Study shows how domestic abusers forge ‘trauma bonds’ before violence begins

Before going on to commit violence, domestic abusers use a mix of intense affection and emotional cruelty, combined with tales of their own childhood trauma, to generate a deep psychological hold that can feel like an “addiction” according to some victims.

A new study by a University of Cambridge criminologist outlines a tactical playbook deployed by male abusers to engineer a “trauma bond”: an attachment based on cycles of threat and relief that leaves victims desperate for approval.

While this bond is typically viewed as a response to violent trauma, researcher Mags Lesiak argues it is, in fact, intentionally manufactured by perpetrators using strategic systems of control long before they leave visible marks.

As such, Lesiak says that recovery strategies relying on theories of codependency “shift blame onto victims” while ignoring the “deliberate brainwashing” by abusers.

For a study published in the journal Violence Against Women, Lesiak conducted extended interviews with 18 women who had suffered repeated domestic violence during a relationship.

To investigate the roots of attachment beyond “captivity”—the active threat of harm, or control via shared housing, children or finances—women recruited for the study were economically independent and often lived away from abusers during the relationship.

Importantly, the women’s relationships had all safely ended. Yet most held a seemingly inexplicable desire—even to themselves—to return to the abuser. Participants included doctors, a dentist, a science teacher and a chef.

“Patterns of manipulation, grooming and coercion were so consistent it was as if all these women were talking about the same man,” said Lesiak, who is conducting a Ph.D. at Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology.

“This is a distinct perpetrator profile. Specific techniques are used to construct and then weaponize love to produce a form of psychological captivity. As with the victims in this study, it can tether women to abusers even without physical or financial coercion.”

“Victim attachment to an abuser is not a passive trauma response, but the result of deliberate brainwashing by a perpetrator,” Lesiak said.

“The abuser’s psychological tactics can get obscured by ideas of codependency, which suggest that a victim is partly culpable due to something broken or masochistic within. Domestic abuse isn’t about victim pathology but perpetrator strategy.”

Lesiak, who spent a decade in frontline mental health and domestic violence services, identified three core themes running through the interviews. An experience all the women shared is what Lesiak terms the “two-faced soulmate.”

Abusers displayed an outward charm and often a fierce devotion to their partner, particularly early on. This gave way to cruelty, with verbal and then—months later—often physical abuse randomly juxtaposed with a return to warmth and affection.

“It fits patterns of intermittent reward and punishment, a staple of grooming,” said Lesiak. “Many women described classic love-bombing in the early stages. Some spoke of such intense happiness that other non-abusive relationships paled in comparison.”

“These relationships start with enchantment. The coercion and abuse that follows is so disorienting, it leaves victims desperate to preserve the earlier image of their abuser.”

Study participants all reported childhood trauma—from emotionally distant parents to sexual abuse. The perpetrators cultivated a sense of shared pain, coaxing personal histories out of the women by sharing accounts of their own traumatic childhoods.

This information was exploited by abusers as a tool of control, either to generate false intimacy, or through humiliation: belittling their partner over who had it worse, or using it to mock them in front of others.

“All the perpetrators co-opted the healing potential of mutual trauma to justify abuse, foster dependency, and obscure responsibility for their own actions,” said Lesiak.

Lastly, when asked how they felt about their former partner, most women compared their situation directly to addiction, and admitted retaining a compulsion to see their abuser despite clear cognitive understanding of this impulse as destructive.

“While it is uncomfortable, I must respect the language used by the participants, and it was explicitly that of addiction and craving. Several women related it directly to hard drug use,” said Lesiak. In fact, three study participants relocated to new cities just to reduce the chances they would reinitiate contact.

“Abusers make sure their partners experience euphoric highs and desperate lows,” said Lesiak. “This creates a powerful psychological reward system that operates on the same logic as a slot machine, with unpredictable wins, sudden losses, and escalating self-blame.”

Lesiak argues that professional training for police and other frontline workers should include recognizing non-physical forms of entrapment—such as the “two-faced soulmate” profile—as indicators of coercive control.

“All human bonds involve care, endurance, and sometimes pain. By coupling cycles of affection and cruelty with the exploitation of shared trauma, abusers create a bond they can use as a tool of control.”