Initially, there’s a surge of affection, followed by the establishment of rules. A recent investigation from the University of Cambridge posits that numerous domestic abusers create strong attachments prior to the onset of violence, employing affection, confessions, and premeditated cruelty to keep their partners mentally entrapped. Through comprehensive interviews with 18 women in the United Kingdom, criminologist Mags Lesiak outlines a replicable tactic that transforms love into leverage, published in Violence Against Women.
Lesiak’s sample was intentionally distinct. Participants were financially autonomous, frequently lived separately from their partners, and safely concluded the relationships, yet many still experienced an urge to go back. This aspect is significant. It challenges the notion that trauma bonds primarily stem from captivity or dependency and redirects focus to the tactics of the abuser. The recurring dynamic that participants recounted begins with allure and culminates in submission.
“The patterns of manipulation, grooming, and coercion were so consistent that it was as if all these women were speaking about the same individual,” Lesiak stated.
The initial stages focused on overwhelming charm and commitment. Consider swift intimacy, grand displays, and constant attention that creates a vibrant life. Then, the colors shift. Verbal cruelty surfaces, followed in some cases by physical violence months later, interspersed with abrupt returns to gentleness. This fluctuation, reminiscent of the erratic blink of a slot machine, is deliberate. Intermittent reward and punishment comprise a conditioning schedule recognized to strengthen behaviors and complicate their cessation. The women endeavored to reconcile the individual they cherished with the one who harmed them, often blaming themselves amid the turmoil.
Another factor was personal history. Every participant reported negative childhood experiences, and many indicated that their partners disclosed accounts of their own trauma. Such mutual sharing can feel like a breath of fresh air after years of restraint. According to the study, abusers then reframed these narratives to rationalize violence or to belittle, asserting greater suffering or ridiculing confidences in public. What appeared to be intimacy functioned also as monitoring and dominance.
The Two-Faced Soulmate And The Conditioning Loop
The study identifies this type of perpetrator as the two-faced soulmate, a character that oscillates between a protective partner and a punitive judge. This alternation conditions compliance without overt restraints. Victims begin to anticipate punishment and strive to regain warmth. Even in the absence of shared living arrangements or financial dependence, breaking the cycle can be challenging. Three participants relocated to new cities to evade contact, likening the pull to addiction. This analogy correlates with reinforcement dynamics: unpredictable highs amplify pursuit, and uncertainty fuels checking behavior.
Lesiak’s framing also critiques prevalent models that emphasize victim pathology, like codependency. Such perspectives can misassign causality and obscure the active role of the perpetrator’s strategy. In contrast, the Cambridge analysis highlights intentional grooming, trauma-sharing as a tool, and the calculated alternation of care and cruelty. For professionals, this means screening for non-physical signs of entrapment, including sudden shifts from idealization to degradation, rehearsed stories of shared trauma, and systematic withdrawal of affection after minor boundary breaches.
“Victim attachment to an abuser is not a passive trauma response, but the result of deliberate brainwashing by a perpetrator,” Lesiak remarked.
I will concede a reporter’s bias here. When 18 individuals recount the same routine, I begin to seek a script. The interviews resonate as variations on a motif: flattery, secrets, tests, disdain, then solace. The reward is relief more than love, a subtle alteration that sustains the system. One woman expressed panic at a gas station near her former neighborhood. Nothing transpired, yet proximity alone heightened her unease. The body had internalized a landscape of pain.
Practice Implications: Recognize Strategy, Not Pathology
For law enforcement, clinicians, and advocates, the critical action is proactive detection. Document how affection is utilized, not just how harm manifests. Inquire about intense early dynamics, about competing suffering framed as bonding, about cycles concluding with apologies and gifts. Risk assessment tools should capture coercive control that leaves no visible marks or financial traces. Treatment programs should shift away from an automatic focus on victim shortcomings and instead disrupt the abuser’s patterns of reinforcement, including pattern interruption and trigger management informed by addiction science.
The article concludes with a straightforward assertion that extends beyond the sample: all bonds encompass care, endurance, and sometimes pain, but when care and cruelty are intricately woven together intentionally, the weave itself transforms into a weapon. Clearly identifying that strategy is an essential first step to dismantling it.
[Read the full study in Violence Against Women](https://doi.org/10.1177/10778012251379423)