Although we think of love as an emotion, it is really more like a drive. Emotions come and go, whereas drives, like love, tend to persist. All emotions are associated with distinct facial expressions, whereas love is not. Love (like all of the basic drives I have discussed in this blog) is difficult to control. Furthermore, the most recent scientific research indicates that all drives, including love, are associated with activation of the brain pathway called the mesolimbic dopamine pathway.
Attraction: the first stage of love
Love, like other drives, is associated with wanting to get something. That something we are talking about here is a partner. The first stage of love, then, involves seeking out a partner. Scientists have called this the attraction phase. It is important for each person to understand how the attraction phase works within himself/herself. There are both conscious and unconscious parts to attraction.
The attraction phase involves the senses, primarily sight and smell. There may be chemicals that activate the brain through smell that we are not consciously aware of. Similarly, we may like the way someone looks and not be sure why. Our conscious mind and unconscious mind may be looking for different things in a partner. The unconscious mind plays a big role in our partner selection process.
It is important to realize that we can be taken over and captivated by attraction. Some of the symptoms of attraction or falling in love are “butterflies in the stomach,” clammy hands and racing heart. These symptoms are direct evidence of the physical nature of the love drive.
There is pleasure associated with getting the objects of our drives. In the brain, this pleasure involves many important chemicals like dopamine and the endorphins. Contact with the lover is also pleasurable because it releases oxytocin. This chemical produces reward by calming us down. (It doesn’t matter that it is the lover’s fault that we need calming.) Oxytocin is a powerful, natural anti-anxiety chemical.
The attraction phase usually lasts no more than 18 months. The reason for this is that it is too consuming. People have to be able to function, and when our energies are over focused on a lover, we aren’t as productive in other areas. Furthermore, the attraction phase has only one purpose. That is to get us hooked. When the pleasure chemicals and anxiety relieving chemicals are released in the brain, a compulsion is formed. That compulsion is to be with the lover. So the love that starts out as pleasure in the company of the lover becomes a compulsion. When the compulsion phase sets in, we feel compelled to stay with our lover no matter what. That is when we know “bonding” has taken place.
So the stages of love basically involve attraction, followed by great pleasure, followed by bonding. I would add a fourth stage, caretaking. Normal people feel an urge to take care of others toward whom they feel bonded.
Sociopaths and love
Ability to love, then, involves attraction, pleasure, bonding and caretaking. How is the sociopath’s experience of love different from what I have described? First, I never met a sociopath who did not do exactly what he/she wanted. I have to conclude from this that the attraction phase operates relatively normally in the sociopath. In fact, many sociopaths hang around only as long as the attraction phase lasts. There is evidence that emotional arousal is abnormal in sociopaths. So I would also assume they experience the pleasures of attraction without the “butterflies.”
It is blatantly obvious that sociopaths do not bond in the usual sense. Their love drive is thus stuck in the attraction gear and they can go no further than attraction. But don’t stop there! As the sociopath experienced the pleasures of his/her latest object of attraction, his/her drive for conquest was also activated.
The sociopath simultaneously experiences pleasure in attraction and pleasure in conquest or power. In other words, although the sociopath cannot form a love bond, he/she can acquire a possession which he/she strongly believes belongs to him/her.
If I enjoy something and I work very hard to get that thing, it is mine! I feel entitled to something I enjoy and work for. That thing also should keep giving me pleasure and satisfaction in order to stay wanted. If a possession is no longer pleasant and appealing to me, I throw it in the garbage. Now, if someone breaks in and tries to steal my possessions, I am angry and feel violated. Does any of this sound familiar?
Unlike the caretaking of the true love bond, the caretaking behavior of sociopaths is only self serving. I take care of my stuff because I have to. If I want people to envy me, I make the outside of my house look good and wax my car. Then people driving by see the great looking house with the new car in the driveway and think I really have it made. My stuff gives me status. If I don’t take care of my stuff, my status goes down.
So again we see that although sociopaths have a rudimentary love drive, in the end their drives are all about power and status. Don’t be fooled by the occasional care taking behavior, it is not motivated by empathy or a true love bond.
My ex was very affectionate when we met and even held my hand when we walked down the street.
