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WardNo1
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Source: https://thoughtcatalog.com/shahida-...xic-partners-and-emotionally-unavailable-men/
ad boys wreak havoc on our lives, our bodies and our brains. The reasons we love bad boys, toxic people and emotionally unavailable partners are not just emotional and psychological – they are downright biochemical.
The truth of the matter is, our brains can be rewired to fixate on people who aren’t good for us. Emotionally unavailable men, toxic partners such as narcissists or sociopaths and pickup artists alike all depend on these effects to get us hooked.It is important to note that for dopamine, researchers have discovered that wanting is different from liking. You may feel especially motivated or “want” and crave pursuing your toxic partner to gain a potential reward but not actually “like” or enjoy this activity in the long-term especially when you know it is harmful to you.
The catch? Dopamine flows more readily in the brain when there is a “intermittent reinforcement” schedule of rewards rather than a consistent schedule. The inability of a toxic partner to give us what we need leaves us pining for the good times and continuing to invest in the relationship, much like a gambler at a slot machine who hopes for a perceived gain despite the inevitable losses of such a risky investment.Dr. Helen Fisher discovered that this “frustration-attraction” experience of obstacles in a romantic relationship actually heightens our feelings of love, rather than hindering them.Emotionally unavailable men or otherwise toxic partners are masters of intermittent reinforcement; they do things on their own schedule – literally. They may disappear for days, they may have a plethora of side chicks, they may constantly woo you and also withhold from you that coveted relationship status. They’re always on the precipice of commitment or changing for the better before they press the reset button once again. They are always uncertain (or too certain when they’re sweet-talking you into bed) about the future, and they leave you guessing about their true intentions on a daily basis.When we don’t know the next time we’ll see someone or are unable to predict their next move, that person becomes much more alluring to our brain. So that nice guy who performs these kind acts consistently rather than periodically feels less rewarding to the brain than the bad boy who takes turns treating you to wonderful dates and then also mistreating you with his disappearances, false promises, ambiguous statements, hot-and-cold behavior and sudden withdrawals of affection.
In other words? Our brains can become masochists, seeking the very people that hurt them. They become so accustomed to good behavior from nice guys that they stop releasing as much dopamine.On the other hand, taking a reprieve from a toxic partner, which will surely happen at some point because he’s not one to stick around for too long before he’s onto the next best thing, gives the reward circuits of our brains a good “reset” so that the next time they’re into us and hoovering us back in, the dopamine effect feels that much sweeter.Research shows that when oxytocin is involved, betrayal does not necessarily have an effect on how much a person continues to invest in the person who betrayed him or her. So the deception of a toxic partner doesn’t necessarily derail us from trusting him blindly, especially if we’re physically enmeshed with him.Toxic partners evoke spikes in our levels of cortisol, adrenaline and norepinephrine, all of which regulate our reactions to stressful situations and work with our “fight or flight” response. Except what often happens in a toxic relationship is that we “freeze” in the relationship with a sense of learned helplessness rather than fight or flee (though we may also certainly fight too).
The release of stress hormones is sure to sharpen your focus on that particular partner, as we have a tendency to become hyper-aware of anything that has caused our stress hormone system to go into overdrive as an evolutionary response to threat. This is likely to cause you to seek out the source of both your comfort and discomfort: the toxic partner that simultaneously becomes both your safe haven as well as your shitty excuse for a relationship.The unpredictability, fear and anxiety associated with a partner who either causes you to walk on eggshells and habitually leaves your head spinning releases adrenaline which has an antidepressant effect. We can become addicted to this effect. Fear also releases dopamine, which again feeds those pesky reward circuits in our brain, leaving us longing for that adrenaline rush.Toxic partners and bad boys tend to dominate our brains 24/7 with their unpredictable behavior as well as their love-bombing, so it’s no wonder that we develop an otherwise irrational compulsion to go back to the very people who hurt us.