Love Bombing, Idealisation, and the Emotional High–Crash Cycle

“Love bombing” is a term now widely used to describe a pattern of overwhelming affection, attention, admiration, and emotional intensity early in a relationship. While the phrase itself is often used casually online, psychology and relationship research do recognise patterns of manipulative idealisation and devaluation that can occur in unhealthy or coercive dynamics. In the… Read More Love Bombing, Idealisation, and the Emotional High–Crash Cycle

Situational Predators and Opportunists: When Vulnerability Attracts Exploitation

People who deliberately exploit vulnerability in others do exist, and psychology research does recognise patterns sometimes associated with grooming, coercive control, manipulation, fraud, or exploitative relationship behaviour. A more balanced and accurate way to describe it would be: Periods of major life change can leave people emotionally vulnerable. Divorce.Bereavement.Financial instability.Loneliness.Illness.Relocation.Emotional exhaustion after long-term stress or… Read More Situational Predators and Opportunists: When Vulnerability Attracts Exploitation

Reinventing Yourself

The Garage Full of Fishing Rods Nearly two years. Nearly two years of waiting for someone to collect the life they left behind. The cupboards.The drawers.The forgotten paperwork.The random cables nobody understands.The clothes still hanging exactly where they were abandoned.And, of course, the garage. Ah yes… the garage. A shrine to fishing. Enough rods, reels,… Read More Reinventing Yourself

“Don’t Discuss Our Relationship with Anyone” — A Serious Red Flag

One of the most dangerous things that can happen inside an unhealthy or abusive relationship is silence. Not peace.Not privacy. Silence. The kind of silence created when one person slowly conditions the other to: stop talking stop confiding in friends stop sharing concerns stop questioning behaviour and stop trusting their own instincts If you are… Read More “Don’t Discuss Our Relationship with Anyone” — A Serious Red Flag

Protection Doesn’t End After Divorce — It Continues for Your Safety

One of the biggest misconceptions people have about abusive or coercive relationships is that once the relationship ends, the danger automatically disappears. Unfortunately, psychology, neuroscience, and real-life experience often tell a very different story. For many people, separation and divorce are not the end of emotional pressure, intimidation, control, or fear. In fact, research consistently… Read More Protection Doesn’t End After Divorce — It Continues for Your Safety

Good to Know the Guardia Civil Will Still Be Protecting Me When I Move Home

There is a strange kind of relief that comes when you realise safety does not end at the front door of one particular house. For a long time, “home” stopped feeling like a place of peace. It became somewhere filled with tension, uncertainty, hypervigilance, and the exhausting emotional mathematics of constantly assessing moods, reactions, and… Read More Good to Know the Guardia Civil Will Still Be Protecting Me When I Move Home

Everyone Comes Into Your Life for a Reason… I’m Just Still Waiting for the Memo on the Last 32 Years

Apparently, everyone who walks into your life has a purpose. A teacher.A lesson.A blessing.A catalyst for growth. Lovely theory. Very neat. Very spiritual. Now someone please explain the last 32 years, because I seem to have missed the PowerPoint presentation. For three decades I apparently completed an advanced course in: patience endurance emotional flexibility and… Read More Everyone Comes Into Your Life for a Reason… I’m Just Still Waiting for the Memo on the Last 32 Years

The Pros and Cons List That Went Wrong

Someone recently suggested I write a list of the pros and cons of my marriage. A healthy exercise, apparently.Balanced. Reflective. Therapeutic. So I sat down fully intending to be fair-minded and emotionally mature. I thought:“Come on, Linda. Thirty-two years. There must have been positives.” I made a cup of tea.Opened a notebook.Prepared myself for deep… Read More The Pros and Cons List That Went Wrong

When the Filing Cabinet Tells a Different Story

There are moments in life when the truth does not arrive dramatically. No shouting.No confession.No cinematic revelation. Sometimes it arrives quietly, hidden between old insurance papers, school reports, fading envelopes, and forgotten folders discovered while packing for a move. A filing cabinet can hold far more than paperwork.Sometimes it holds the dismantling of a carefully… Read More When the Filing Cabinet Tells a Different Story