic Personality Disorder below.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder – Cleveland Clinic

Narcissistic personality disorder – Mayo Clinic

The 13 Traits of a Narcissist – Psychology Today

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