Invariably, once we realize we’ve been conned by a psychopath, this person has lied to us from the very beginning, and we fell for all of it, we ask why? Why did we believe? Why did we trust?
The short answer is that we did what we, as social animals, are biologically designed to do. Human beings have evolved over millennia to live in community, and trust is the glue that holds us together.
I just finished reading The Moral Molecule the source of love and prosperity, by Paul J. Zak. Zak spent 10 years researching a brain chemical called oxytocin and its role in human behavior. He says oxytocin inspires trust; trust is connected to morality; and morality is connected to the survival of the human race.
The video above gives an overview of the points he makes in his book. Zak briefly refers to psychopaths in the video, and the discussion about this personality disorder in his book isn’t much longer. I’m going to extrapolate from his work to discuss the role that oxytocin probably plays in why psychopaths do what they do, and why we respond the way we do.
What is oxytocin?
Oxytocin is both a neurotransmitter, sending signals within the brain, and a hormone, carrying messages in the bloodstream. It plays a huge role in pair bonding, especially for monogamous mammals. It has long been associated with sex, childbirth and breastfeeding.
Research now shows that both men and women release oxytocin, although women release far more. The substance is integrally involved with love and empathy. An article in Scientific American describes oxytocin as nature’s “love glue.”
Be mine forever: Oxytocin may help build long-lasting love, on ScientificAmerican.com.
Intimacy and sex trigger the release of oxytocin. So do feelings of empathy. An easy way to spark the release of oxytocin in people is to give them a hug. Another way is to show that you trust them. Conversation creates a sense of community, which builds trust, which leads to oxytocin release.
In his book, Zak describes a behavioral feedback loop based on oxytocin:
Oxytocin generates the empathy that drives moral behavior, which inspires trust, which causes the release of more oxytocin, which creates more empathy.
But it’s not all love and roses. Oxytocin also helps people know when to be wary. Zak says, “oxytocin maintains the balance between self and other, trust and distrust, approach and withdrawal.”
Testosterone
Testosterone is a hormone associated with aggression, motivation and drive, especially sex drive. Men have more testosterone than women, and young men have twice the level of testosterone as older men. Testosterone is elevated in all psychopaths, both male and female. Hold that thought.
Testosterone is the opposite of oxytocin. In The Moral Molecule, Zak says:
Testosterone specifically interferes with the uptake of oxytocin, producing a damping effect on being caring and feeling. (Page 83 emphasis by Zak.)
Zak also talks about a high-octane version of testosterone called dihydrotestosterone (DHT), which stimulates areas of the brain associated with aggression. Zak writes:
DHT’s affect on the brain is about five times larger than testosterone’s. It not only unleashes aggression, but also increases dopamine, which makes the aggression feel good. (Page 84)
Here are a few more points about testosterone:
High-testosterone males divorce more often, spend less time with their children, engage in competitions of all types, have more sexual partners (as well as learning disabilities), and lose their jobs more often. (Page 90)
Winning too big too often can have a corrosive effect by bathing an individual in testosterone. Always coming out on top, consistently and over time, can reinforce some of the more obnoxious stereotypically male behaviors associated with the hormone. (Page 94)
Administering testosterone has been shown to actually inhibit people’s ability’s to pick up the social cues that eye contact conveys. (Page 95)
Putting this together: Psychopaths have excess testosterone. Testosterone blocks caring and feeling, increases aggression, inhibits the ability to pick up on social cues and correlates with the type of behavior we’ve all seen in psychopaths.
Oxytocin receptors
Oxytocin works by connecting with “oxytocin receptors,” which are present in the mammary glands, uterus and in the central nervous system. However, Zak says that “5 percent of any population lack the oxytocin receptors necessary to bond and behave morally without external reinforcement.” Of course, 5 percent is remarkably close to official estimates for antisocial personality disorder 4 percent of the population.
Zak explains that oxytocin receptors need to be stimulated, starting when humans are babies, in order for them to grow. If the receptors are not stimulated by love and attention early on, they fail to develop, which contributes to a lack of empathy. In an interview with IEEE Spectrum, Zak says that psychopaths seem to lack oxytocin receptors.
