When Love Isn’t Love

It often begins beautifully: someone sweeps you off your feet with attention, gifts, and declarations that feel like the kind of love you always hoped for. You’re told you’re special, that this connection is rare, that they’ve never felt so connected to anyone before. The intensity feels flattering, even intoxicating. But slowly, it starts to feel off. The affection begins to feel more like control, and the love that once felt warm and fuzzy begins to set off alarm bells.

This is how psychological manipulation works. It hides in what looks like devotion, but it’s designed to confuse, control, and make you question your own sense of reality. Many survivors of domestic abuse, including myself, have experienced these tactics firsthand. They often appear as love-bombing, future-faking, and gaslighting — three powerful ways abusers secure control early in a relationship. Understanding them is the first step toward protecting yourself and others.

Affection as a Weapon

Love-bombing is the use of excessive affection and attention to influence and manipulate someone’s emotions. It often involves gifts, nearly constant calls or text messages, public declarations of love, and pressure to move the relationship forward faster than feels natural. It may look romantic on the surface, but the goal is control, not connection.

Love-bombing creates an imbalance. It floods the victim with affection until they feel emotionally dependent, making it easier for the abuser to shift into criticism or control later. Survivors often describe the same pattern: “She told me she knew she wanted to marry me after the first date.” or “He said he’d never loved anyone this way before.” These statements may sound sweet, but they are tools to create false intimacy.

In my own experience, it began subtly. What started as casual interactions quickly became constant contact. Stopping by my workplace unannounced with food and coffee, visiting my room in the barracks while on duty frequently, and expecting the same level of attention from me in return. Within a week, there were public declarations of love on social media and telling others we were soulmates. At first, I interpreted the intensity as genuine affection. But over time, it became overwhelming. When I attempted to set distance, the gestures only escalated: numerous gifts, long emotional messages, and pleas for me to stay in the relationship. I was young and didn’t recognize it for what it was. In hindsight, those early signs of “devotion” were red flags I missed.

When you recognize love-bombing, try grounding responses like:

• “I appreciate your thoughtfulness, but I need time to get to know you.”

• “I prefer to take things slow and build trust over time.”

• “This feels like a lot for me right now. Let’s pause and check in with how we both feel.”

Love that is real grows gradually. It respects boundaries and space. When someone insists that intensity equals love, it may be time to take a step back.

The Illusion of Forever

Future-faking happens when an abuser makes elaborate promises about the future to create emotional attachment in the present. They talk about marriage, travel, or starting a family before they truly know you. The promises are not about sincere commitment; they are designed to create a sense of security and dependency.

Future-faking is one of the most effective early tactics in coercive relationships because it bypasses logic and appeals to hope. It convinces the victim that they have found something extraordinary. Before they realize it, they have made commitments or sacrifices for a future that was never real.

On survivor shared, “He told me he wanted the same number of children that I did and suggested we come up with names for them as a fun date night activity. He gave me a promise ring after six months and told me it was a ‘promise to give [me] the marriage and family of [my] dreams. We barely knew each other yet our future together was set in stone.”

To disrupt future-faking, you can respond with:

• “That sounds nice, but let’s focus on where we are right now.”

• “I’d like to see consistent actions before we talk about big plans.”

• “Promises don’t mean much until they are lived out.”

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Healthy relationships are built through shared experiences, not future fantasies. If someone constantly paints a picture of a perfect life but avoids accountability in the present, they are using dreams as bait.

Rewriting Your Reality

Gaslighting involves denying, twisting, or distorting the truth to make the victim doubt their memory, perception, or sanity. Gaslighting often sounds like, “You’re overreacting,” “I never said that”, or “You’re remembering it wrong.”

For me, it looked like arguments where the facts would suddenly change. I’d recall specific events, only to be told they never happened. Over time, I began questioning my own judgment. I started apologizing for things I didn’t do, just to restore peace. This confusion is exactly what gaslighting is meant to achieve. Confusion disorients the victim, exhausting them, until they give up and rely on the abuser’s version of reality.

Gaslighting is often paired with trivialization, where the abuser minimizes your feelings or shifts blame to make you seem unreasonable or “too sensitive”. It can leave you feeling powerless and isolated.

Grounding responses to gaslighting include:

• “We remember that differently, and that’s okay.”

• “I know what I experienced.”

• “You don’t get to define how I feel.”

• “If we can’t agree on what happened, I’m stepping away from this conversation.”

The goal is not to convince them but to protect your truth. Gaslighting thrives in silence. Speaking your reality, even to yourself, breaks its hold.

The More You Know

Spotting manipulation for what it is can feel both painful and liberating. For many survivors, recognizing these behaviors have names is a turning point. Love-bombing, future-faking, and gaslighting all rely on confusion and self-doubt. Once you see them clearly, their power begins to fade.

In time, you learn that real love does not need to rush, promise, or prove itself. It grows slowly through honesty, respect, and consistency. Awareness gives you the ability to pause and self-reflect before manipulation takes root.

If any of these patterns feel familiar, know that you are not alone. These tactics can happen to anyone, regardless of gender or background. They do not mean you are weak. They mean someone took advantage of your empathy, trust and kindness. The more we talk about these dynamics openly, the harder it becomes for abusers to hide behind the mask of love.

You don’t deserve relationships that make you question your reality and self-worth. You deserve relationships that feel safe, steady, and true. Awareness won’t erase the past, but it can give you the power to choose differently in the future.