Researchers have found that a pulse of the brain hormone oxytocin—instigated by a soft touch or caress—enhances trust, and a squirt of testosterone makes people more skeptical.
Although this article doesn’t address it, these hormones have implications in dealing with sociopaths. The predators instinctively seem to know that proclaiming their love for a target, and getting the person into an intimate relationship, makes the target more likely to trust them. And then the sociopaths go to work as exploiters.
Read She doesn’t trust you? Blame the testosterone on NYTimes.com.
Link submitted by a Lovefraud reader.
Thanks! I am ok just so busy. I still check back on this thread and read articles here on LF as much as I have time for. I got a few minutes tonight to read a bit. I ordered Just Like His Father and I’m hoping I’ll have it soon. That will be my greatest vindication if I manage to prevent my son from being a spath.
OMG……..what a gift it is to know that I’m not the only one!! That I’m not the crazy one!! That I’m not the B—-! I am a normal, loving person who has been dealing with this for 30 years….when I first married my husband and he and his little S-path daughter (from an S-path as well) moved in with me….I could never have seen what was about to happen to me…now, I had been around kids all my life, loved kids…..but the moment I laid eyes on this kid, I felt like I was looking into the eyes of an animal that was going to attack me at any time..I gladly took on the responsibility of her (her bio Mom had abandonded them both,no surprise there)because I also had a daughter close to her age and I thought it would work out….I could never understand why I could not stand for this kid to touch me, or even be in “my space”…..it repulsed me..to this day (she is 32) and I still cannot stand for her to touch me…I would literally get palpitations, agitation, you name it….all the instincts in my gut still scream at me to RUN !! I blamed myself for decades and she of course blamed me too….but now my eyes have been opened !!!! God bless all of you who are willing to share things you may have bottled up for decades like I have…because by doing that you have made me and others feel validated. It is not easy to get on here and admit the things we overlooked, or refused to see that possibly costs us decades of our lives and almost our own sanity, but it does have healing benefits. Now we know, they are real, they are in our families, at our jobs, in our Churches, and sometimes in our very bed. They never change. Our God given insticts are what make us recoil from them…I will never feel guilty for not touching her again….and it’s true, their touch is never comforting or soft, it’s mechanical always with an agenda attached! Theirs……
Nice. This other book Testosterone is Your Friend: A Book for Both Men and Women. is quite similar to this one, I actually made a review about it.