 Our relationship in the beginning was fun, exciting, we would go on little adventures all the time. Passionate, lots of heavy making out, making out in secret places that you're not supposed to be yet. It was romance and passion and constant compliments and promises of the future and everything that I ever wanted. By our fourth date, he told me that he loved me and that like he wanted me to be his wife. Time went by he kind of started being more distant but at the same time he didn't want to let go. I just I just felt the shift and and then it became to the point where you know it's been three weeks and we haven't seen each other. That change made me feel a mixture of angry, disbelief, shocked, mad at myself that I didn't trust my intuition because I knew it was all just feeling way too good to be true. If any of this sounds familiar to you then I'm making this video for you because today we're talking about love bombing. This video is sponsored by Squarespace. From websites and online stores to marketing tools and analytics, Squarespace is an all-in-one platform to build a fire online presence and run your online business. Squarespace is where Shan hosts and designs her websites including your personal site and thegameofdesire.com. Go to Squarespace.com slash Shanbooty to start playing around for free and when you're ready to launch go to Squarespace.com slash Shanbooty to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Hey there lovers and friends love bombing let's talk about it. Furthermore this is part of a broader conversation that I want to have on this channel about mind manipulation in relationships. How people can use psychological techniques to get people hooked into unhealthy and generally unhappy intimate connections. Now the thing with mind manipulation is that it's usually pretty predictable patterns and pretty predictable techniques that people are using which is why I want you to get better at spotting them so that one you can remove yourself or number two if you're guilty of it you can stop it because the problem with mind manipulation is that ultimately no one wins because the goal of relationships is not to get someone to like you the most or to like someone the most it's ultimately to like yourself and you can't do that if you're hurting others or if you're being hurt. So this is about cleaning the plate cleaning the palate and starting fresh with better connections for a better intimate future. Now what I think is fascinating is that we did this already when it comes to food. I feel like five to ten years ago when Netflix started to pop off we started to really examine the unhealthy ingredients in a lot of our everyday food that was creating unhealthy consumption habits and now that we know that we can make better choices at the grocery store and just avoid some aisles all together completely. I promise you have never eaten a Twinkie in like seven years and used to be my favorite food. So I want you guys to avoid Twinkie ass relationships and to be honest with you I think love bombing is the Twinkie of mind manipulation. It's the basic technique and one that a lot of us actually experience probably in high school. So to break it down in simple terms love bombing is when a connection starts off ablaze from the jump it's just time attention affection gifts physical touch all of the above and then slowly those things start to get taken away and before you know what you are grasping to get back this idyllic time when the two of you just seem to click but if you really analyzed it during that time that all of that clicking was happening the two of you didn't know each other and so that person wasn't responding to you they were one responding to an ideal or two trying to get you addicted because there's two kinds of love bombers the conscious one and the unconscious one. Now the conscious one understands the basic principle that I've said many times in this channel that nothing creates an addiction like an inconsistent reward and so much like a casino a conscious love bomber understands that it has to let you win in the beginning it has to get you intrigued with the lights and the flashing sirens and the fun and the sex of it all and then you're going to be chasing that feeling the rest of the time that you're in the casino and what they do is that they give you inconsistent wins and so with a love bomber it's not as if you know what when I give this person sex they'll treat me well which people often fall into that trap with a love bomber sometimes giving your body gets you positive reinforcement and sometimes it gets you nothing at all and that inconsistency is what actually causes the person to start over investing and that's where house deeds and pink slips start to get put up into the fold so I want to talk about how you can spot the red flags of this technique off the top how you can fix it if you recognize that the relationship is going in that direction and if you are a love bomber how you can stop being one but before we get to that point you got to know where you are in this storyline so I want you to take a quiz right now that I made on my square space website because I'm obsessed and so I have a bunch of quizzes on there love bombing is my brand new one so while I tell you more about square space and how it can empower your next greatest idea go to the game of desire dot com slash bomb and take the quiz for yourself all right so you all know square space has stunning templates so you can design your dream site but here's some things you might not know about simultaneous posting auto post your content to twitter facebook or tumblr traffic overview gain insights into the top traffic sources products device types browsers and operating systems basically square space gives you in-depth analytics so you know where to focus your marketing at subscriptions easily sell subscriptions to products and services on a weekly or monthly basis to generate recurring revenue and build customer loyalty email campaigns stand out in any inbox with square space email campaigns site management square space blog lets you manage blog comments and entries on the go I mean if you listen this far go check it out for