Psychopathic Eye Contact: The Love-bombing Glare
Just a quick post, about one of the smaller red flags that you might want to stick in your survival kit.
Psychopaths in particular are said to frequently share this quirk, which they exhibit during the love-bombing idealisation phase of the abuse cycle. During this stage, the abuser is doing whatever it takes to facilitate a one-way emotional attachment, as quickly as possible. Either it is a cruel way to boost his ego, or he intends to exploit the unreciprocated attachment during the devaluation phase. An abuser will do all sorts of things to try to get the attachment going (e.g., to get the other person to fall in love with him). However, broadly-speaking, he must convincingly act as though the attachment is reciprocated. He will shower the target with intense attention, affection, intimacy, praise, promises, reassurances, and so on, in order to get the attachment to form as quickly and strongly as possible. Intensity is the part of genuinely falling in love that is the easiest for an abuser to emulate.
Anyway, this is just a comparatively small red flag, which is supposed to be characteristic of psychopaths during the love-bombing stage. Specifically, psychopaths characteristically use intense eye contact. During the idealisation stage of the abuse cycle, a psychopath will fix the target with unblinking, intense eye contact, as a way of suggesting a deep connection, sincerity of feeling, and a sensation of singular focus and specialness. Psychopaths deploy this tactic intermittently during the idealisation phase, even when the occurrence of the eye contact would not have occurred naturally. In other words, intermittently, the psychopath will noticeably decide to do the eye contact thing, and then simply make it happen. E.g. he might even physically grab the person's head and turn it towards him, just so that he can fix her with the intense eye contact (sound familiar?). Psychopaths also tend to use this technique during sex, which is something else that they are renowned for using in order to facilitate a bond quickly.
Lastly, a psychopath might even use the intense eye contact for the purpose of distracting or deflecting, during a perceived conflict or upset that occurs during the idealisation phase. In such a case, the eye contact achieves two things. It interrupts the emotion that the other person is expressing or the assertion that she is making, and abruptly changes the direction of the conversation away from the abuser's unwanted destination. Moreover, it does this in a way that at least suggests a deep understanding of the other person, or a sincerity of feeling, or a genuine connection, without (and this is the point) actually consisting in any tangible evidence of these things. In other words, by establishing intense eye contact with the other person, the abuser gives the strong impression that he is listening, and that he deeply cares, and that everything will be okay because of the special connection that he shares with the other person, without actually having to do anything. He doesn't have to think of something appropriate to say, or exert any effort at all. He doesn't have to genuinely listen, or genuinely care.
I know that this is a comparatively minor thing to mention. But these sorts of red flags are only helpful indicators en masse. So it's worth being on the look out for this particular quirk. Keep your eyes peeled for that intense we have a connection glare.