Can one chemical be the basis of all morality? on Spectrum.IEEE.org.
In The Moral Molecule, Zak writes:
Psychopaths can have incredible social competence on the cognitive level the trouble is that they simply don’t care bout anyone but themselves. Their lack of empathy allows them to treat others as objects, and their cognitive skill enables them to get away with it. (Page 128)
Oxytocin and the psychopathic experience
Psychopaths do not form authentic, caring love bonds with other people. But they are very good at pretending that they do.
When psychopaths target us for romantic relationships, they shower us with attention and affection. They spend a lot of time talking with us, and conversation builds trust. They say and do things to indicate that they trust us, and we should trust them. They tell stories about themselves designed to appeal to our empathy. They rush us into emotional, physical and sexual intimacy.
All of this causes the release of oxytocin in our brains, which is absolutely normal. Because of the oxytocin, we feel calm, trusting, empathetic and content. We especially feel trusting of the person who caused this reaction in us the psychopath.
The psychopath, however, does not have the normal number of oxytocin receptors. Plus, the psychopath has elevated testosterone, which blocks the release of oxytocin. Therefore, he or she does not experience the effects of the oxytocin, and does not feel trust or empathy.
Researchers are finding many biological components of psychopathy, including the problems with oxytocin. But the oxytocin system operates just fine in many of us who have been targeted by psychopaths. So they love bomb us; we don’t know they are lying; we respond as human are intended to respond to displays of trust and affection, which releases oxytocin.
Psychopathic seduction hijacks the normal human bonding system. That’s an important reason why we get hooked.
If you’d like to know more about oxytocin and how it is supposed to work, read The Moral Molecule, by Paul J. Zak.
The Moral Molecule — the source of love and prosperity, is available on Amazon.com.
I know I still feel addicted to the spath, even though I am not with him and don’t have any contact with him. I still think about him all the time. I still want to be with him. It is so crazy. I wanted him to love me like he said he did. I wanted him to be that wonderful person that I first met. I wanted a lot! But what really happened was that I GAVE a lot. It was like selling my soul to the devil, so to speak.
I know one day he will be out of my head but I’m not there now. This is the worst thing I have been through.
One who took me over during a terrorizing crisis was a reporter. He was something else. He killed himself last year and I still think about him. There is a true chemical reaction in the brain (the Oxytocin article explains that) to people when we feel love…and it never goes away.
I’ve always said that I live for that first few months and throw away years on a loser because I’m still searching for that fake “high” from the first few months.
Right now, I have had to choose being lonely. I have decided to MAKE it a CHOICE. Not wallow in it…at least most of the time. But actively choose to feel lonely and educate myself while I’m feeling it. There is nothing more lonely than having a sociopath in my life after that first two months…again…another time around the Scary-Go-Round with HIM. Nothing more lonely and bad for my health.
Any time, I spend time with one, or glamorize the memories from that first two months with one, I make myself remember what happened after reality set in. Lonely and devastating. Now, because I am choosing. I choose lonely. It is the same thing as a drug, alcohol, gambling, sex, etc. addict. It hurts. I have to feel my feelings and I don’t want to. I want my lovey-dovey phony to come back into the body of the spath. My addiction.
After I educate myself and face up to my addiction to people who are fake and unrealistic, I might venture out and see what happens. But, I am not giving in to the red flags any more. They are tricks on my brain to make it crave a person to whom I am addicted. They are tricks by a spath to suck me in again and again. When they are tried one me, I think of the bad things. I can say no. I will like being by myself and learning and reading and watching movies and coming to lovefraud to read and learn and share. I will always have to fight my addiction with reality and education.
All addictions change the brain. My brain is changed. But, I am alive and I am learning to know the red flags and recognize them sooner rather than later and I am going to get better at it. There are addicts addicted to substances and they work until they die to fight it. I just have to accept that I get addicted to the wrong people and I will fight that until the day I die.