yourself at square space dot com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch go to square space dot com slash hand booty to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain welcome back now that you finished the quiz you got one of four results either one you found out that your relationship is healthy and that's not my manipulation two you found out that love bombing is not the technique being used on you but something is not quite right and once again in future videos we're going to be dissecting different mind games and perhaps one of those will ring more true three you found out that you are or have been with a love bomber or four you found out that you are a love bomber and I want to really talk about first and foremost how do you spot the signs like how do you figure out before it's too late before you get into this addictive cycle that your relationship is along the patterns of love bombing and this is a hard one to do because it starts with you and your ego you got to really put things in perspective and check and say hang on a second I know I'm great but I'm not that great I think it's a little peculiar that this person is giving me all of this praise and affirmation when they really don't know me yet and yes their response is what I'm looking for the cause of this response I can't actually say is warranted and we already do this already when it comes to other things in life we recognize that people aren't just nice to us just because we're wonderful people for example if you go to the grocery store and they just give you a bunch of boxes of frozen shrimp for free what are you going to start asking yourself what's the expiry date on these shrimps we understand that true healthy intimacy is about mutuality it's about reciprocity and it's subject to logic it has to make sense and if it doesn't something isn't quite right so if you're experiencing a lot of positivity before you feel like you've truly earned it through time consistency trust and mutuality you got to be like we slow things down I'm not comfortable with this pace I'm not comfortable with all this attention let's get to know each other first before we start putting all these projections because to me I think it's going to feel so much better when I get all this positivity when I know through time and through earned effort it makes sense when we think about movies right we see love bombing a lot we see that instant connection that like classic Romeo and Juliet story but you have to keep in mind that a movie has a responsibility to wrap a plot up in an hour and 20 minutes hopefully you have a lot more time than that for your intimate bonds and so you can afford to slow things down so if you feel like you've tried to slow things down and set reasonable expectations with a love bomber but they're not playing fair meaning maybe in a conversation they'll say one thing but not follow up with that consistent action that's when you have to start looking at this as a bonus relationship you have to assess that this person has a lot more work to do on themselves than you are capable of doing and they may even be again in a state of delusion in a state of not understanding how this behavior is creating a tumultuous cycle that nobody wins in so a lot of parents actually do this a lot of parents who are not present have a love bombing relationship with their children they'll come into their life at unexpected times act like everything's okay bring a bunch of gifts say wonderful things only disappear and then again not show up for weeks years on n etc and the healthiest way to manage that relationship is to one cut it out altogether if you know you can't handle the inconsistency and the lack of predictability and that's creating so much more pain than it's worth it might just be uh i can't do this anymore with you i don't have fun i want off this ride on the flip side if you feel like you can accept that person for what they are which is a bonus if what they're offering as is can be enough for you once in a while i do think you can have a healthy relationship with a love bomber but once again just like somebody shouldn't rely on a casino to be their primary source of income you should not look to a love bomber to be your primary source of intimate connection and finally if you're watching this video and you did the quiz and you're like shish and i'm that love bomber i want to say to you you're never going to find happiness this way i know that maybe you saw someone do this and it worked really well or it's giving you the attention that you think you want in relationships but the end is never going to be worth the means you're going to spend so much more time arguing so much more time lying so much more time trying to manage people's erratic feelings because again when you get somebody in an addictive cycle they start having unpredictable behavior that comes with it so you have to really say maybe i'm getting the result that i want which is people's attention which is people's praise and positivity but the way that's coming is never going to feel good for me it is not the shortcut that you think it is and if you're a love bomber because you are projecting your ideals of romanticism on somebody and when they don't measure up you are pulling away as a punishment you're the problem you are the one who is creating or is the barrier to the kind of love that you're looking for it's not that this person isn't the right fit you're going to find yourself searching all over the world for the individual who's going to be able to maintain a connection the way that you are going about it so it has to start with working on you that's all guys say about that in future episodes i'm going to break down denis theory next and denis theory is an advanced form of love bombing it's a very particular one so if you found this video at all confusing the next one is going to break it all the way down we're also going to talk about emotional entrapment reductions gaslighting and once again the goal in mind is that you can start to recognize the unhealthy ingredients and some intimate connections and thus you can work around work with or run away from them that's all i want for you