Quick answer
These notes do not define love bombing and do not contain a diagnostic manual entry for it. The CDC does define psychological aggression as communication meant to harm or to control. If you are in danger, call.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on a page reviewed August 19, 2026, describes psychological aggression as verbal and non-verbal communication with the intent to harm a partner mentally or emotionally or to exert control. These notes do not define love bombing. If you opened this page for a checklist under that name, the honest first screen is that the name is not defined here. What is defined, on the CDC page, is a form of harm and control inside intimate partner violence. Those are not interchangeable labels, and this article will not pretend they are.
What the CDC page is actually about
Intimate partner violence, on that page, is abuse or aggression in a romantic relationship. An intimate partner includes a current or former spouse and a dating partner. The types listed are physical violence, sexual violence, stalking, and psychological aggression. Sexual violence includes forcing or attempting to force a sex act, sexual touching, or a non-physical sexual event such as sexting, without consent. Stalking is repeated unwanted attention and contact that causes fear or concern for safety. Psychological aggression is the communication type: words or non-verbal acts meant to harm a partner mentally or emotionally, or meant to exert control.
The page says intimate partner violence can be prevented, and that promoting healthy, respectful, nonviolent relationships is part of prevention. Prevention language does not mean you caused what is happening to you. It means the CDC treats the violence as something communities can reduce, not as a private mystery. This page cannot run that prevention for you. It can tell you the definitions it is allowed to use.
Numbers that do not count the undefined term
The CDC page reports lifetime figures from the NISVS 2023/2024 data brief. More than 1 in 3 women, nearly 43.5 million, and more than 1 in 6 men, 20.7 million, experienced contact sexual violence, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner. Among women the page lists contact sexual violence at 19.7 percent, physical violence at 22.5 percent, and stalking at 12.2 percent. Among men it lists 4.4 percent, 13.7 percent, and 4.2 percent. About 16 million women and 11 million men first experienced intimate partner violence before age 18. Those numbers are not a headcount of psychological aggression alone, and they are not a headcount of a pattern these notes never define. If a post online attaches them to the undefined name, it is gluing a statistic to a word the source did not measure under that word.
A National Violent Death Reporting System note, 27 states in 2015, says about 1 in 5 homicide victims are killed by an intimate partner, and over half of female homicide victims are killed by a current or former male intimate partner. The lifetime economic cost on the page is 5.6 trillion dollars. The per-victim lifetime cost is nearly 135,000 dollars for women and over 30,000 dollars for men, from Peterson and colleagues, 2018, as adjusted on the page. These figures describe violence by intimate partners and its cost. They do not say those deaths or those dollars were produced by the pattern this packet refuses to define. Use them as a reason to take partner violence seriously. Do not use them as a caption under a word you cannot find in the notes.
Wanting to merge is a different sentence
A different paper describes an intense wish for closeness, and it is not a description of control. In Hazan and Shaver's 1987 newspaper sample, readers who classed themselves as anxious/ambivalent were given this self-description: "I find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I often worry that my partner doesn't really love me or won't want to stay with me. I want to merge completely with another person, and this desire sometimes scares people away." The authors say those respondents experienced love as obsession, a desire for reciprocation and union, extreme sexual attraction, and jealousy, with sharp up-and-down emotional swings. They scored apart from the other groups on obsessive preoccupation, sexual attraction, desire for union, desire for reciprocation, and love at first sight.
"Sometimes scares people away" is inside that self-description. A wish to merge can frighten a partner. Fright, in that sentence, is about the pace and the hunger for union. It is not the CDC's sentence about communication intended to harm or to exert control. Early intensity in the 1987 wording can be clumsy, consuming, and scary to the person on the receiving end. It can also be the speaker's own fear of being left. None of that, by itself, is a finding that the speaker is trying to harm or control. If you are unsettled because someone wants to move very fast, you are allowed to slow down. Slowing down is not the same decision as getting to safety from violence.