Fight,
I want you to know this comment of yours spoke to me today. I was kind of down today. My ex sent me this super sappy love song video via email. And for some reason it made me cry. That was the other day. I thought I’d brushed it off. But something has been just weighing me down emotionally since I watched the stupid video.
I know it’s what you describe here. Even though I’ve been strong in my decision making and I never let the ex (who is OUT of my life) know it, I have painful moments where I, too, miss that dream bubble I was in for nine weeks. But as you say, I know where it leads and that the “drug” is a combination of lies, manipulation and a natural human response to being lovebombed.
I find it helpful to replay all the idiotic, insensitive and incredibly selfish things my ex used to say. I recall this one time he said he used to communicate online with this 20 year old girl who posed for a sex web site he was involved in. He is 44, mind you. Anyway, he said he bonded with her over her fascination with Hitler. He called her a Nazi freak and thought it was funny.
Also, I replay the spiteful and hateful comments he made about ALL of his exes, referring to one as a fat b*tch who freaked him out when she wanted to have sex with him. Of course, I found out he was trying to reconnect with that ex-wife as well right before I came along. He slipped and told me then tried to cover it up with a story about how he did her taxes for her for a fee at his condo.
I just think about all the crap, and then that old lovebombing era starts to lose its sparkle.
CassandrasDream: I am glad I helped you. You have helped me also with your response. Crying is good for us. Research shows that all tears are not the same. There are different chemicals in the tears we cry for each reason: Anger, Fear, Mourning, Loneliness, etc. Different chemical mixes in our tears for each thing! So, when we cry, our body is crying out the chemicals it automatically knows we need out of our system. Can you imagine that? So just as Oxytocin can become our enemy when we fall in love with fake love, our tears have chemicals that can heal us. I hope you feel more centered today.
Donna, I’m embarased to say how many red flags I, not ignored exactly…..some, yes ignored, but also SAW. You are very right…..I just didn’t know. It’s still hard for me to wrap my head around it and I STILL find myself questioning my suspicions. I still think these thoughts……what if I’m wrong? What if he’s just off base…on and on. But it’s clear that with the package of issues I come with, this is not a man I need to hang my hopes, welfare and safety on. he would and has dropped them on the ground, slam dunked them into oblivion. Nope, there is something wrong with this one, something that can’t be mended.
I feel sadness for his way of being because he will always face the same end with a woman. If he can’t help what he is and can’t fix it because it’s not fixable…..that is truly sad, is it not?
It is something that people have to be aware of and at the same time, can’t really grasp until it’s too late not a rosy picture.
Dorothy;
I have note been here in several months and actually stopped by to comment on a few headlines in the news. However, I first saw this Oxytocin and had to comment, as trust and manipulation are hallmarks of a sociopathic relationship.
We all saw Red Flags and ignored them. We all questioned our own questioning of our misgivings regarding the sociopath. In my case, like many others, I blamed myself for his transgressions. In the end, however, he is what he is — a dark, manipulating individual with not a shred of empathy.
Nevertheless, while I intellectually recognize this, I still admit to harboring positive feelings FOR THE PERSON HE PRETENDED TO BE.
Why? Oxytocin. Since we have normal Oxytocin responses, we build trust and caring whereas the sociopath cannot.
Dorothy2 – we can’t fault ourselves for what we didn’t know. We all saw the warning signs and we all got caught because we didn’t know what they were. The love bombing seemed to be the true affection we’d always dreamed about – who doesn’t want to believe the words, “I love you” or “you’re the one I’ve been waiting for all my life”?
We can only live, learn and move on to something better.
Being able to be a loving person in life is nothing to be ashamed of. They are the ones who should have shame, but they don’t have feelings for anyone except themselves when they are in their illusion. They should feel the shame for perpetrating fraud against someone they tricked. Fraud is fraud. Everyone experiences fraud against them in some ways throughout life. Love is nothing to feel shame about.
dorothy2,
Thanks for the poem!It’s so full of meaning and I agree with Donna!After all the havoc and harm the sociopath has wreaked,they deserve to be lonely at the end…let them see how it feels!
