Trauma Bonding: When Love and Harm Become Entangled

Most psychological traumas do not happen in isolation. They unfold in relationships. Close relationships—within family, romantic partnerships, or friendships—are where we form, attach, and shape our identity. Sadly, they can also be where our deepest wounds are inflicted.

I’m writing about trauma bonding because it is one of the most confusing, intense, and painful forms of human connection. A bond that can feel like love, yet slowly drains you and erodes your sense of self.

For those caught in such relationships, leaving can feel impossible. When children are involved, when there’s financial dependency, or when years of emotional investment bind the two people together, separation is not simply a difficult choice—it becomes a profound inner journey.

Almost a decade ago, I volunteered in a domestic violence shelter. I met women who had fled their homes with their children, seeking safety after years of abuse. Their stories—and many others since—helped me understand how complex and invisible this tie can be, the one that binds the victim to the very person who harms them.

What Is Trauma Bonding?

Trauma bonding is an intense emotional and psychological attachment between an abused person and their abuser, maintained through repeated cycles of abuse followed by moments of apparent care or affection. This unpredictable alternation creates a deep dependency, in which the victim comes to believe they cannot live without the one who is hurting them.

In healthy relationships, bonding is a positive process—it means closeness, intimacy, and mutual support. In trauma bonding, however, closeness becomes a survival response to abuse. The abused person may develop loyalty, sympathy, or even love for the abuser, because occasional affection and validation are woven in between episodes of harm.

This cycle is reinforced through intermittent reinforcement: rare positive behaviors strengthen hope that things will improve, despite repeated evidence to the contrary.

The term trauma bonding was first introduced in the 1980s by psychologists Donald Dutton and Susan Painter, who described this dysfunctional attachment marked by power imbalance and the alternation of abuse and reconciliation. In 1997, Patrick Carnes expanded the concept in the context of addictions and relationships defined by deep betrayal, highlighting its neurobiological underpinnings.

Attachment, the Brain, and the Repetition Compulsion

Our relationship choices are rarely accidental. The way we were loved, contained, or rejected in childhood shapes our attachment style—secure, anxious, avoidant, or disorganized—and deeply influences the connections we form as adults. In the absence of a healthy template, the brain seeks what is familiar, not necessarily what is healthy. This means we may be unconsciously drawn to partners or environments that reactivate old wounds.

Trauma bonding often begins in relationships that start with intensity, passion, and an illusion of safety. Over time, warning signs emerge—subtle criticism, sudden withdrawal, emotional invalidation, manipulation, or control. If we stay, the destructive cycle takes hold: abuse → reconciliation → hope → confusion → abuse again. This is the essence of intermittent reinforcement—a well-documented mechanism, even in animal studies—where alternating pain and apparent love produces an addictive emotional bond.

Neurobiologically, this dynamic activates the brain’s attachment, stress, and reward systems. Oxytocin (the bonding hormone), dopamine (linked to reward and anticipation), and cortisol (the stress hormone) flood the system in an intense hormonal mix. The brain’s natural opioid system also kicks in, dulling emotional pain and creating a false sense of safety. Over time, the bond itself becomes a form of emotional regulation—though one that is profoundly damaging.

On a psychological level, Freud’s repetition compulsion—the unconscious drive to recreate painful dynamics in the hope of resolving them—can keep people drawn to toxic or abusive partners. Where suffering was once part of the language of love in childhood, abuse may later be misinterpreted as intimacy.

In such relationships, the victim often internalizes the abuser’s perspective, loses trust in their own perceptions, and becomes increasingly dependent on the relationship for a sense of stability—even if that “stability” is harmful.

Understanding these mechanisms allows us to replace judgment with empathy, asking not “Why don’t they just leave?” but “What happened to this person, and how can they be supported to find themselves again?”

Common Stages of Trauma Bonding in Abusive Relationships

1. Love Bombing: The abuser wins over the partner with grand gestures, intense affection, lavish promises, and idealization—creating the illusion of the perfect relationship.
2. Building Trust and Dependence: The victim begins to feel safe and increasingly relies on the abuser for emotional needs. Dependency deepens.
3. Criticism and Devaluation: Once trust is secured, the abuser begins to criticize, undermine, and damage the victim’s self-esteem, sowing confusion.
4. Manipulation and Gaslighting: The abuser distorts reality, causing the victim to doubt their perceptions and judgment. Power shifts further toward the abuser.
5. Resignation and Surrender: The victim becomes emotionally exhausted and feels trapped, unable to leave or reclaim autonomy.
6. Loss of Self-Identity: Over time, the victim loses touch with their values, identity, and self-confidence, feeling adrift.
7. Addiction to the Abuse–Reward Cycle: The victim becomes dependent on moments of reconciliation and occasional validation, which reinforce the bond and make leaving feel almost impossible.

