"If that's love bombing, fine": Giovanni pushes back on modern dating labels after Love Is Blind: Italy

From the moment Giovanni Calvario stepped out of the pods on Love Is Blind: Italy, his words, gestures, and courtship style were rapidly categorized online using a vocabulary he says he had never encountered before the show.

Terms like “love bombing,” “gaslighting,” and “red flag” followed him across social media, reshaping how viewers interpreted scenes that, to Giovanni, represented something far older and more deliberate: romantic courtship.

Speaking in an interview conducted by Italian author Daniela Collu, Giovanni addressed the gap between how he understands intimacy and how it is increasingly framed in online discourse. He said, 

“I’m discovering all these labels, these Anglicisms tied to new online trends. What is gaslighting? What is a red flag? I was completely disconnected from this terminology. Love bombing is my favorite term, incomprehensible. What is it?”

When Collu suggested that some viewers believed those terms applied directly to his behavior in Love Is Blind: Italy, Giovanni did not deny the intensity of his approach.

Instead, he rejected the premise that intensity itself implies manipulation. He said, 

“What I do is courtship. I experience courtship very intensely. I’d rather have a beautiful date that maybe ends badly because there’s no chemistry, than do what many friends do, grabbing a quick coffee in some suburban bar, hoping to have s** right after.”

Love Is Blind: Italy and the clash between romance and labels

The tension Giovanni describes sits at the center of Love Is Blind: Italy, where emotional expression unfolds under conditions designed to accelerate intimacy.

In the pods, he said, courtship was stripped of visual cues and condensed into repeated, high-stakes conversations. Giovanni said, 

“It was a very small room, like a womb, and you’re constantly tested. On one hand, you have to like the other person, and on the other, you have to somehow be liked.”

Giovanni acknowledged that his gestures were theatrical and deliberate, including poems, letters, incense, and symbolic gifts.

He described these acts not as tactics but as the way he would want his own life to be remembered. He said, 

“What if this person were the last woman in my life, the one I marry? What would I tell my grandchildren? That I won her over with a cheap beer in a sketchy bar? No. I’d like to say I wrote her a letter, read her a poem, gave her a beautiful gift.”

Collu pressed on the criticism that such gestures created expectations that women later found humiliating when they compared experiences in the lounge.

Giovanni responded by rejecting the idea that repetition equaled deceit. He said, 

“I knew perfectly well that the women talked to each other. I wasn’t ‘caught.’ I gave four gifts to the four women I had a bond with, because that’s my way, my love language.”

Throughout Love Is Blind: Italy, Giovanni said he understood the experiment as a space where authenticity required vulnerability rather than restraint. He said, 

“A manipulator, to me, is someone lurking in the shadows, acting through deceit. I show myself without fear.”

That openness, he acknowledged, came with consequences once the show aired. Giovanni said he became aware of what he described as a “huge negative review hanging over your head, even with women.”

Rather than retreating, he said the backlash clarified who was willing to look beyond surface narratives. He said, 

“It will help me distinguish between those who only look at the surface and those who have the courage to go deeper.” 

Asked how he responds to being labeled a narcissist or villain, Giovanni said irony has been his defense. He said, 

“What they see on screen is a character, not the person. They’ve never had dinner with me. They’re not talking with me like we are now.”

For Giovanni, Love Is Blind: Italy did not introduce him to deception but to exposure. He said, 

“Being seen is both a gift and a curse. You can’t hide.”

The series placed his romantic philosophy in direct conversation with modern dating culture, where restraint is often prized and intensity scrutinized.

Giovanni did not concede that the language applied to him, but he did not attempt to rewrite how viewers responded. Instead, he accepted the labels as part of the cost of visibility. He said, 

“If that’s love bombing, fine.”

Stay tuned for more updates.