Love-bombing is one of the most disorienting experiences a person can have in a romantic relationship. In the moment it feels like the opposite of abuse. The intensity of the attention and the seemingly perfect compatibility are emotionally intoxicating. It feels like being seen, heard, understood, and chosen – all at once. In my coaching practice, working with survivors of…
Intimate Partner Terrorism
Intimate partner terrorism is a term used in the domestic violence literature to describe a systematic pattern of coercive control in romantic relationships — one that goes beyond episodic conflict to encompass the deliberate, ongoing use of psychological, emotional, financial, and physical tactics to establish and maintain dominance over a partner. It is distinct from situational couple violence, which arises from specific conflicts and is not part of a broader control pattern. Love bombing is the entry point of intimate partner terrorism — the idealization phase through which the perpetrator disarms the target’s defenses before deploying the full range of control tactics. Hayes and Jeffries’s romantic terrorism framework situates love bombing explicitly within this broader pattern of intimate partner coercion.
Firearms kill Black women at rates no other weapon approaches. Nearly three out of four Black female femicide victims die by gunshot. That proportion has climbed 47% since 2011. Guns do not cause femicide. But they determine who survives it.