Seeking Shelter

Dearest Rachel –

I’m not sure if you were ever acquainted with the phrase ‘love bombing’; it’s a term I’ve encountered more and more as time goes on, and our time together gets further away, ironically enough. I’m not sure if it’s one of the latest buzzwords in pop psychology, or if it’s just something I simply haven’t had to be aware of until now, as I had plenty of water to drink from my own cistern, as the proverb puts it.

Once it’s explained and described, though, you’ll probably recognize the concept, even if you’d agree that we didn’t engage in it on each other. Essentially, it involves overloading the ‘target,’ if you’ll excuse my extending the metaphor, with various forms of affection. Whatever the love language, it’s spoken to them, voluminously and incessantly. The objective is to make them fall for you through overwhelming force, whether in the form of attention, affirmation, adoration or what have you. Endless text messages, presents, hands-on affection; the whole nine yards. Once the target has been seized, all of this lets up; in part because such a barrage is exhausting to maintain, but also often because the objective was in the capture, not the maintenance, of the relationship. Suddenly, all that affection dries up, and the target (victim?) realizes they’ve been had – but at that point, it’s too late to back out.

As I understand it, this is fairly standard operating procedure for various cults – and has been since long before there was a term for it, and long before we were alive – but of course, it also works on a one-on-one basis as well. It’s why, when dating, people are on their best behavior with each other, only to revert to their real selves once “I do”s have been exchanged. It’s the source of countless dialogues between spouses; “you’re not the same person you were when we were dating/we got married,” because they literally aren’t.

Of course, everyone changes over time; we grow older and more infirm (as a general rule; I’d actually like to think I’ve been rather reversing that trend within myself, but it’s not necessarily been the easiest or most pleasant journey, as you’ve read). We learn new things, and our opinions change as facts are revealed to us. I know that I try to keep politics out of my letters, but I do wish I knew what you would have thought of the rapidly changing climate that I’ve been drifting around in since you left (not that your departure had much to do with those political winds, but we would discuss so much of us, either over a table or in bed together. I miss those days, and your insights, which weren’t always exactly like mine, but not as far off as men and women seem to be these days); would you and I still be on much the same wavelength as we were once upon a time, especially exposed as we would be to similar effects from similar circumstances?

But I’m getting off the topic I meant to tell you about. My point is that people put on faces and personalities in order to woo others; and then, once they’ve caught that person, the act drops. That’s how I understand the art of ‘love bombing,’ and why, when I sense it aimed at me, I find myself running for the shelters.

Again, with the two of us, that didn’t happen. We were friends first – and indeed, your first impression of me wasn’t such that you even saw friendship as a desirable thing – but from there, things grew into something deeper. We didn’t put on a false front for each other, as we’d already seen each other, not necessarily at our worst, but at less than our best. We didn’t have to put on airs, and so we didn’t have to worry about dropping an act we hadn’t been effecting in the first place once we had each other as our closest and eternal (at least, so we thought) friend and lover.

This is a rather long introduction to my latest contact; the other day, I’d gotten a message on WhatsApp from someone who introduced herself as マイ (her actual name, but spelled in katakana so as to obscure it from searches; you can’t be too careful these days). According to her, I’d given her my number on the dating website I… well, ‘frequent’ would be overstating things by several orders of magnitude, but it is my go-to site for such things, and they have a habit of sending me a number of emails on a weekly basis that I tend to check out, if only to confirm that the person who sent me a like has been removed from the site for one reason or another, which is almost universally what happens.

In any event, she contacted me and, rather than simply ignoring her out of hand, I asked whether I knew her, which is where she insisted I’d given her my number. Which I might have, for all I know; I may have been less than careful about that when I first signed up and was being reached out to. If I did, I thought it would be inconsiderate to brush off someone I had reached out to at some point in the past, so I let the conversation continue – complete with an exchange of photos – over the next eight hours. She would not let up with questions for me and hints about herself, even when I was joined up by Daniel later in the evening.

Despite her own phone number having a Chicago area code, she claims to be from the L.A. suburbs… but she’s planning to come to the city at some point before the end of the year, possibly twice (although the first time might coincide with our trip to Israel, although I’m hesitant to let her know about that). She’s wanting me to show her about the city when she comes, at which point I informed her that, as a thoroughly suburban kid, I didn’t have much to do with the city; if she wants the whole Chicago experience, I wasn’t the person to talk to. “It’s okay,” she replied, “please take me to see the sights and taste the delicious food as much as possible.”

There’s a part of me that has trouble saying no to her request, especially given how much trouble I have trying to get the friends I have to do something like this with me. She sounds so friendly in these texts, too – and her picture is unquestionably cute, too, to the point where I question why she’s talking to the likes of me. But that’s where another, larger and more suspicious part of me rises up and insists that I’m being ‘love bombed,’ sweet-talked into agreeing to this; if I’m not careful, what will she ask of me next? And will I give in?

I’ve mentioned before that if I’m suspicious of everyone, I’ll end up like the dwarves who “refuse to be taken in”; where I can’t allow myself to enjoy even the slightest possibility of a romantic connection, because I’m assuming there are ulterior motives behind this contact. At the same time, there’s a sense of this being “too good to be true,” where if something looks like that, it probably is. I don’t like to always have to assume the worst, but this is the world we’re stuck living in, honey.

Meanwhile, there’s the fact that I’m guilty of the same type of behavior. I still keep in touch with “Lee” every day or two (or three), just to let her know I’m still there and interested (or at the very least, I ought to take her out on my own at some point, as she did for me), even though I’ve essentially concluded that the distance between the two of us makes sustaining a relationship difficult, if not impossible. How much more so would マイ and I be, given that we’re more than half a continent away from each other? I really should run from this, and seek shelter, but I find myself more curious than I have a right to be.

In which case, I should probably just ask you to keep an eye on me, and wish me luck, one way or another, as I’m likely to need it either way.