Hey everyone, I’ve been gone for a couple weeks trying to keep a clear head and VERY proud of myself for going NC for almost a month now. Last Thursday I got an email with old photos of his son and I. i recognized immediately what he was doing I then get an email on Sunday Evening saying that he was missing me, missed sex, and wanted to go for dinner this week. I replied with a “I thought you have a new serious girlfriend isn’t this innappropirate? He replied with a big email about he only was dating casually and would never repeat mistakes and cheat on a girlfriend….
Today the most amazing incredible thing happened….
I live in a city of 1.5 million people….on my way home from work I pulled up beside his car at a stop light…there was a girl driving….I don’t know what came over me but I felt this incredible feeling and I flagged her over…. I rolled down the window and said is this so and so’s car? She said yes….I said are you his girlfriend?….she said yes….I asked her to chat. She said yes.
We exchanged stories for about 20 minutes…poor young girl totally hooped. We had an 8 month crossover in our dating. I showed her the email from the other night. We were both shaking. It was such an incredible profound moment.
He emailed me about a half hour later and said: “Why are you trying to ruin things for me….I really liked this girl.” I’m just in shock!
Since I started writing on here I really felt like it was ME who was the psychopath. To be honest I was googling bi-polar and personality disorders and sociopathism came up… now that I educate myself I see how dangerous he was. And every day I’m away I know I’m not crazy… he was. And I am hurting today that I fell into this trap
What does all this mean? How did it happen that I ran into this girl 2 days after he sent me these emails? I was doing fine with him stonewalling me. I was so hurt that he discarded me and then when I got the emails I’m not going to lie I was pleased that I could respond shortly and not care…. and then this happens and I uncover more lies. Why?
Serenity, astonishing coincidence! And a fantastic opportunity for you to now utterly discard his pitiful attempt to lure you back into his web of abuse. Duping delight, infidelity, bait and catch, discarding, assaulting you in the presence of his son…he really is the full package serenity. He is dangerous, yes. To you and to other women. You know what he is. No denial. No contact. No more email. Open a gmail account if you don’t have one. Go to mail filter in settings. Set it so all his mail bypasses your normal inbox, the one he knows, and goes straight to the gmail account. Don’t open the gmail account ever. Get a friend to set it up and to chose à password and tell her or him not to give it to you unless you need to check it to build an RO file in future. They don’t let go easy some of them. You have to be the one who let’s go. Peace and love serenity.
Just a reminder…they don’t come back because they love us. They come back because they enjoy hurting us, frustrating us, duping us, toying with us, taking what they want ( sex , housework childcare and money usually) and then leaving us or forcing us to leave them. And then as with yours the game is ” despite the fact that I have treated serenity like dirt I have the poser to make her come back for more. I’ll give that a go to prove she’s a fool who can’t live without me”. It’s just a game to them serenity. They don’t get hurt by it, they get results (sex, etc) which satisfies them temporarily, or they can’t persuade you back and they shrug and move on to fresh meat. Stay safe.
Tea Light: Great advice about opening a new email account and/or blocking their address. If you are on FB, you can also go to security settings and block their name and email address so they can not see you on FB at all. Very helpful.
Serenity12: I’m so glad you found this website. It is just terrible to go through that feeling of “Is this me?” Hopefully, his new victim will find the right educational information and figure him out. It was quite a gift of kismet for you to see her driving his car. Now you know what you know and no one can talk you out of it.
Thanks. I feel so numb today I just want to cry. I was SO upset that he was stonewalling me and so wished he would just contact me saying that he wanted me back and I’d be strong enough to say EFF OFF!! Which I was… and I thought getting the revenge of warning his girlfriend would make me feel better. I fantasized about all this like so many people on here do!! My “fantasy” came true 100% but why do I feel so crappy still? Just more proof the NC is the way to go for EVERY reason…
It’s tough not to trust a person you knew whether since childhood, or just a few years ago. You have shared many past experiences; same pizza place, many of the same people, same shops, etc. . You never heard or saw anything bad about that person. If life circumstances happen to let you randomly reconnect with that person during a vulnerable period of life (new college, new job, after a bad break up, any form of personal trauma), you could see that person as a form of stability, normalcy. It’s a built in link, a ready made bond.
