Exploring the Concept of Love-bombing in Young Adult Filipino Lesbian Relationships

The study explores how young adult Filipino lesbians define, experience, and interpret the phenomenon of love-bombing in their romantic relationships. Addressing the scarcity of local scholarly work, the study employed a phenomenological design with ten purposively selected self-identified lesbian key informants, aged 18 to 27, from the Philippines. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, and data were analyzed using Colaizzi’s descriptive phenomenological approach, which yielded nine themes organized into three overarching domains. The first domain focused on the experience of love-bombing, highlighting patterns of romantic intensification, emotional dependence, and blurred relational boundaries. The second domain surfaced responses to the experience, including emotional distancing, boundary-setting, and personal growth. Key informants consistently contrasted love-bombing with traditional Filipino courtship, noting the lack of mutual consent, emotional clarity, and established boundaries in the former. The third domain addressed key informants’ meaning-making and realizations, which included delayed recognition of manipulation, internal conflict, and social validation. Findings suggest that love-bombing thrives in emotionally ambiguous spaces where intense affection masks coercion. The emotional impact is compounded by sociocultural factors such as limited queer visibility, religious conservatism, and lack of relationship models for LGBTQ+ individuals in the Philippines. The study emphasizes the need for culturally sensitive, queer-affirming frameworks for emotional abuse recognition and relational support. It also calls for further research into emotional manipulation within marginalized communities to inform both education and intervention efforts.