Love Bombing but Make It Catholic: Romance, Sacrament, and the Ethics of Going All-In
Tuesday, May 6, 2025. This is for Agnes.
When DTR Is Just a Pre-Confession
You’ve just started dating. He brings flowers to your work, memorizes your confirmation saint, and casually mentions he’s already spoken to his priest about you. You think, Is this love bombing or discernment?
Welcome to the rising meme: Love Bombing but Make It Catholic.
In its secular form, love bombing is a red flag—a manipulative flood of affection and attention to destabilize emotional boundaries (Sussman, 2011).
But in its Catholic remix, it's often mistaken for intentionality, even sanctity.
The iconography shifts from scented candles and trauma-bonding to rosary beads and rapid-fire marriage talk.
Discernment or Drive-By Courtship?
In Catholic culture, dating isn't recreational—it's vocational.
As Pope John Paul II famously said, “Love is never something ready made. It is always being created.” (John Paul II, 1997).
This ideal can lend itself to a kind of spiritual velocity that bypasses emotional pacing. In the right key, it sounds like devotion. In the wrong hands, it’s just fast-tracked codependency with a crucifix.
“I’ve prayed about you.”
Translation: I’m already assigning you to a spiritual identity you haven’t agreed to inhabit yet.
Love Bombing: The Clinical Core
In clinical psychology, love bombing is recognized as an early stage of narcissistic relational cycles—marked by excessive praise, grandiose promises, and rapid escalation (Campbell & Miller, 2011).
But religious love bombing often escapes scrutiny because it’s cloaked in moral language: God put you on my heart. I’ve been fasting for you. I feel called.
And because purity culture discourages prolonged ambiguity, couples may rush toward commitment under the guise of discernment, rather than actually getting to know each other.
The Liturgical Speed Run
Week 1: Theology of the Body texts exchanged.
Week 2: Discussing Natural Family Planning and spiritual warfare.
Week 3: Meeting with his priest “just to chat.”
Week 4: You’re a Pinterest board away from a sacrament.
This isn’t courtship. It’s clerical cosplay with emotional consequences.
What Catholic Love Bombing Obscures
Beneath the piety, there’s often anxiety—about sin, time, or failure. In communities where sex is off the table until marriage, relational pacing can warp.
Courtship becomes a pressure cooker of projection and idealization (Reynolds, 2017).
And for some, it’s not malicious—it’s a spiritualized anxious attachment style, where intensity is mistaken for holiness.
The Ethical Alternative: Reverent Pacing
In The Meaning of Marriage, Keller (2011) reminds us that commitment is not a mood but a moral promise.
Catholic dating can be deep, reverent, and sacramental—but it must also be real.
Real dating involves:
Uncertainty
Disagreement
Emotional regulation
Time
If God is in the details, then dating needs time to reveal the details, not skip them in favor of holy projection.
A Healthy Benediction
Love bombing—Catholic edition—is often just intensity without intimacy.
Holiness isn't found in speed. It's found in patience, which is, after all, a fruit of the Spirit.
So if he’s quoting Aquinas on the third date, take note.
If she’s inviting you to adoration and then asking for a ring size, slow down.
God’s will can handle a coffee date without wedding bells.
Discern love. Don’t detonate it.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Campbell, W. K., & Miller, J. D. (2011). The handbook of narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder: Theoretical approaches, empirical findings, and treatments. Wiley.
John Paul II. (1997). Letter to Families. Vatican Publishing House.
Keller, T. (2011). The meaning of marriage: Facing the complexities of commitment with the wisdom of God. Dutton.
Reynolds, J. (2017). Religious courtship, purity culture, and the pressure to marry young. Journal of Religion and Health, 56(2), 555–568.
Sussman, L. (2011). Love bombing and narcissism: Early warning signs in relationships. Journal of Emotional Abuse, 9(1), 1–14.