By Mr. Newman
THE STORY:
Ms. Parker has a friend in Savannah whose romantic intentions are often unclear, especially when she is not in Savannah. Ambiguity is fine when you want to keep your options open. But as Ms. Parker said, “Ambiguity is annoying. Maybe when you’re younger it’s exciting. But I’m looking for clarity now.”
For many of the long-married members of the English department, Ms. Parker’s stories about the dating life are always interesting, and she is unfailingly cheerful and good-humored in delivering her updates, regardless of how painful or awkward those updates may be.
Fairly recently, when she was talking about Mr. Savannah, she said she thought he was love bombing her. I hadn’t heard the term. She described it as showing a lot of interest in someone and then suddenly withdrawing it.
After researching the term online (see results below), I had to ask Ms. Parker if Mr. Savannah met some of the more nefarious criteria of a love bomber, like being manipulative and abusive in offering and withholding affection. It turned out that she too had, in the interim, read some of the same online stories about love bombing that I had, and she now felt the term really didn’t apply. There didn’t seem to be any intentional manipulation or cruelty.
Ultimately, though she’s leaning towards wanting more clarity, Ms. Parker still doesn’t mind a little chaos. “I like having good stories in my life,” she said. “I like telling funny stories. So if these things didn’t happen, then what would I talk about?”
It also helps in her English classes when she needs a real-world example. Right now, she’s teaching Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. In a recent class, they considered: “Does Orsino really love Olivia? Or is the idea of love what he’s really falling for? Maybe it’s fun to have a crush to text or Snap, but are you really in love with that person? Probably not. But that’s not the point.”
As I thought more about the Mr. Savannah situation, it seemed like his behavior more closely fit within the parameters of the “three-month rule,” which I learned about when I got caught up in a lively conversation with a group of sophomores who’d taken over the seating area in the front office and were eager to tutor me in the term.
First, Pearl (name changed) recounted an epic tale that began when a guy she met outside of a Halloween party asked her for her phone number. They went back into the party, stayed for awhile, and then “the next day he texts me and is trying to make plans to hang out. That Friday we, my other friend and I, go over to his house. We hang out for a while, and then about two weeks later, same thing. And then two weeks later after that the same thing. We’re texting in between calling, seeing each other in person sometimes.”
I interjected, “There’s sparks?”
“Um-hmm,” she said, and then continued with her account of hangouts, parties, and regular texting. Right around three months, which was about a week before this front-office conversation, she said things began to change. “We’re not done or anything,” she said, “but we’re communicating a lot less.”
At this point, I wondered aloud whether this was due to him pulling away, or was it more mutual. In other words, was this story really about two young people who discovered they just weren’t that into each other, regardless of the month?
“It’s not over yet,” she said, holding onto hope. “We’ll figure that out soon.”
“To be continued,” one of her friends said, and Pearl echoed, “To be continued. Because we’re almost at three months.”
I turned to Max (name changed) and said that it seemed like the girls were suggesting it’s generally the guy who pulls back after three months.
“It’s generally not the guy that does it. It’s really the girl,” Max said.
Sid (name changed) picked up the thread, noting that he had friends who called him while “we were on the game. They’re like, ‘She ghosted me.’ Personally, it never happened to me.” He felt it was wrong for a girl to make a guy put all this effort and hard work into making her interested.
Max said, “Amen,” before adding that maybe “after the two-month period hits girls just get boring at this point. So it’s really not our fault.” They seemed to be proving, unintentionally, that members of a couple have about an equal chance of losing interest.
Then the logic got even fuzzier.
“It’s really not our fault,” Max said. “Sometimes it’s a skills issue.”
“Yeah,” Sid agreed.
“Sometimes it comes down to the skill issue,” Max repeated and Sid again agreed.
But just when they seemed to be in sync with their ideas, Sid suggested, “DNA?” To which Max replied, “What are you talking about?” I wasn’t sure either. If I had to make a guess, the wisdom behind their rather cryptic observations is that sometimes things just aren’t meant to be.
