Page 108 of Shielding Instinct

“We were walking on the path and spotted a cub lying in the sun, balanced belly-down on the railing. So cute. He was there for a while, and nobody saw his mom. Finally, he gets down, and we see him wander away. I turned around the bend and went to the railing to see down. There I am, face to face—I mean, feel her exhale on my skin kind of face to face—with this mama bear. Her cub is by her side.”

Hawkeye pulled the potato chip away from his mouth. “Shit!”

“Nah. I saw that mama bear and said, ‘Hey, mama, you’re doing a mighty fine job with your cub. I’m so proud of you.’ The mom looks at me like – I agree, thanks for noticing, and she and the cub lumber off.”

He ate the chip. Then another. And a third. “That could have gone so badly.”

“She could have eaten my face. Easily. But I didn’t send off any scared vibes. She didn’t feel any danger from me. We were good. And guess what?”

“No clue.”

“I saw her by the river about fifteen minutes later, and she pulled a salmon from the water and fed it to her cub.”

Hawkeye gave Petra a high five. “Congratulations.” He ate another chip. “I have a question for you. I’m leaping a cavern to a whole new topic.”

“Leap away,” Petra said.

“Actually it’s not such a leap,” Hawkeye corrected. “I was thinking about this because of the fawning topic when I was asking if I could buy a lady a drink.”

“Okay.”

“Is there a scientific way to know if a person is your person?” Hawkeye asked.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a blood test for love? ‘I see, Miss Armstrong, that your blood is saturated in X and Z. Congratulations. May you live happily ever after.’” Petra looked out to sea as she said that.

Her brain was busy.

Hawkeye waited.

“That was flip,” she turned back to him. “You want a real answer.”

“I would, if you don’t mind.”

She nodded. “I think this goes back to the word crush. You used it the other day. Some people have an experience where, because of an emotional connection, life seems bright and shiny. They think, oh, this is what the poets were writing about. This is how it happens in the movies. This is real. And then the light switches off, and you almost hate the other person because the joy you felt feels like it was stolen from you?”

“That second part I’ve never experienced. I’m referring to the first part.”

“Yes,” Petra said, “that’s just chemistry.”

“Literal chemistry—not like the phrase ‘we just had good chemistry.’”

“Is there a difference?” Petra asked.

“I don’t know.” Hawkeye rubbed his thumb along his jaw. “I feel like we might be in an odd loop here.”

“Okay, let me take a stab at answering you, and then you tell me if I’m off the mark. I’m approaching this first part from the perspective that one person in the relationshipis either a psychopath, a sociopath, or someone who survived a high-trauma childhood. When you’re with this person, and you feel seen and appreciated and cared for, you feel safe. The conversation flows. You are glowing.”

“Okay.”

“Now, walk away. The new love went home. You’re left standing in your living room alone. How do you feel in the following minutes, hours, and days? What do you feel after you’ve had some space from this person? Are you depleted? Do things seem grayer? Do you relive your time together and have bad feelings about how things went? Places where you felt unease? You see, a manipulator will have figured you out. They are experts at it—cult leaders reign supreme in this way. What they’re giving you chemically is dopamine.”

“Dopamine, okay.”

“It’s one of the reasons why, in a cult,” Petra said, “you need to be kept away from others, kept close, and continually fed the dopamine so you constantly glow.”

“They know they're doing this?”

“Some do. Cult leaders do,” Petra said. “Survivors of childhood trauma aren’t as aware. Their goal is to keep things calm and stay on the good side. It’s a safety measure, not malevolence. Think of it this way: there are people who kill for a living—you did, I have to assume. People who kill without moral impetus are psychopaths. People who kill for the greater good—the security and protection of their clan—are warriors. The reason for the kill is defined by whether we, as a society, think of them as good or bad.”

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