A year later he was so unaffectionate he wouldn’t put his arm around me in a photo taken at a freinds birthday dinner…even after his freind urged him to!
He also denied ever holding my hand in public, telling me my memory was wrong.
(He knew my memory was a bit shonky and would milk this weakness for all it was worth).
Anyway…just glad all that confusion and hurt is over!
I’m enjoying reading these posts and gaining insight into his behaviours.
I count myself lucky that I had the opportunity to talk at lenngth with his ex-gf of 5 years..who told me all the things he did to hurt her..and she said “he has no conscience” although she didn’t use the word sociopath.
I’d be interested to hear of anyone else who had the opportunity to talk to thier socio’s ex partner/spouse
Oxdrover that is so sad 🙁
I had a chance to talk to the partner. The lies and compulsive cheating just came right out.
I think that this is the understanding that we need to begin the healing process and to begin to unravel the knots in our own misunderstandings of love.
You can’t fix these people, but you can change yourself. Improtant to get real understanding of what love relationship work like, smell like and feel like when they ARE healthy.
I found this forum because I suspect my brother is a sociopath and armed with this information i now feel helpless. I cant “get out” of a relationship with a brother! I am being manipulated and have no where to turn. He has got our mother under his control and our father does whatever our mother says. We own a business together and my brother has all but cut me out from the daily operations. He has used his sociopathic powers to do this, turning employees against me and even out mother because he is also a homosexual and is using that to get his way. I am called intolerant because I am Catholic. Even though I have read the Catetchisim (sp?) to him which states that homosexual attraction cannot be helped, it is a disorder and we love the person and are to show no discrimination towards them WHICH I dont. However he twists whatever i say into an argument so that I am the bad guy! He has an attraction to a 20 year old which he KNEW was gay when he saw him in a local store and asked him to apply for a job at our restaurant. I had no idea till after that he was a homo and that my brother wanted around him for the sexual attraction. This relationship has caused more problems for me. The 20 year old is now in jail but set to get out in 5 months. I had a “ah ha” moment with my brother when I confronted him and said that the reason he has been causing trouble for me with everyone is that so I would move out of our shared apt so he could move the 20 year old in when he got out of jail ( he had already promised him his old job back). Brother’s reply “its probably not going to happen”. I guess the best confirmation of what is really going on from a sociopath.
These realizations run deep and are deeply troubling because they invoke everything we know about ourselves and what we believe to be true.
Its a tough day for me too. I am tired and when I am tired, I find that I am most easily distressed by the feelings of fear and anxiety and inability to do something mighty to change my situation.
It is these days, when I find the best things to turning a bad day into a productive one is to first come here, to second perfomr the more mundane and mindless tasks of daily living and then to make lists of what is to be done, what resources are required and what steps.
I don’t hold myself to account fo rthe limitations because the first step is to define the problem and make it as big as possible.
Then, to go back and loook at solving each of the smallest components in order.
This is how Eisenhower go DDAY planned and executed. We can do this. We just need techniques. We need to rely on our faith and we need to go somewhere to downlaod emotionally until we can find a quiet place in our minds to think about the tasks which must be performed. Even making a plan is productive.
And like the great generals knew, any battle plan changes on first engagement with the enemy….
silvermoon:
That must be it, I am tired. I hope to be able to regconize when I am tired and down at the same time, in the future. Yes, the list thing, I just made a step by step list of the order in which I wanted to do laundry. Someone on here had wrote that to me awhile back, don’t remember who. Ok. I got to get.
I just got out of a relationship with a guy I think is a sociopath. We were together 5 years, during which time I was completely confused and bewildered by his odd behavior. I wasn’t the only one who noticed, EVERYONE I KNEW would tell me:”There is something wrong with that guy, how can you stand him?”
He was charming enough, so people put up with him. They would make excuses for his behavior just like I did. He had a different job every 6 months, he has no friends (besides the ones he picked up through his relationship with me). He makes sexually innapropriate comments on the fly and used to grab me inappropriately in public a lot. Before we went out for the night I would tell him that he “better not” embarass me and he would literally BEG me to help him. He would want to know what he should wear and how he should act.
