When we think of trauma, we don’t usually think of betrayal as being a source of it.
Your partner calls you an insulting name, uses you for money, disrespects your boundaries, or sleeps with your neighbor. Your friends tell you to leave them.
Your mom insults your appearance, asks intrusive questions, and causes a rift between you and your siblings. Your friends say the relationship is not healthy and you must set boundaries.
But you DON’T leave your toxic partner or set boundaries with your mother.
Instead, you avoid spending time with these friends and strengthen your relationship with the abusers.
Betrayal bonds are the glue keeping you attached to abuse. They’re a form of brainwashing that thrives on the trauma of breaking spoken or unspoken ‘contracts’ within intimate relationships where trust is required.
Make no mistake: you can’t heal from betrayal bonds (also known as trauma bonding) if you don’t actively accept that it’s happening. Unfortunately, many people in abusive relationships with narcissists tend to form a sort of tolerance against repeated betrayals. This is especially common for narcissistic abuse victims who are dependent upon the narcissist in their lives for housing, finances, or employment.
For many, pushing betrayal out of one’s conscious awareness is a survival strategy but, eventually, it becomes toxic to the targeted individual on a mental, physical, and spiritual level.
What are Betrayal Bonds?
Narcissists use betrayal trauma as reinforcement to control their victims.
Imagine you and a friend were in a car accident together. Your friendship strengthens after the accident because you both went through a traumatic experience together. But, this kind of trauma isn’t rooted in betrayal.
Narcissists, however, use betrayal trauma to manipulate and control your emotions.
The narcissist knows triggering fights, digging up your deepest fears, and cheating on you repeatedly is powerful. These events stir up your emotions. The narcissist understands that the trauma will make you feel emotions like shame, guilt, and worthlessness. That’s the whole point.
However, it goes deeper than that.
Narcissists also understand that the deep valleys of trauma leave you craving the positive peaks too. They hold (albeit superficial) emotions like love and gratitude hostage and dole them out in insignificant amounts to keep you begging for more.
Think of it this way.
Going through narcissistic abuse is a form of biochemical addiction. When someone is addicted to a drug, it’s fun at first – that’s why they start using. However, their tolerance builds as they continue taking the drug. Eventually, they build a dependence. They have more bad days staving off withdrawal than good days getting high.
In the depths of narcissistic abuse, you’re in the dependence stage of addiction.
The narcissist gives you tiny “hits” of love while flooding you with trauma most of the time. An example of this would be their making a promise to you that they will stop being unfaithful, but later you discover they never stopped.
It’s critical you realize that these “hits” of love are not genuine. They’re simply a strategic part of betrayal bonds.
How Betrayal Bonds Hold Back Narcissistic Abuse Recovery
Stockholm syndrome, betrayal bonds, trauma bonding – these are all terms describing similar phenomena.
Trauma bonds are vital for narcissists to manipulate your emotions, thoughts, and actions. It’s like being in a cult.
The narcissist thrives on the attention you give them during trauma. They love that you care so much to fight back, argue, and defend yourself so they can keep tearing you down. It’s what they live for.
They also love that the trauma strengthens the bond you share.
Surely you wouldn’t put up with this behavior from anyone else. Surely you must care deeply for them if you haven’t left.
They’ll use this as evidence to claim your relationship is intimate and unlike anything else. They’ll tell you other people can’t understand the complexities and layers you experience together.
And so you isolate yourself. You stop talking to your friends. You spend all your time, energy, and thoughts on the narcissist. The abuse seems normal, and you assume this is as good as it gets.
Trauma Bonding and the Path to Betrayal
Betrayal bonds are vital components of brainwashing.
Abusers isolate their victims, devalue their identity, and subject them to a traumatic event. The goal is to normalize the abuse so the victim won’t see a problem or possibly leave.
Narcissists follow a similar strategy with trauma bonding – this is called the path to betrayal.
Love Bombing
The narcissist first needs you to falsely believe they’re compassionate and loving. They’ll shower you with gifts and attention. They’ll make you believe you’re soulmates.
