Trauma Bonding: Love as Addiction Trauma bonding is when you're so heavily attached to a toxic person that you are willing to maintain a relationship, even at the expense of yourself for the few and far between highs. Your brain gets highly addicted to the habitual ups and downs of oxytocin, dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, that even when the relationship ends, you will seek and crave the person, or become obsessive, or seek similar people in order to get your fix. It's the rewiring of the neurological pathways of love, turning against itself. The loss of love makes you crave them more. You're dependent in the same way a heroin addict is.