Love Bombing and Grooming in Cluster B Personality Disorders

Sam Vaknin

Visiting Professor of Psychology, Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, Russia and Professor of Finance and Psychology in CIAPS, Nigeria

*Correspondence to: Dr. Sam Vaknin, Visiting Professor of Psychology, Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, Russia and Professor of Finance and Psychology in CIAPS, Nigeria.

Copyright © 2020 Dr. Sam Vaknin. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Paper

Love bombing has four functions:

1. To signal the intensity and persistence of the interlocutor’s or correspondent’s ostensible emotions and to chart and document the growing, all-pervasive attachment.
2. Virtue signaling: to convey the purity and authenticity as well as the good intentions of the love bomber.
3. Gaslighting: to engender, foster, and impose on the target an immersive virtual reality bubble within which a cult-like shared fantasy or shared psychosis is established and takes hold.
4. To induce the target to enter the hall of mirrors where she is idealized and becomes infatuated with her rendition, an addictive experience which results in operant conditioning. It grants the love bomber with the power to withhold access to his contraption as a way to modify the target’s behaviors (intermittent reinforcement).

The grooming or love bombing of a sexual sadist differs to that of the narcissist or psychopath. It is intended to achieve 6 goals:

1. Establish mastery, a power hierarchy, and an external locus of control
2. Mold the woman into a mindless and obedient whore
3. Overcome the woman’s natural revulsion and anxiety by habituating her and coopting or hijacking her fantasy life
4. Expose the woman to brainwashing messaging and signaling
5. Push the woman to dismantle her boundaries, abrogate her values and morals, and violate her own rules of conduct
6. Isolate the woman from her family and social network.

Put together, these create a shared psychotic space within which the shared fantasy thrives on false promises and make believe role play. Whenever the woman tries to exit this common territory, she is punished with sadistic sex, egregious abuse, withholding, or rejection.

Finally, the only way open to her is to resort to another man with whom she can create an alternative sanctuary, however fantastic and brief. She cheats and the shared fantasy is irrevocably undermined as mortification sets in and the woman is now perceived as a threat to be shunned at all costs.

The narcissist divides all women into homemakers, promiscuous, and promiscuous-glamorous.

When cheated on or abandoned, he experiences mortification only with homemakers. He then transforms external mortification into an internal one: they are not like that or to blame for their misconduct, it is my fault, my abuse and withholding pushed them to the limit. He overlooks any facts to the contrary, including the partner’s past promiscuity and a pattern of betrayal and sexual and emotional licentiousness.

With promiscuous-glamorous (beautiful, entrepreneurial, autonomous), the narcissist experiences both retroactive and reactive romantic jealousy. “Owning” this kind of partner - who could have chosen any man - upholds the narcissist’s grandiosity (uniqueness, irresistibility) and sense of virility. Losing her challenges both.

With promiscuous only partners, the narcissist feels nothing and experiences no reaction: cheating is both expected and accepted as way out of the fun and fuck shallow relationship he has with this kind of partners.

The worst, most egregious, hurtful and dangerous type of narcissist - really, of any person - is also antisocial (psychopathic) and sadistic. He is the sad and corrupted outcome of intermittent reinforcement in early childhood which resulted in a shattering and never resolved narcissistic mortification.

Such narcissists were first idolized, placed on a pedestal, pampered, and cosseted, admired, exhibited, they could do no wrong, they were perfection reified. Then, abruptly, they were cast aside, shunned, discarded, mocked, nightmarishly abused in every which manner, sadistically criticized, and ostentatiously hated.

These narcissists will stop at nothing to recapture this garden of Eden ideal state. In women, they look for an idealizing mother - or, failing that, they try to “fix” the intimate partner coercively. They generate a shared fantasy space into which they shoehorn all others, from business partners and colleagues to romantic partners and neighbors. Any attempt to exit the space or challenge it leads to extreme aggression and a replay of the original narcissistic mortification.

