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How Romance Scammers Use ‘Love Bombing’ to Steal Your Heart (and, often, Money)

Extreme adoration at the start of a relationship, often followed by periods of withdrawal, is a tactic to lower victims' defenses

7-minute read

Part of Series: Romance Scams

Ken Budd,

AARP

Reviewed by

Kathy Stokes, AARP Fraud Watch Network

En español

Published April 23, 2025

Sarah Rogers (Getty images 3)

Key takeaways

Love bombing is a tactic used by romance scammers, who flood potential victims with intense early affection to quickly build trust and emotional closeness.
Sometimes scammers will shift from attention to criticism or silence to create anxiety and dependence.
Be wary of a prospective partner who overshares (to get you to do the same) and moves unusually aggressively to advance the relationship.

Anna Rowe’s new boyfriend, Antony, was flooding her phone with messages. She had met him three months earlier on a dating app, and as he learned more about her — including that she had low self-esteem — he capitalized on this knowledge, calling and texting constantly to say that he loved her, that she was special, and that she was unlike anyone he’d ever met.

Rowe, 52, a teacher in Canterbury, England, was the target of love bombing: overly affectionate behavior, usually at the start of a romance,, where someone overwhelms the other with excessive or abnormally effusive displays of adoration and attention. Tactics can include extreme flattery, oversharing feelings, showering a victim with gifts, and suggesting future plans. And all of it occurs way too early in the relationship. But for someone like Rowe, who felt “a need to be needed,” the attention was intoxicating.

“It was like nothing that I had ever experienced,” Rowe tells AARP. “A lot of people wrongly think that love bombing is just sharing a few pet names, but it’s an all-consuming experience where you are bombarded with attention and affection, 24 hours a day. These people never let you out of their thoughts, and you’re made to feel like the most important person in their lives.”

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Antony, however, was a catfisher: A perpetrator who creates a false identity and then forms relationships with victims through dating apps, messaging apps, and social media. Catfishers might pretend to be a new love or a long-lost friend. Some use fraudulent information and images to create their false identities online.

In Rowe’s case, Antony used the photo of a Bollywood actor (though it looked like him) in the dating app. He tweaked his name and bio (his profile, for example, said he was a lawyer in the aviation industry, which was true, but he lied about where he worked). He also claimed to be divorced, but was married. Rowe has since found 16 other women who also entered into a fraudulent relationship with Antony — but local police suspect the number may be as high as 200.

Rowe ended the 14-month relationship in 2016. Since then, she has formed two nonprofits, Catch the Catfish and LoveSaid, to help people recover from romance scams. She says she assists as many as 100 people a week who are experiencing love bombing and catfishing, which are used in many romance scams.

The stages of love bombing

Love bombing doesn’t simply involve inundating victims with too-early soulmate declarations and expensive jewelry. It’s a multi-stage process.

Step 1: Information gathering. The scammer will start digging for information to manipulate you and understand vulnerabilities. Some may find love bombing off-putting, but others are drawn to the attention. That’s the scammer’s target. “They’ll test the waters and do it broadly until [they find] a hit,” says Kelly Campbell, a psychology professor at California State University, San Bernardino, who studies catfishing.

Step 2: Devaluing you. Losing that flood of attention is typically the next stage. After the onslaught of adoration, the scammers embrace what psychologists call “devaluing.” “The person may withhold love and affection, or become critical, or gaslight you,” says Rachel Noble, a licensed therapist who runs Noble Practice, a D.C.-based therapy and psychiatry group. “They may punish you and blame you for problems in the relationship.”

The scammer might even suddenly vanish. This ghosting can leave the victim feeling desperate, scared, and unworthy, giving the scammer psychological and emotional power. Rowe experienced this with Antony, who abruptly disappeared for a weekend. “After that intense attention and affection, where you’re never out of their thoughts, they will go quiet, and you panic that you’ve done something wrong to lose that incredible connection,” Noble says. “It knocks you back, and you think, ‘What did I do? What did I say?'”

Step 3: Control. When they return or become affectionate again, the scammer will likely assert more control over the victim, whose levels of anxiety and fear are now elevated. This process can go on for months or even years. Some scammers, like Rowe’s love bomber, are seeking not money, but sexual conquests.

But many are after cash, and will eventually say they need money to buy a plane ticket or to address a health problem, for instance. They may try to woo victims into bogus cryptocurrency investments. (In these cases, love bombing is part of a process known as financial grooming. Criminals refer to it as pig butchering.)

How to identify and avoid love bombers

Know their tactics. Before the love bombing starts, scammers often fish for information about their victims. But they don’t simply ask questions. “A lot of people think that catfishers only ask about you but don’t tell you anything about themselves. That’s not how it works,” Rowe says. “They often open up about themselves first because it gives you permission to open up about your background, too.” They may also seek to build what Rowe calls the trauma bond. You might both know someone who had cancer, for example. Scammers can exploit experiences they claim to share, so be careful about what you reveal initially to your new suitor and don’t overshare on social media.

Be wary of speed. For scammers, love bombing is about getting you invested in the relationship — fast. But that speed is also a warning sign. “When someone comes on that fast and that strong, it’s inherently inauthentic because they don’t know you,” Noble says. “You’re either dealing with a scammer or with someone who is mentally unstable. Either way, it’s a red flag.”

Understand love bombing’s power. Adoration and affection can “fire a whole neural network of pleasure receptors,” says Noble. And love bombing’s intensity can increase the intensity of the response. If the chemical response in a normal relationship is like the amount of caffeine in a latte, “being in a relationship with one of these individuals is like having a triple espresso,” Rowe says. “It’s intense and powerful to the point of being overwhelming.

Trust your gut. If you find yourself asking, “Is something off here? Is this all happening too fast?” your instincts are probably right. If something feels off, talk with a friend or family member, Rowe suggests. An outside perspective may reveal warning signs you hadn’t noticed.

Reporting scams

Report scams to local law enforcement and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at IC3.gov.

The AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline, 877-908-3360, is a free resource; call to speak with trained fraud specialists who provide support and guidance on what to do next and how to avoid scams in the future. The AARP Fraud Watch Network also offers free online group support sessions.

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The key takeaways were created with the assistance of generative AI. An AARP editor reviewed and refined the content for accuracy and clarity.

About the author

Ken Budd has written for National Geographic Traveler, The Atlantic, The Washington Post Magazine and many more. He is the author of a memoir, The Voluntourist.

About the reviewer

Kathy Stokes is the senior director of fraud prevention programs at the AARP Fraud Network.