In many ways, a physical link to your past, at a time of upheaval, is a drug. You think of a candy coated vision of what use to be, it’s easier than a somewhat unpleasant today. If something happens, doesn’t have to be earth shattering but just somewhat frustrating, during your new circumstances, you will turn to the person from the past. That person becomes a ‘quick fix drug’. They can put ‘today’ into perspective and remind you of something good from ‘yesteryear’.
That is all good. People, by nature, help each other. Unless you are a hermit, it’s hard to make sense of life by yourself.
But if the person from your past is a spath, it’s the road to certain destruction. A spath does not work like an aspirin to relieve a headache and done, rather they are much more insidious like heroin or meth eventually causing you to put your life on the way back burner in favor of them and only them. You no longer matter, all of your strength is zapped either by trying to please them or fearing them.
Some maybe be even like LSD or any other hallucinogens. They have taken so much of/from you that you only see the person you want to see, the person they told you they were, that you can not bring yourself to see the person that is really there. You actually hallucinate about the spath to others and worse to yourself. You don’t see the financial con man, rather the person who is going to pay you back next week, month, year. You don’t see the unemployed bum, you see the dream job right around the corner. You don’t see the abuser, you see yourself as the one deserving to be punished. The pictures your mind paints are a lot prettier than the reality of the spath.
I like your phrase about seeing a “candy coated” version of the sociopath. A very helpful way to look at it.
Hi Donna,
Once again, I am so grateful for this site and the education that I gather from reading here. I do not post as often as I did when I first began to wake from my trauma, but I surely have come a long way since I first found LF; a long way in my understanding of what actually happened to me and why. Thank you Donna for posting this article. I had heard of oxytocin’s role in these type of relationships, and this post just takes away any humiliation I have over being in love with someone when it all turned out to be a ploy and deception. The more I understand the dynamics of the natural bonding process, the less I blame myself for being a silly little girl.
Hello to Truthspeak, Blossom, Tealight, Oxdrover, and many others. I read many of your posts, and know that your words of mental sobriety touch more souls than just the one you may be addressing. I am grateful for your being here and still sharing what you have learned to help us understand how to go forward.
I did allow a break in NC. It was a further sliming. I think a little part of me still missed him, I was wishing there was something in him that missed me…quess I wanted to find out the hard way that he really did not care about me at all. Well, he let me know in his cold-hard way, that I meant nothing to him. More tears followed. I put blocks back up. You are all so right, when you say NC is the only way to begin to heal. There is nothing to hold out hope for…only ourselves and rebuilding from within, with solidity this time.
I have begun to look at myself. I am up and down on how I feel, some days, so much despair and self-recrimination. I took more slights and mistreatment from this man than I have ever tolerated before. The why of my willingness to submit and love a man who treated me with dishonor is a huge part of looking within to heal for me.
I need to be in love with me so much, that I will not love a man who is showing me in a million ways that he thinks I am worthless.
So much of what I did, was to please him, win his favor, get him to show me the love he poured on in first months. A desperate plea on my part, to get love out of a turnip. LOL
Still reading, somedays sad, some tears. So much to clean up in my lifestyle changes, that were not healthy choices. On a good note, I have gone from hysterical-devastated…to conscious and growing wiser in the 6 plus months since I have last seen him. It has only been 3~ wks. since I let NC break. I have no desire now to ever break NC again. I have no desire to ever see him again. There is still an ache within, but I think it is for something that had nothing to do with him, an empty place in me that he found, exploited.
Hugs to you all, thx for being her, for all you share.
Bluemosaic
Bluemosaic – If you are only 3 weeks away from him, it is understandable that you feel the way you do. You now sound like you have much stronger resolve. Focus on your own healing -you can do it!
