One of my patients, a middle-aged drug dealer and pimp, explained how he turns a young woman. His specialty was turning nice-looking young women into prostitutes to work for him. He would pick out a clean-looking virgin, court her, and give her great sex. Her hormones would then bond her to him - "I love him." Physiologically, big doses of prolactin and oxytocin are released with caressing and especially orgasm. I had a chance to see the results of this in action a year or so later when his IV drug use had given him an infection that destroyed his tricuspid valve, so he was always short of breath. The young, middle-class woman with him was adamant that he should get disability!! Now, I have known men who dealt drugs out of a wheelchair, so it was my opinion that he could still support himself, but of course he was now too short of breath to bring a woman to orgasm!

What you CAN say to the abused woman is "your hormones are deceiving you". She got attached before she was abused, and the abuser may very well make up after the abuse with more great sex. It feels like love, but it is a trick of nature.

Carolyn