Lovefraud frequently hears from readers who have been discarded by sociopaths, but still feel like they’re in love with them, and can’t get them out of their minds. We frequently tell these readers that sociopathic relationships are very much like addictions.
Now, there’s proof. A recent study found that “the pain anguish of rejection by a romantic partner may be the result of activity in parts of the brain associated with motivation, reward and addiction cravings,” according to Science Daily.
Read Romantic rejection stimulates areas of brain involved with motivation, reward and addiction on sciencedaily.com.
Link submitted by a Lovefraud reader.
southernman429
And if the addiction isn’t enough to shame us.. lets add the fact that it was never real on their part… for it was a covert plan to seek and destroy for their amusement…yet the brain still wants them….I believe that doubles up on the “anguish” part….
Ox Drover
Hi Southern man! Long time no “see”! Hope you are well and things going great for you! I hope your part of the south isn’t as hot and humid as mine is!
Though I have LITTLE confidence in the reliability of the fMRI due to some studies showing it is not real reliable, I don’t doubt this study as it is pretty easily seen that the behavior we feel is like an addiction. Hey, I’m about 9 months out of stopping smoking and off the nicotine replacement for about 2-3 months, and you know folks, you can “relatively easily”get drunks off booze but off nicotine? NO WAY! You can get folks off all kinds of drugs except NICOTINE! THAT STUFF IS TOUGH! Did you notice the article about that near the linked one? I sure did.
Getting un-addicted to the Psychopaths is difficult, but we are doing it so will just keep on truckin’ !!!
purewaters3
It’s amazing, after everything, how my ex-socio lurks in my mind like a huge black shadow. Still, after almost a year, anytime I catch someone with the same first name, during movie trailers, commercials, radio, it sends me into a panic… mixed with deep pain.
I don’t confuse this “presence” so much as love or any sort of good thing. And, when I do catch myself thinking in a quasi-wistful romantic way, I quickly remind myself how unhealthy it is to relate my ex-sociopath relationship to healthy love.
This is just my brain, its phantom nerves – seeking a connection…wanting and needing to have some sort of closure on a loss that I can’t accept – wanting to go back to a time where he was important to me… where I was a step away from figuring out what was wrong – so, I could fix it, and get back to some semblance of normalcy and peace. A place where a happy conclusion was possible.
When something is broken, you can do something about it. But, not with a sociopath. You can never fix them, your relationship, or the past. All of that is a failed dream – become a real, living nighmare.
I think this whole thing speaks of the hardwired integrity and pro-social nature of the brain – that it would stimulate the areas associated with motivation, reward and addiction cravings… all the things necessary to deal with an emergency situation, or a situation turning sour.
It’s like we’re “built” to try to save, fix, and improve – else, we fixate on it and mourn deeply.
southernman429
I agree purewaters.. nicely said… there is still a part of me that is angry that she was disordered…. I somehow think if she was not, we could have had it all… but then again..who knows?…….
Rosa
I like the last sentence of the article….
” If attachment responses decrease as the days go by and falling out of love is a learning process, there could very well be physiological evidence that time heals all wounds.”
Yes, time heals.
purewaters3
Southernman,
If my ex-sociopath had not been disordered, the relationship would never have been, in the first place.
He would have treated his ex-wife lovingly and respectfully (not driving her into a mental breakdown, and leaving her, slandering her as he left onto other women – convincing everyone, including me, that it was her fault)…
And, I would not have been his next “victim”.
The person that I was “in love” with was a beautiful creation of my own mind, and his manipulation. It was doomed from the start. There are no “what if’s” for me, anymore.
southernman429
Again.. interesting point purewaters… kinda like “The Butterfly Effect”….I’m smiling at that thought….
Wini
What gets me is that it’s all energy. You expend energy being good and of course you expend energy being an ash. Why in the world would anyone want to do the latter if it’s expending energy anyway?
Then I have to go back to Jesus telling us the answer … that it is the difference between spiritual thinking and carnal thinking.
silvermoon
Sooner or later , it boils down to: I quit.
At the end of the day, we were lied to and played for what they could get – sex, power, supply.
They used who we are against us. And its a potent deception.
Once you cut them off for a few months and get back in the world with normal people, its interesting how little that experience of longing happens…
Gaslighting, love bombing, brainwashing- that stuff works. And careful not to let it happen again is the real!
It means changing the receptors and seeking something different than what we got.
erin1972
Mine was my first love-at age 36. I was SO in love with him. Before I found LF I was 10 months post breakup and still wanting him and crying for him sometimes. When I was discarded it wasn’t expected and it hit me like a ton of bricks. The night before we were planning our future together. I was so devastated that I couldn’t work for 4 months and didn’t sleep hardly at all because I cried for him constantly. I never cried so much in my entire life.
It was so important for me to learn on here that I was in love with an illusion-the person he pretended to be. He could have gotten a freakin academy award for the acting that he did in our relationship. He seems to me now like a pathetic shell of a person and he’s a bigtime coward.
It’s still hard to come face to face with his wife-like I did at work today and look at her and know that she doesn’t know that I’m the one she was threatening last year. She doesn’t know when she sees my face that she is looking at the woman she promised to “take down”. Today was my first time face to face with her and I was A LITTLE unnerved-even though she can no longer do me any harm. She can’t run me out of another job. It’s just creepy to me. My boss was walking around the hospital with the CEO and motioning for me to put my name badge on but she has no idea that the spaths wife’s office was close to where we were standing.
I am not afraid of her. I just have a bad feeling that I can’t describe that is nervous. I feel nauseous. I’m just not yet ready to have her see my badge yet and know who I am.