These stages are not universal, each person’s experience may vary, and not all abusive relationships follow the same pattern.

How Trauma Bonds Persist Over Time

Trauma bonds are reinforced by:

• Shame, confusion, and social isolation
• Dissociation, which increases tolerance for abuse
• Cognitive distortions (“They love me even if they hurt me”)
• Fear of attachment and abandonment, swinging between anxious closeness and withdrawal
• Inner conflict and ambivalence—seeking help but seeing therapy or friends’ interventions as threats to the relationship
• Self-blame for staying, returning, or feeling desire during abuse

The illusion of safety

In trauma bonding, the relationship does not provide true safety, but a false sense of emotional regulation. After abuse, reconciliation brings temporary relief that is mistaken for love. Neurochemically, oxytocin, dopamine, and cortisol are all released—a mix that deepens the bond even as the nervous system remains in high alert, hypervigilance, or emotional numbing.

Signs You May Be in a Trauma Bond

• You struggle to leave, even knowing the relationship is harmful
• You justify or excuse abusive behaviors
• You feel guilty for your reactions or for wanting to leave
• You avoid discussing the relationship or downplay what’s happening
• You feel stuck, confused, or emotionally dependent on your partner

Types of Abuse

• Physical: hitting, shoving, physical restraint
• Emotional: humiliation, silent treatment, shaming, constant sarcasm
• Psychological: gaslighting, veiled threats, distortion of reality
• Sexual: pressure, coercion, lack of consent, bodily control
• Financial: controlling money, restricting access to resources
• Spiritual: using religious beliefs to control

Healthy Relationship vs. Trauma Bond

In healthy relationships, conflict happens, but it is followed by accountability, empathy, repair, and growth. There is mutual respect, emotional safety, and freedom.

In trauma bonds, conflict becomes a tool of control. There is no genuine repair—only cycles of hope and disappointment, with the victim caught between guilt and fear.

While it’s clear that one person is visibly harmed, it’s also important to recognize that the abuser is often a deeply wounded person too. The dynamic is not always between a conscious “villain” and a helpless “victim,” but between two individuals carrying unhealed pain. The abuser may have their own history of insecure attachment, unresolved trauma, or mental health struggles. This does not excuse abuse, but it does help explain the pattern.

In such dynamics, both people can become trapped—one in enduring harm, the other in perpetuating it. Both may need psychological support: the victim to heal and reclaim their autonomy, the abuser to break the cycle and stop passing their own pain on to others.

Recovery: Breaking Free from a Trauma Bond

A trauma bond cannot be broken by willpower alone. Healing requires a gradual process of awareness, therapeutic support, self-discovery, and reconnection with one’s own identity. Naming the dynamic, recognizing its impact, and understanding its psychological and biological mechanisms are the first essential steps.

For the victim, recovery means both physical separation and emotional reconnection with the self—rebuilding trust in one’s own perceptions and learning to set healthy boundaries. It’s the journey of reclaiming emotional autonomy and creating relationships based on mutual respect and care.

For the abuser, recovery—if they are willing to engage—requires accountability and therapeutic support to interrupt destructive patterns, often inherited across generations.

Healing is rarely linear, but it is possible. With the right support—therapy, safe relationships, support groups—you can step out of the cycle of abuse and build a conscious, healthy, and compassionate way of relating, both with yourself and with others.

Recommended Resources

• TED Talk: Why Domestic Violence Victims Don’t Leave – Leslie Morgan Steiner
• Carnes, Patrick. (1997). The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships. Health Communications Inc.
• Herman, Judith L. (1997). Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence – From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. Basic Books.
• Heller, Laurence & LaPierre, Aline. (2012). Healing Developmental Trauma: How Early Trauma Affects Self-Regulation, Self-Image, and the Capacity for Relationship. North Atlantic Books.
• Van der Kolk, Bessel. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking.
• Price, MaryCatherine. (2022). Unbroken: The Trauma Response Is Never Wrong – And It’s Your Superpower. Sounds True.
• Levine, Peter A. (1997). Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. North Atlantic Books.