What determines whether the narcissist experiences narcissistic mortification or mere searing romantic jealousy when his partner misbehaves with other men?

Reminder: mortification occurs when the rejection is total, abrupt, ostentatious, and when the narcissist needs his partner the most. It is a stark reminder of his power for self-delusion and gullibility. Romantic jealousy is a normal reaction to the anticipated loss of the partner.

The sexual sadist fantasizes not about sex but about humiliating, trashing, & degrading the woman. Conventional sex leads him ultimately to boredom & ED.

Only women of types (1) & (2) would acquiesce & cater to sadistic needs:

1. Women who are submissive & already deeply in love or irresistibly infatuated with the man. These women require grooming to be brought to this stage.
2. Promiscuous masochists in sex clubs & private networks. It takes a lot of effort to find them & there are huge risks involved, medical & personal.
3. Women in casual sex would never agree to realise the sadist’s sexual fantasies. They also demand equipotence (negotiated power symmetry).

So, sadists avoid one night stands as they are likely to be unfulfilling & merely provoke performance anxiety. They also invariably end up in a narcissistic injury (rejection or humiliation).

Sexual sadists with a weak sex drive, opt for massive sublimation (converting the sexual energy into nonsexual, socially acceptable activities) and only intermittently go for alternative [1].

The problem is that (1) requires an intimate committed relationship which most sadists are not willing to embark on. They are looking merely for an admirer, playmate, & lover (shared fantasy), a toy to dismantle - not for a wife or to become a father. Many sadists deceive their women & make false promises to the contrary in order to secure the 3 Ss (sex, supply, & services). At times, they go as far as marrying a woman so as to secure her cooperation.

So, even when the sadist does find (1), the women - angry & disappointed - end up cheating on him. This leads to harrowing mortification time & again. The prize (shared fantasy) ain’t worth the price (grooming+mortification). This is why most sadists go through inordinately long stretches of celibacy.

People with atypical sexuality often give up on sex altogether in order to not hurt the innocent (lonely, fragile, broken women; children) &/or because finding a partner requires excessive investment of resources &/or because the sex is likely to result in psychologically or physically dangerous and bad outcomes to themselves &/or to others.

Like every narcissist, my only goal is narcissistic supply. But as a hybrid antisocial narcissist & sadist, my exclusive form of supply is sadistic: it is to embarrass, humiliate, degrade, & undermine people (especially women).

My sadism is grandiose: that I possess the power to so badly damage my devastated interlocutors & intimate partners proves me omnipotent & it elates me, like a rush or a high. It is the confluence of fantastic personal inflation buttressed by the visible impacts of my unmitigated, relentless, and callous cruelty.

I obtain sadistic supply with my aggressive ostentatious & public defiance of everything my targets or victims hold sacred, their conventions, plans, & hopes.

I first collude with their fantasies & dreams, acting the perfect accomplice & mate. But then I destroy everything we have built together with cold indifference & glee, methodically, as though exclaiming: “You can never take me for granted for I am a force of Nature & I will punish & ruin you for daring to humanize me, for being so blind that you fail to grasp my divine superiority in every way. I do not need you or anything you have to offer & I will prove it by discarding you offhandedly.” I harp on people’s insecurities, vulnerabilities, & weaknesses mercilessly & push them to the limits of decompensation, disintegration & acting out.

All other forms of narcissistic supply & psychopathic goals (admiration, recognition, sex, money, power) are secondary & subordinate to my sadistic needs. I often sacrifice them in order to obtain the gratification of watching my prey unravel as I inflict pain & suffering on them, frustrate them, & counter their happiness and joy - often in public.

An example: I will give up having sex with a woman if I can instead frustrate, reject, humiliate, & hurt her with my reluctance or refusal to respond to her signals, cues, & advances. Her evident pain is a far greater aphrodisiac & supply than anything sex with her can yield.

Similarly, I will forgo or sabotage great opportunities & rewards just so as to hurt & frustrate the hopes & expectations of others [1-27].

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