I guess what I want to know is, are there different levels of sociopathy? There are things my boyfriend did that weren’t very indictive of a sociopath.
First of all, he learned to control his verbal and physical outbursts, the innapropriate comments and all of that ultimately dissappeared in public. He seemed to have progressed as I made suggestions to him, which I am told a sociopath cannot do.
His sex drive was intense, and we had “kinky” sex, but he was always really concerned with my satisfaction and he was romantic in bed. He prefferred to look into my eyes, and to kiss me. He wanted to take baths together and massage my feet. He did all of the cooking in our relationship, nearly all of the cleaning. He couldn’t keep a job, but he did attempt to make me happy and to contribute. He didn’t steal anyting from me, and every single time I suspected him of cheating I would investigate and find out that my concerns were unfounded. I used to drive by his house at night to see if he was home and feel stupid when his car was in the driveway.
He has a kid, who appears to amuse him, but I don’t know about the “love thing”. He treats his son how his Father treated him (his father appears to be sociopathic on a much more intense level).
He appears to feel things when he listens to music. He will get goose bumps from certain songs he hears.
After our break-up we had a talk about our “sex lives” and he was hurt when I indicated I’d had sex. He said that it literally made him sick to think about, and he said that his stomach hurt and he couldn’t eat his lunch. He then divulged to me that the sex he had sucked, and that all he kept thinking was that the girl he was with wasn’t me. He asked detail after detail, almost pulling off to the side of the road in his anxiety. But he was respectful. He said that it was his fault I had to have sex with someone else because he was stupid, and that he didn’t want to hear anymore. But he kept asking and asking, getting more and more anxious but making sure to get as many details as possible. (PS: I didn’t give him many details)
Now that we are broken up I really miss him and we talk on the phone a lot. He has a job right now, and hopefully he will keep it.
I just don’t know whats going on. I don’t want to get rid of a good guy because I suspect him of being a sociopath. Diagnosing something like that is tricky, there are alot of people who are LIKE sociopaths but are really just insecure idiots who lie a lot because they find themselves boring. How can you tell the difference?
Dear Dolley,
It doesn’t sound to me like he is a sociopath at all, it sounds to me like your relationshiip was maybe not all that mature, but it doesn’t sound to me like he was cruel to you in any way.
I would decide what you want in a relationship and if you think he could provide that then talk about it with him, see if that is what he wants. If not, then just go your separate ways.
I’m feeling very triggered today.
Yesterday I found an excellant site that deals with BPD issues and went there specifically to see if I could find anything about MALE borderlines. I have always believed that all of my serious relationships have been with men with some kind of disorder, (and yes. I know what that says about me.)
I thought my Xhub was an N, and my Xspath an addict who displayed ASPD traits, but had always wondered if he might really be a borderline.
I found some insightfull articles about these relationships, and now I think we are all borderlines.
It talked about the care-taking male BPD who hooks up with the female waif BPD so he can rest assured she won’t leave him, and so he can be in controll. BINGO, military Xhub.
It talked about the male waif BPD who hooks up with a female siren type BPD. BINGO, Xspath.
I think my Mom was BPD…I fit the profile…the younger of my two daughters has been diagnosed with it, and now the oldest of her two daughters is really worrying me.
She is using a lot of manipulation to be noticed, and to get attention. She loves men, and will hardly say hello to me, wont answer me, in short snubs me. She has a lot of the “mean girl ” charictaristics firmly in place.
My daughter has battled anorexia, and now my GD is showing an abnormal interest in food, hungar, eating habits, and not wanting to eat. Control, control, control.
I’m 51, and I’m not interested in having intimate relationships anymore…I function pretty well in other kinds of relationships.
I don’t want to spend the rest of my lfe in therapy, drudging up those things that hurt sooo bad. I do try to be self aware, and call myself on my behavior.
I recognize myself in my GD…her needyness, her lack of power, her manipulations and it is really triggering alot of unwanted emotion.
Do you’ll think I should stay away from the BPD site?
By the way, my daughter functions well, in the world, and is a good mother.
My GD pushes my BPD buttons. It is all so familiar to me.
Sorry, guys. most of the time I don’t bring this up, here, but you guys are my support group!