Love Bombing Happens in Friendships Too

Love Bombing, But Make It Platonic

We often talk about love bombing in the context of romantic relationships—the constant texting—the overwhelming attention from the get-go. The grand declarations charged with empty promises. The feeling that you have known someone your whole life after knowing them for only a few weeks.

Yeah… There is no doubt that we have all been there, unfortunately. But I don’t necessarily think we have thought about what happens when that person isn’t someone you are dating.

What happens when it is your friend? Ever thought about that? Yeah, I didn’t think this was a thing that happened in platonic friendships up until about two years ago.

So to set the scene here, about two years ago during my third year of undergrad, I was still struggling to find my collegiate community. After the past two years of transferring universities, moving halfway across the country to a new city, and school, I still hadn’t found my people. Through a mutual on Instagram, I came across this girl. For privacy reasons, we will call her Harper. Harper, for lack of a better word, was your good ol’fashioned party girl. She was reckless, captivating, and quite hedonistic.

One early fall afternoon in September, I agreed to a spontaneous coffee date with Harper. I had agreed to meet her at the metro station right after my final class on Foreign Policy. I was so stressed that I was going to make her wait. After texting her that I was at the bottom of the metro station, I received a message from her apologizing and saying that she hadn’t even left her apartment and she would be there in twenty minutes. (Should have been my first trigger warning).

A bit annoyed. I texted, “No worries,” and that I was waiting for her. When she finally arrived, I sat next to her, and the first thing I noticed about her was that even though she was extremely tall with sharp features, she also seemed spontaneous. It took us an hour and a sketchy Uber ride to get to our destination. When we got there, we hit it off.

We talked, laughed, and studied. It seemed like I had made the perfect friend. We then decided to get some dinner, which then turned into dessert. When it came time to go home, she insisted that we take the metro.

By this time I was exhausted. I had been up since six am, and the last thing I wanted to do was to spend an hour and a half back on the metro. Her phone was practically dead; mine was hovering around 13%. As she continued to tell me how fun it would be, I obliged and happily went along.

After that, out of nowhere, she had become my best friend, and we did everything together. We would go out almost every weekend, go to uber expensive, out-of-this-world restaurants to have ‘girl-dinners’, but most importantly, I started to feel like I was finding my community after years of searching for it.

And sure, there were major trigger warnings that I happily ignored. The random 90+ missed calls on a Saturday night when she forgot her wallet in my apartment, and got annoyed that I fell asleep—always getting into a drama with someone. The list could go on and on.

Looking back, those six months were pure bliss. Until well…it wasn’t. I remember our falling out. I remember our falling out; looking back, it was ridiculous that it was even a thing, but it happened. In a moment, I was iced out of the friend group that I had helped build; it was terrible.

For anyone who has gone through a friendship breakup, it is really different from a romantic one. It just sucks. It is a terrible feeling.

The next few months felt incredibly isolating to me. I felt stuck. I went from going out every weekend to hardly leaving my apartment. It was so bad that I even dyed my hair for some reason jet black (iykyk), and my natural hair color isn’t even black.

Everyone had seemed to have moved on but me. In a span of a minute, I had gone from eight friends to one.

And looking back, this is where I finally understood something: I had been loved bombed.

Not in the traditional romantic sense. There were no grand declarations of love or promises of marriage. No flowers were showing up at my door with a card reading that I was someone’s soulmate.

But there was an intensity to the relationship.

An almost immediate closeness that made me feel like I had known this person forever.

Within weeks, Harper had become one of the most important people in my life. We were constantly together. We talked all the time. We made plans around each other. I was introduced to her world, and she became deeply embedded in mine.

And because I had spent the previous two years desperately trying to find my people, that intensity felt incredibly validating.

It felt like someone had finally chosen me. That is what I think makes friendship love bombing so complicated.

Sometimes it doesn’t look like manipulation. Sometimes it looks like friendship. It looks like someone wanting to see you every day.

It looks like spontaneous plans, endless conversations, inside jokes, late nights, and being told that you are different from everyone else.

It looks like finally finding the person you can text at any hour of the day.

And when you have been lonely, or searching for a community, that kind of attention can feel almost intoxicating.

You don’t stop to ask whether the relationship is developing too quickly. You are just grateful that it is happening at all. Looking back, I think I confused intensity with intimacy.

I thought because we became so close so quickly, the friendship must have been incredibly deep. But those aren’t necessarily the same thing.

Someone can make you feel incredibly important without actually being capable of maintaining a healthy, long-term friendship with you. And sometimes, the very intensity that makes a friendship feel so special in the beginning is what makes the ending feel so devastating.

Because when the attention disappears, you don’t just lose a friend. You lose the version of yourself that existed when you felt so wanted by them.

That was the part I wasn’t prepared for.

I knew friendships could end. Of course I did.

What I wasn’t prepared for was how quickly someone could go from making you feel like their favorite person in the world to making you feel like you barely existed.

And perhaps that is the part of friendship love bombing we don’t talk about enough.

The beginning can feel so big that when it ends, you are left wondering whether you imagined the whole thing.

And that is what makes my story a cautionary tale.

I don’t think Harper intentionally love bombed me. I think I was simply susceptible to it. I was lonely, searching for my people, and suddenly someone wanted me around constantly. Of course I embraced it.

I ignored the warning signs because I was so grateful to finally feel like I belonged.

Looking back, I confused intensity with intimacy. I thought becoming inseparable so quickly meant we had built something deep. But real friendship takes time.

Sometimes, the people who make you feel the most wanted aren’t necessarily the people who are meant to stay.

And sometimes, losing them is for the better.