You might be thinking any strong start is suspect. The notes do not say that. They give you two different descriptions and ask you not to collapse them. One description is a longing to merge that can scare people. The other is aggression: communication meant to harm or control, stalking that causes fear for safety, sexual acts without consent, physical violence. Intensity of wanting is not proof of the second description. Fear for your safety is not something you should explain away as the first description.
When attention itself causes fear
Stalking, on the CDC page, is repeated unwanted attention and contact that causes fear or concern for safety. If contact is constant, unwanted, and you are afraid for your safety, you are in the stalking definition, not in a debate about a popular nickname. Psychological aggression covers communication meant to harm you mentally or emotionally or to control you, even when nobody has hit you. You do not need a bruise for the CDC page to have a name for what is happening. You also do not need this blog to confirm a nickname. The names that are actually defined are enough to justify help.
These notes do not contain a diagnostic manual entry under the nickname you may have heard. This page will not say the pattern is a diagnosis. It will not say it is not a diagnosis. That answer is not in the sources here. A manual entry would have to be opened and checked. It was not. Do not let anyone, including this page, borrow a manual's authority without the entry.
Call, and assume this screen is not private
If you are in immediate danger, contact 911. For suicidal thoughts or emotional distress, the National Institute of Mental Health says you can call or text 988, or chat via the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, which is 24-hour and confidential. Veterans can call 988 and then press 1, or text 838255. NIMH also says that in a life-threatening situation you should call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room. NIMH cannot give you medical advice or a personal referral.
The National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233, also written as 1-800-799-SAFE. You can text START to 88788. Advocates are there 24/7. They offer support, crisis intervention, education, and referrals. They do not give direct cash, hotel, or transportation vouchers. The hotline also lists StrongHearts at 844-762-8483, the loveisrespect National Teen Dating Abuse Helpline at 866-331-9474, and the Deaf Hotline video phone at 855-812-1001.
Their security alert matters before you keep reading. Internet use can be monitored and is impossible to erase completely. If monitoring is a concern, call rather than browse, and they tell visitors they can leave the site immediately. Use a phone you believe is safer, or a device the other person does not control. This page is education. It is not treatment, and it is not an advocate on the line. A licensed clinician can help later, when you are safe enough to seek one. Couples work is not the step these sources name while you are being harmed or controlled.
If fear or control is part of your relationship, will you call from a safer device instead of staying on a page someone else may be able to see?
Pages for harm, control, and help
- CDC, "About Intimate Partner Violence," reviewed August 19, 2026. https://www.cdc.gov/intimate-partner-violence/about/index.html
- National Domestic Violence Hotline. https://www.thehotline.org/
- National Institute of Mental Health, "Help for Mental Illnesses," last reviewed April 2026. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/find-help
- Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver, "Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(3), 511–524, 1987. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.52.3.511
Frequently Asked Questions
- Is the nickname defined in this packet?
- It is not. A diagnostic manual entry is also absent, so this page will neither stamp the pattern as a diagnosis nor announce that it falls outside one.
- What does psychological aggression mean on the CDC page?
- Words or nonverbal acts meant to injure a partner's mind or feelings, or to take control. It is one form of intimate partner abuse, listed with physical harm, sexual harm, and stalking.
- Is a hunger to merge the same thing as control?
- The 1987 anxious wording includes a wish to unite completely, and it says that wish can frighten people off. That fright is not the CDC sentence about harm or control. If you are afraid for your safety, use 911 or the domestic violence line.
- What should you assume before you open the hotline website?
- Browsing can be watched, and the traces cannot be fully wiped. If that is a real risk, phone 1-800-799-7233 instead of staying on a screen. You can text START to 88788. Leave immediately if you need to. Use 911 when danger is happening now.
- Are the lifetime violence counts a tally of this nickname?
- No. Those NISVS figures cover contact sexual violence, physical violence, and stalking by a partner. They do not count a word this packet never defines.