Intermittent Reinforcement...

It is a behavioral principle.  It is the strongest reinforcer.  When the rat knows it will get the pellet on the 3rd or 57th push, it will push 3 times or 57 times and then stop.  But if the rat is never sure when the pellet will come, it will hit that mother fucking lever until it is dead.

And this basically describes the status of relationships in our world today...

We are all the walking wounded.  We all have our trauma, our issues, our attachments styles and our wounds.  And instead of seeing each other as partners in healing, we are just triggering each other and making everything worse.  (I know this isn’t everyone, but please indulge me here a little given what I do for a living and my knowledge base, I am not seeing the successful relationships...I see the dumpster fires, so for the purposes of this blog, assume we are excluding people who are happy and content and not fucking their relationships up...which is less than 50% of the population by the way...)

In relationships the intermittent reinforcement takes many forms:  sexual desire, presence, words of affirmation, attention, desire, engagement...but none of these are sustainable.  The avoidant person will only be capable of giving these things sporadically, thereby setting up the anxious person’s nervous system for a roller coaster ride that isn’t fun and makes them want to throw up, forever. Then let’s add the personality disordered to the mix - they intentionally set up the intermittent reinforcement...it all kicks off with love bombing which gets you hooked and conned into believing that you are special and wanted and desired.  That everything you have EVER WANTED is happening to you right now with this person that is there in front of you lighting you up.  Except, it isn’t real. How do you know?  Just wait, that is my best advice for getting into a relationship if you want to avoid being gaslit into a high conflict relationship. W A I T!  Slow down everything.  Make it so slow that it feels like you are crawling.  If you are engaged with a high conflict personality they will not be able to take the slow and steady approach.  They will not be able to sustain communication, desire, need and want over a protracted period of time. If you don’t give them what they want RIGHT FUCKING NOW, they will move onto another source where they ARE able to get what they want immediately.

Waiting is the BEST possible defense to getting love bombed and gaslit into a relationship that will drain you emotionally, physically, sexually and spiritually.

Back to the intermittent reinforcement...

If you have childhood wounds dealing with abandonment or not feeling wanted, you grew up never knowing when or if you are going to be wanted, engaged or desired. And this takes on a life of its own.  Just about the time you are starting to doubt your worth (which is where you go all the time anyway) the avoidant person will give you exactly what you are looking for, in just the right amount.  Your relational lever hitting pays off and your brain gets the message, “See, if I just am patient then I will get what I want and need from this person...”  WRONG!  You will just get more of the same shit you have already gotten...intermittent attention, desire and communication.  But since you never know when you are going to be rewarded, you just keep hanging in there, waiting.

What I have seen work is the slow down.  Love bombing works because it feels so fucking good.  FINALLY someone realizes how wonderful you are!  You have been waiting for this person to show up for so long and now they are here!  But the timing is all wrong - everything is pressured, everything is hurried.  Sex comes fast and early, communication is sporadic and intense, dates give way into cohabitating way too soon.  Too much time is spent, boundaries are ignored and you get lost in the heady emotions and chemicals of love, sex and desire.  Leaving you completely defenseless against the charms of the uncommitting and crazy.

Love is slow.  Trust takes time and when you allow a relationship to kick off and up in a manner that doesn’t give love and trust and respect time to grow and deepen, you get what is all over social media these days:  a relational nightmare that is very hard to leave.

Why do we keep going back?  Intermittent reinforcement.  It really is that simple.  You keep thinking, “well, this hasn’t been going all that well...I don’t feel seen or heard...” And just at that perfect time, the love/attention pellet drops and you are like, “oh, wait, perhaps my expectations are too high or much, see they do care and are capable of showing up...” But they aren’t, not every day, not all the time.  A toxic relationship is always going to have the following:  intense emotions followed by period of absence (unreturned texts and phone calls and missed dates), poor communication (it will be through text message which is a horrible way to communicate in an intimate connection) and the communication will be way too intense or the other person will tailor the conversation away from what is at issue and towards you being too much or that nothing is wrong so why you tripping? Another hallmark of a toxic relationship is the timeline.  Healthy relationships take their time in developing.  Sex is something that is appreciated and valued and can wait until you are more sure about each other.  Communication is consistent and isn’t something that is withheld to control or manipulate you.  There is transparency in intention, “I like you, I am not seeing others because I like you enough to see where this goes...”