What you remember as an enthralling and joyful period of the relationship was actually a ruse of emotional manipulation to rope you into the narcissist’s trap. It’s also what activates the “arousal” neuropathway of addiction.
Initial trauma
A narcissist will begin testing your boundaries with insults, backhanded compliments, or slights on your character. They want to see how you react so they know if you’re a good supply for long-term abuse. Once they’ve been cleared for the initial trauma, they will begin ‘upping the ante’ to gauge just how far they can go. Slowly, like the metaphor of the boiled frog, you will begin tolerating higher levels of betrayal and trauma.
Gaslighting
If you defend yourself after the initial trauma, the narcissist will attempt to manipulate your thoughts and emotions with gaslighting. They’ll try to convince you that you took their words the wrong way or that they didn’t actually mean what they said/did.
When it comes to narcissists, perspecticide is always the end goal: narcissists don’t want you to think for yourself, they want you to think for them.
More trauma
Now that the narcissist knows you’ll accept their gaslighting, they’ll kick the abuse up a few notches. Narcissists often wait until you’re in a vulnerable position before they start their most intense abuse, such as after marriage, living together, or moving far away from your support system.
Minimizing and Projecting
In addition to constant gaslighting, the narcissist will also follow up intense abuse by minimizing it and projecting it back onto you. The narcissist will tell you they’re actually the victim, and what they did/said wasn’t so bad.
Maintenance Love Bombing
By this point, the initial love-bombing of the relationship is gone, and you find yourself suffering from worthlessness, guilt, and isolation. You welcome the short bursts of love the narcissist gives out in tiny pieces in-between fights. These instances of love bombing are important for reinforcing the betrayal bonds. This is why love bombing is always followed by hate bombing.
Repeated Cycle
The cycle of trauma, gaslighting and manipulation, and love bombing continues indefinitely until you leave or the narcissist discards you for a new supply.
What Do Betrayal Bonds Feel Like? 9 Signs
Betrayal bonds are tough to spot while you’re in the grip of narcissistic abuse. After all, the whole point is to brainwash you. Here are a few symptoms and signs you’re in the midst of trauma bonding.
- You defend, justify, or explain the narcissist’s abusive behavior to friends and family.
- You’ve given up explaining the abuse and isolated yourself from your support system – often at the narcissist’s suggestion or demand.
- You expect the narcissist will change one day even though they keep repeating the same abuse.
- Fights are unproductive (that’s by design). There’s no healthy communication, and the narcissist always turns your words around.
- The narcissist is always the victim – even when you bring up a clear-cut situation in which they hurt you. You may be mislabeled as the abuser.
- You fixate on the narcissist’s “good” (usually shallow) qualities like their natural talents, sex, money, job, or social status.
- You find yourself mourning the pilot stages of the relationship and believe things can go back to the way they were during the initial love bombing stage.
- You hide the narcissist’s most abusive behavior out of embarrassment or fear.
- You’ve accepted this situation as your fate. You assume no one will ever love you like the narcissist.
How to Start Breaking the Betrayal Bonds and Begin Narcissistic Abuse Recovery
The first step is to accept the narcissist will not change. If they could change, they would have or at least made some effort. Narcissists have no intention of changing for the better. They only introduce love bombing as a pay-off to keep you hooked and solidify betrayal bonds. It’s strategic and contrived.
Next, it’s important to talk to someone you trust about the abuse candidly. The narcissist has strategically isolated you from your support system to avoid this. Reach out to old friends or find new ones you trust.
If you can’t leave yet, don’t fight back. The narcissist thrives on fighting to solidify trauma bonds. Ignore them or give one-word answers.
Finally, the only way to free yourself from trauma bonding is to go 100% No Contact for good. If you share custody with the narcissist in your life, Extreme Modified Contact should be implemented. Comprehensive narcissistic abuse recovery is critical to avoid falling into the trap of betrayal bonds in the future.
