(MENAFN- The Conversation) At first, it looks like love. He's charming. Always generous, always attentive. He remembers your coffee order, listens to your stories, seems to share your pain. He tells you that you're the only one who understands him. But as the relationship deepens, the warmth starts to fade. He becomes distant, defensive, unpredictable. You try harder to reconnect. You think: maybe it's me.

This pattern of affection followed by withdrawal is often mistaken for the natural turbulence of intimacy. In fact, it can be a form of coercive control : a deliberate manipulation of attachment designed to entrap rather than connect.

For decades, survivors who stayed with abusive partners have been labelled by some as codependent or masochistic – blamed for the abuse and asked:“Why didn't you just leave?” My new research with colleague Loraine Gelsthorpe, published in the journal Violence Against Women, challenges this outdated view.

We conducted in-depth interviews with 18 female survivors of abuse, and discovered a psychological“playbook” – a set of recurring strategies used to gain trust, create emotional attachment, and then use that attachment as a means of control.

Many of the women I interviewed spoke about their experiences of earlier trauma (often childhood neglect, abuse or loss) and how their abusers appeared to share similar experiences. Survivors described feeling deeply seen or“understood” by someone who shared their pain.

The perpetrators used this connection to create a sense of closeness and emotional intensity early in the relationship, but then later used it against their victims. Personal disclosures were turned into weapons – repeated back during arguments, mocked in front of others or used to justify the abuser's own behaviour.

The study shows that “trauma bonding” is not necessarily a passive response, but rather, an attachment actively manufactured by perpetrators through grooming, trauma-sharing and manipulation – a strategy of control.

In our research, we found a recurring pattern that survivors described as the“two-faced soulmate”: the abuser who appears deeply loving, even soulful, while concealing manipulation beneath warmth.

The two-faced soulmate. Yta23/Shutterstock

The women described cycles of unpredictable behaviour: tenderness followed by sudden withdrawal, verbal cruelty softened by moments of warmth.

Like a slot machine, the abuser delivers unpredictable rewards such as a sudden apology, a tender message or a flash of charm – just enough to keep the victim emotionally hooked. Survivors described this cycle as maddening: not knowing when affection would come, but still hoping it would.

This is what behavioural science calls intermittent reinforcement , a powerful way to condition behaviour. When rewards are rare and unpredictable, the brain doesn't disengage, it craves and tries harder.

The bond that forms isn't irrational, it's neurologically reinforced. And that craving, that confusion, becomes the abuser's tool. They don't need to use force. The schedule of rewards does it for them.

A rising form of control

In England and Wales, reported domestic abuse is at record levels. In the year ending March 2024, 2.3 million adults experienced domestic abuse – 6.6% of women and 3% of men. While most forms of crime are falling, recorded violence against women has risen by more than a third since 2018.

Reporting of psychological abuse has also increased. In England and Wales, police recorded 45,310 offences of coercive or controlling behaviour in the year ending March 2024 – up from 17,616 in 2017.

These offences capture not physical violence but domination through monitoring, gaslighting, isolation and control over victims' everyday lives. Research shows that coercive control is now more commonly reported than physical or sexual abuse in many contexts, and is often the primary mechanism of entrapment.

In our study, all participants reported experiencing psychological abuse, and the majority also described episodes of physical violence. However, the emotional control was not simply a parallel form of harm – it was the gateway to later physical abuse.

The emotional attachment through grooming, flattery and trauma sharing created a dependency that made subsequent physical aggression easier to dismiss, deny or endure.

Detecting invisible abuse

All participants in our study were financially independent, lived separately from their abusers and faced no explicit threats. Yet they described feeling emotionally captive – unable to leave the relationship without unbearable guilt, fear or confusion.

Coercive control in relationships isn't obvious – it can involve subtle shifts in tone, behaviour and emotional volatility. Traditional risk assessment tools used by police are not designed to detect these subtler dynamics, and often fail to register coercive patterns when there is no recent physical violence.

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Survivors' distress may be misinterpreted as personal deficits –“attachment issues”,“poor boundaries” or“emotional instability” – thus shifting the focus on to her psychology rather than his tactics of control. Participants reported being dismissed by therapists, friends and professionals, or told that their reactions were overreactions or signs of emotional fragility, not valid responses to sustained manipulation.

Organisations working with survivors need a broader understanding of abuse that includes the psychological tactics outlined in this research. Signs like emotional compulsion, sudden mood swings or manipulative displays of vulnerability are not“soft” or secondary – they are part of how abusers gain control.

Such behaviour is often missed because it doesn't leave bruises – yet it forms the emotional infrastructure that keeps victims trapped.

If institutions continue to define coercion only through visible threats or violence, they will miss its most insidious form: control that is designed to feel like love.

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