There is a love bombing/undervaluing/ignoring cycle that a person with narcissistic personality adaptations always goes through, and this cycle is inevitable. Sometimes, we are not even present for the love bombing phase, but we are sure to experience the phase of being removed, ignored, and devalued.
What most people don’t understand or understand is that every part of the cycle is a seduction.
Let me explain.
Related: How To Know If You Were Raised By Truly Narcissistic Parents
Everyone realizes that the love bombing phase is a temptation. For most of us, this stage seems amazing.
But here’s an important note: The first part of this seduction is the part where we agree to become their property. It is the stage where they begin to own us and where we begin to agree to it. Because that’s what they do. They tempt us to be something, something.
In the love bombing stage, we are idealists! There is nothing bad or wrong with us. We are super. We feel seen (we’re not). We feel superior and exceptional. They tell us how wonderful we are. They are after us. They want us. They can’t live without us. We are the perfect person, the special person, the dear person, the person with magical powers.
None of this is real, but this part of the seduction sounds so good that we don’t care that we’re being seduced with ownership. Because after all, who wants to be just a regular old person? Being a cherished and prized possession is relatively cool. The truth is, we want epic! We were conditioned to do so.
We want romance, gurus, shamans, and personality cults to help us feel special, bring us into the IN group, and make us feel like we belong. In exchange for all this, we allow them to turn us into their prized possessions.
But all things lose their value, so what comes next is a foregone conclusion.
The secondary reduction stage is when everything starts to turn pear-shaped. The gaslighting and madness-making begin in earnest at this point.
We think it’s different from the love bombing phase — which means the seduction is over — but manipulating us into continuing to be their target is still in play. They are doubling. Since the importance and value of an object depend on the person who owns the object, this stage of devaluation is crucial.
The temptation at this point seems like they are starting to convince us how insignificant we are now. How disappointed we have become for them.
The person who once “loved” us suddenly begins to treat us with disdain and contempt; They started humiliating us. All the excellence they once gave us is now withheld and used to punish us for being flawed. Since objects are not supposed to have feelings, they become disturbed when we have feelings about their behavior.
They were never interested in knowing who we were. They were only interested in the part of us that served them and their ego.
Related: 8 Signs You’re In Love With A Narcissist Who Specializes In Deep Emotional Abuse
The third predictable stage of the cycle — the final part of this three-part story — is the ignoring stage.
Toys are thrown away when the children have finished playing with them.
In the ignoring phase, they tempt us to leave on their terms. They don’t want us to mess around convincing others that something might be rotten in Denmark. They also, most likely, want to start the cycle with someone else, and having you around them is a hassle for them.
The most confusing and painful thing about this particular stage is that they want us to keep focusing on them while they devalue and ignore us. They want us nervous and wondering: “Why did they say X?” “What did they mean?” “Could I have said something different?” “Was that something you did?”, etc.
They want us to be obsessed and crazy about them. Because in this way the seduction is complete.
To reiterate, every part of this arc — this dance — is their attempt to turn us into their goal. Each piece aims to draw us into their deeply fractured black-and-white reality. Each act in this drama is an invitation to play our part and be punished for the sins inflicted on them by someone else.
No part of this is love. Every aspect of it is aggression. Even during the stage of feeling pleasure and love bombing. Because treating anyone as less than human is in itself an act of aggression.
Seduction was never about love. Temptation was never about sex. Manipulation was never about staying in a relationship. All seduction has always been about turning us into an object.
The issue is, and will always remain, that we agree, at every stage, to dance and participate. The problem is that we are willing, over and over again, to be turned into something they can play with.