You sound, overall Blue, just great. Really. I remember well the terrible pain you shared with us back in early spring. Heartbreaking, as you seemed so vulnerable then whereas Blue today’s post registers as so clear of purpose and clear minded. You are stronger than you credit yourself with being. You are a survivor. Not a victim. You have broken the spell. Don’t hurt yourself again. Blue. It is what it is. A cruel man. No contact forever kiddo! Peace and love to you today.
Thanks. I am not sure I am there 100% emotionally, but I am mentally.
I can relate to this comment about being there mentally but not emotionally as well. I had been a few months NC and was truly starting to believe through this site that it wasn’t me it was him….and that it was nothing personal. I got slimed yesterday and I feel back to square one:(
The Moral Molecule ”“ the source of love and prosperity HAH! What an eye-opener!
Well, this article only reinforces the fact that I need to LOVE BOMB MYSELF, to raise that level of oxytocin in my body for MYSELF, to learn to trust MYSELF and do what is right for ME. How do I do that? One step at a time, slowly, being VERY conscious of the choices I am making, not being pushed and rushed into decisions that I don’t feel comfortable with, not ignoring signs that something isn’t right for me.
It feels so odd to be nice to ME! To choose what I want to do! To protect and take care of myself. Even the ME, ME, ME tone of my response is offensive to me. Why is that? I am doing this now on a day by day basis, but it feels weird and selfish. Never who I was before. I hope I get used to it, because I like feeling this way and I’m a good person who I feel deserves it after being the “Giving Tree” all my life. Not just to the ex-spath, but to everyone. Wish me luck as I wish ALL of you luck on your road to (I hope) a speedy recovery from the damages. I am so happy now! My brain is not used to it!!
Newlife: Yes! Love Bomb ourselves. I like that. I had a therapist once who told me when I felt selfish for not rescuing everyone, to call it “self full” instead. To be selffull and take care of me.
NewLife43 – good to see you! You sound great! Keep focusing on “you” – and get comfortable with it!
Hi fight, the political theorist Iris Young borrows the feminist philosopher Marilyn Frye’s birdcage metaphor to describe the constraints we often face in life :
”The cage makes the bird entirely unfree to fly. If one studies the causes of this imprisonment by looking at one wire at a time, however, it appears puzzling. How does a wire only a couple of centimetres wide prevent a bird’s flight? One wire at a time, we can neither describe nor explain the inhibition of the bird’s flight. Only a large number of wires arranged in a specific way and connected to one another to enclose the bird and reinforce one another’s rigidity can explain why the bird is unable to fly freely”.
No one should judge a victim of abuse for facing difficulties in removing themselves from the abusive situation, whilst we should always, I believe strongly, advocate that leaving is always the ideal and should be carried out if at all possible.
Hi Tea: I don’t judge someone for leaving or going. I don’t judge any choice by a victim. Your discussion about birds in cages reminded me of one of my favorite short stories. It is called “Trifles” and I recommend it to everyone here. I believe you can find it on line and read it. It is a wonderful story about a community helping a victim. It is a very interesting perspective about making decisions about what is right and what is wrong. People can read “Trifles” and some may see the main characters as either good or bad depending upon their subjectivity while reading the story.
Fight, it was a general comment , what I wrote about noone having the right to judge those not ready to leave, not directed at you, it just followed the discussion with savvy.
Blue,
It is good to hear from you again! Congratulations,you sound stronger and more focused than ever!You’re gonna make it!
newlife43,
I had a difficult time learning to think about myself and be nice to myself,too!I’ve always been a giver,not a taker.But pampering myself in a balanced way has helped the healing process!
Blocking is our weapon and our shield. You have trouble building a file asking for an RO with the ones who keep coming back if we send them email and texts. It has to stop if we have made the decision that we have ended the relationship. It’s pretty straightforward in practical terms if you don’t live with or have kids with them to just refuse any digital or telecoms contact. Then their options are turning up at your work or home where you can refuse entry and call the police or can get witnesses to the stalking chiche is what it then is after This Relationship Is Now Over. That is not to minimise the trauma if those posters being stalked in exactly those ways. My point is just that call and text and mail blocking ZILCH from me for 2 months seems to have worked. Fingers crossed.