So maybe there’s nothing magical about three months. Maybe it’s just the average amount of time it takes for a couple (or a member of a couple) to gather enough data to decide whether to continue the relationship and to know whether things are meant to be.
Also, was the placebo effect at work? Once ideas like the “three-month rule” proliferate, does that lead to self-fulfilling prophecies, where one member of a couple, ninety days in, might feel obligated to pull away or might become hyper-sensitive to the other’s signals and drive the other away unintentionally? Or perhaps sometimes it’s just DNA or a skills issue.
By the way, before my nearly thirty-year marriage, the longest relationship I had was with Sarah in twelfth grade. I pined for her for most of high school, we dated in the spring of my senior year, and after six lovely weeks, she unilaterally decided it was time for us to go back to being just friends. I haven’t run the numbers, but perhaps her dumping me after a month-and-a-half in 1990 would now translate to three months with inflation.
And if you’re wondering what the latest news is about Ms. Parker and Mr. Savannah, she said they’re still texting, things are not necessarily progressing, but he’s planning to visit in February. Regardless of what happens, “It’s just another chapter in my life that I enjoy writing,” she said.
THE RESEARCH:
It does seem to be about collecting those data points.
According to Ami Angelowicz, in her CNN.com column “The Frisky,” in a story titled “Dating? Be aware of the ‘3-month rule’”, ninety days is about the time it takes to navigate through your illusions, fantasies, and projections of the other person, and see them “for who they really are.” You learn “the stuff you need to know before you move forward.”
So while those philosophical sophomores in the front office may have been right that one person in a relationship could be stringing the other one along, or rudely ghosting them without warning, or communicating a lot less, it’s also possible that if one person is pulling back at three months, it just means the data pointed to the other person not being the one.
“Love Bombing,” on the other hand, is far more unambiguously problematic. In a March 2017 story in Psychology Today titled, “The Danger of Manipulative Love Bombing in a Relationship: Spot the warning signs of love bombing early and recover faster with these tips,” Dale Archer M.D. offers some key points:
1) Love bombing is “an attempt to influence another person with over-the-top displays of affection.”
2) Love bombers can “be experts at detecting low self-esteem and exploiting it.”
3) One of the most common love bombing manipulation techniques is “to build another person up as if they were an idealized object.”
Archer presents a composite case of a 30-year-old woman in a two-year relationship with a man who would alternate periods of intense affection with periods where he would be jealous and cruel.
If you think you’re being love-bombed, he recommends slowing things down and making sure the person’s words and actions are in sync. Then, if you’re sure you’ve been love-bombed, he recommends breaking off contact, reconnecting with loved ones, and reminding yourself that love-bombing is abuse.
Ironically, according to Archer the origin of the term love bombing goes back to the 1970s, when the Reverend Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church of the United States said the joy and smiles of church members witnessing to the community were like a love bomb.
But Archer also notes that cult leaders like Jim Jones, Charles Manson, and David Koresh “weaponized love bombing.” Given the term’s association with famous narcissistic sociopaths as well as with “pimps and gang leaders” trying “to encourage loyalty and obedience,” perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that you can find a link to Archer’s article on the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
Of course, if you’d prefer to get your information from a website whose current top story is “24 Cardigan Dresses That’ll Make Getting Dressed a Million Times Easier,” check out this story on Cosmopolitan.com: “Everything You Need to Know About Love Bombing and Why It’s So Dangerous”. To be fair to the magazine that promises on its “About Us” page to provide “fresh, funny, and fundamental intel on all the many things you truly want to know,” the article takes the issue very seriously.
But it turns out there might also be some answers to be found in Chaise Sanders’s “24 Cardigan Dresses” story. As she writes, “The older you get, the more you appreciate clothing that can 1) make you feel good and 2) make you look good. But even better? The clothes that can do both at once with zero effort.” Given how much effort it can take to figure out your love life, zero effort might be just what you’re looking for.
As always, your usage may vary.