So many relationship go wrong because we are afraid to ask the hard questions early because we are afraid to find out that what we need and want isn’t really in this person before us.  So we delay and just get further entranced in the toxicity that seems to proliferate a million fold for every second we stay in it.

I really want to make this simple for everyone.  If you don’t want to get involved in a toxic shitshow do the following:

1.  Notice the principle of intermittent reinforcement.  See it in your life in other areas.  Think slot machines.  Why do people stand there for hours mindlessly putting quarters into the machine?  Because they are never sure when it is going to pay off...if you are doing this in any fashion in your romantic relationships, you are headed for very big and large trouble.  Safety and security should be the beginning of a healthy relationship - not waiting around to see if what’s her name is going to show up today or not!

2. WAIT - slow it all down.  Wait until you actually have a track record with this person BEFORE you sleep with them. Make it clear from the outset that you are NOT going to jump into bed with them. That you want to get to know them as a person BEFORE you know them sexually.  This doesn’t mean no physicality at all, just slow your roll until you actually see how the person you are interested in shows up (or not) over time. If you are dealing with an avoidant or personality disordered person, they will not be able to tolerate the waiting and will go seek a more ready source.  Will this suck?  Fucking yes it will, but I promise you it will suck a lot less than doing the fast lane shit where by the time you figure out that you are being lovebombed and gaslit, you are so far in that it is hard to get out.

3. Say the things.  Ask the questions.  Who gives a shit if they are offended???  Don’t hold back.  Ask the hard questions, if they leave, GOOD! That is what you want, you want to ask the hard shit early so that you run off the narcissist and the avoidants...remember, for the right person, open communication will be welcomed. They will look at hard conversations as a way to deepen the bond instead of seeing it as a threat.  If you pull punches early, you will just go more rounds getting your ass kicked.

4. Trust your gut.  I have never one time gotten involved with someone or something toxic that I didn’t at least feel was off from the outset.  I just didn’t care enough about myself in that moment to make another choice.  I wanted to be dazzled, amazed, entertained...whatever the fuck I was needing in the moment and I made the choice for long term pain for short term gain.  Worthwhile people and relationships will require short term pain for long term gain every. single. time!

We are always going to want the thing that we can’t have. It is just human nature.  But if you don’t want to be forever dating narcissistic fuckers who are going to let you down, bleed you out financially and kill any hope you have for romance and humanity, do the above four things. Sure, you will have less dates, but you will also have far less drama and heartbreak.  I promise.  The personality disordered cannot withstand the test of time.  So what you are really deciding is do you want to pay now or pay later?  And believe me when I tell you that paying later costs way fucking more than it does to see the patterns early and sidestep the whole debacle.

Lovebombing feels good because it feeds our egos.  But egoic relationships will not survive the test of time because they are not based on reality.  Someone who gaslights you isn’t trustworthy and they will not magically become trustworthy because YOU are trustworthy or because you want and need them to be trustworthy!

Intermittent reinforcement is the lifeblood that sustains all toxic encounters.  If you want something deeper and trusting and more meaningful, you have to see how this principle is fucking up your life and realize that you are not a rat, life is not a lever and you can turn around and go get your own fucking pellet.  And once you figure that out, all your relationships improve because you are not looking to this other person to heal you or fix you, you can do that yourself and then share with another person who has also done the work on themselves the wonderful, beautiful sexy lovely you are...or you can repeat the cycle of dysfunction over and over again until you are dead or wish you were. Totally up to you.

Again, still...