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.
Dear One/Joy, if he thinks you are “well adjusted” NOW, he should have seen you a while back when you first came to LF! LOL Snort, giggle! Yea, I’m well adjusted NOW too….but not when I first came to LF, I was a paranoid nut job….and the reason I was paranoid was my whole freaking family was either out to kill me, or stand by while someone else did! Yep, that was me, NUT JOB!!!! LOL ROTFLMAO
ps having come into contact with quite a few “corrections officers” during my time dealing with the prisons and my P son, I am not sure who is the worst psychopaths….I think they must have to hire narcissists and/or psychopaths because no one except another psychopath could “deal with” the large number of psychopaths that are locked up…I think if a normal person went to work in a prison, they would go nuts just like the rest of us from “exposure” to the path-ology. Just close exposure to psychopaths on a daily basis I think rubs off on “normal” people, you run out of your ability to cope with them when you have NO PEACE. At least I did/do…that is why it is so important to me to remain psychopath-FREE and NC, because every time I associate with one even the least bit, I LOSE IT…ABNORMAL BECOMES NORMAL…sometimes just reading a news story that is particularly bad will “get to me” and make me grind my teeth. So maybe I’m not so “well adjusted” after all. LOL ROTFLMAO
Oxy-you said admormal becomes normal (when you are around them). It’s funny how quickly I began to except my P’s bs when he rolls in once every two weeks. I try to keep my guard up and see most of it for what it is but when he leaves I shake my head at EVERTHING. Someone said someowhere not insane just a sociopath. Thinking mine IS insane.
Dear Justus5,
My opinion, for what it is worth is that if we continue to associate with them once we know what they are, WE are the ones that are INSANE. We just keep doing the SAME THING OVER AND OVER AND EXPECTING DIFFERENT RESULTS. That is the definition of “insanity.”
As long as you associate with them, their contagion will rub off on YOU. It is impossible to have a normal life with a psychopath intimately involved in your life. JMHO.
oxy – one of the first ‘people outside of lovefraud and my immediate circle i told about the spath was an employment counselor. i was booked in to do a mock interview for the job i have now. i wanted to know if i came across ‘normal enough’ – because i sure as hell didn’t feel normal or think that i came across as normal.
he was a (youngish) retired corrections guy – he had taught in the prisons. we immediately got into talking about spathy as soon as I knew where he used to work. it was such a relief to tell someone out in the world and to gain his assurance that i came across as ‘normal enough’, even though i was so mind******.
he was deeply affected by working in corrections. it almost ruined his life – he became quite paranoid about everyone – didn’t want anyone (including his own family, whom he trusted) around his kids….he has PTSD as his parting gift from corrections. he’s a really really nice guy, who has seen way too much evil in this life.
Oxy-Your opinion is appreciated. I finally managed to quit being insanely drawn into his dance of anger and fighting, his twisting of reality. I can see him for what he is now I am stuck in fear of being on my own and fear of the nastiness I would have to deal with after a divorce.
Dear One/Joy,
I know what you mean, kiddo, I sure as HELL DIDN’T COME ACROSS NORMAL…even my therapist thought I was a paranoid nut jobber! LOL And so did the attorney I hired to represent me at Patrick’s parole hearing…untiil he got the package of documents I sent him! LOL
Anyone who is “normal” and goes into corrections work will not stay normal long. I firmly believe that working around or with these people does a NUMBER on your mind and sanity. It is like working in a pit of vipers, you get to where you cannot walk around a GARDEN HOSE without jumping. PTSD? I do NOT doubt that one bit.
AFter my son was caught with a cell phone in his cell (smuggled in of course and actually a felony) he got kicked out of craft shop, and I had to drive 16 hours one way to pick up his gear (several thousands of dollars worth of equipment and supplies) a bunch of expensive leather had been “missing” from his stuff and the warden and the major got together and called me into the warden’s office….and the warden was talking to me like I was a convict, I said very nicely “Please don’t talk to me in that tone of voice, I am a citizen, not a convict.” I thought the warden was going to come across his desk at me, he SCREAMED at me to “get out of my office now!” The major was playing the “good cop” and when I made arrangements for a time to pick up the stuff, he had 4 trollies of stuff with inmates pushing them and he told me I’d have to load it myself….some of it was HEAVY…and so I didn’t bite, I just got up in the back of the truck with the first box and started to put it in the bed of the truck. I think he thought I’d beg him to get the inmates to load it, but I didn’t, so he smiled and said “get down, I’ll get them to load it.”
Patrick actually had a sexual relationship with a married female major at one place he was housed, she came into the visiting room when we were there once and you could see the “sparks” flying between their eyes. OPENLY FLIRTING. A secretary there a few years ago had a sexual relationship with an inmate AND an officer, and she and the inmate were both found dead in a closet…supposedly the inmate killed her and then cut his own throat, but Patrick thought the officer killed them both. I don’t doubt it.
I used to be so worried about him, cause he is a small white guy in a tough prison system that is primarily black and Hispanic and the racial divide is rigid…gangs, etc. and he’s been beaten up a bunch of times and severely injured, but I no longer worry, he got himself into that place and he can have the consequences as far as I am concerned. He is still better off than the girl he murdered. I’m not sure who is the worst danger in prisons, the guards or the other inmates…but it is a PhD program for psychopaths any way you slice it. In a lot of ways, it gives them the perfect environment, constant risk and games to play with each other. My son is “good at it” and knows all the ins and outs of smuggling stuff in and conning the system. BFD (big farking deal)—he’s the smartest inmate in the place, but he’s nothing but a not so successful small time thug and murderer. He had enough brains to have invented the cure for cancer, or to have been Bill Gates, and he CHOSE to be a thug. His loss and mine too, only he doesn’t have sense enough to realize it. Just like that sociopath that wrote the letter to Donna.
Well, justus5, I guess “better the devil you know than the one you don’t know” but if you choose to live “with it” instead of to make a life for yourself independently, then that is your choice. I chose that course with a lot of relation-shits, but I realized finally that FOR ME I would rather live in a tent and eat out of a McDonald’s dumpster than to live any where near a psychopath.
I found out that I don’t need anyone (especially a psychopath) in my life that doesn’t cherish me as I deserve to be cherished. Life is much nicer now.
Oxy-I have come to the point of excepting responsility for my sitiuation. I think everyday about how to get out of the mess that I have allowed him to create. Still afraid and confused though about the future.
Justus5, we ALL are/were confused about the future. Without a crystal ball and without being psychic there’s no way to see the future either way and “there are no guarantees in life” that is for sure. I definitely understand your fear of the future—probably financially (I’m just guessing here) and in many other ways as well, I think you have kids to raise—how will they react? How will this all impact them? That’s also part of the collateral damage they do to our lives and the lives of the ones we love.
Keep on reading and learning about psychopaths and about how to heal to help you make decisions. Making THE decision to get away from an abusive mate IS A BIG ONE I understand. But just like no one ever died and thought “I wish I’d spent more time at the office” no one ever approached their death bed and said “I’m glad I stayed with that psychopath.”