Does rejecting a person ATTRACT HER?

Almost everyone in the world has suffered anguish at some point after being rejected at some point in our lives. Either because of a relationship that is broken where we are left with a broken heart and the other person quickly turns the page, or for some fleeting and idealized love that we wanted to be with but were never rewarded as we would have liked.

We talk about those "loves that mark us", those difficult and long-suffering loves that we see in literature, in art history and in our daily dramas. Why does the rejection of someone we care about generate such an impact on us? Why is it that when someone rejects us or is indifferent, it interests us more and in some cases generates a strange obsession? What is the mystery behind that that we cannot have or that resists us?Could it be that rejecting a person attracts them? What is true behind this question?

In this Psychology-Online article, we will unravel myths and clarify what happens and what is attractive to us when a person rejects us. What does a person feel when it is not reciprocated, why are there people who reject people who they like them and if it is effective to use rejection as a seduction technique to attract the person loved.

Index

1. How a person acts when rejected
2. What does a person feel when it is not reciprocated
3. Does rejecting a person to attract them work?
4. Why are there people who reject the person they like?

There is an interesting behavior that emerges in the face of all that we cannot have and that prompts us to make efforts and efforts to achieve it. We stubbornly and persistently desire what resists us and the more difficult it is for us to achieve something, the stronger the joy we feel once we achieve it. So what will happen here? Why does the rejection of someone we care about generate such an impact on us? If we are supposed to want the other who interests us to pay attention and interest to us, why is it that every time the opposite happens, we fall in love and catch more and more?

These questions are not new, nor do they occur to me. They have been the object of study over time and there is very interesting research in this regard. One of them, my favorite perhaps, is one made by a anthropologist and biologist, Helen Fishershe, who along with colleagues in the field did a study about love and heartbreak with 32 people who were completely in love. Of them 15 were desperate and hopeless after being rejected or abandoned by the loved one. The experiment consisted of each of the participants having to see a photograph of the loved or desired being while observing and analyzing her brain activity.

• Brain activation of addition circuits. The study found in all cases that people who experience rejection, termination or abandonment activated the same areas in the brain that are activated in deep addictions. In other words, rejection generates real and important physical and psychological reactions and in this meaning the attempt to reconnect with the other person is an attempt to regain homeostasis lost.
• Imbalance. The human being is always in search of recovering what makes us feel good, but that is the catch, not necessarily what gives us pleasure is the best for us.
• Pursuit of pleasure. The same happens in the cycle of addictions and it is what so much traps and confuses us. Our brain understands that what gives us pleasure is good for us and begins to request it desperately before its abstinence.
• Despair. Faced with rejection, something similar happens to addicts when they look for the drug to satisfy their pain and that is that I not only request something desperate, but when I do not get what my body asks of me, I start looking for it with more strength and I am capable of everything as long as to get it.
• Obsessive behaviors. Understanding this, which is perhaps easier for us with the figure of addictions, we can understand why the abandoned person presents obsessive behaviors and is that it is so Neural chemistry that occurs at the brain level in such situations is strong, that frustration and need lead the person to act erratically and desperate.

What happens on a neuronal and emotional level when the loved one rejects us?

• Brain chemical alteration. When a person is rejected, a neuronal chemical alteration is generated in his brain where the serotonin (something similar to what happens in depressions and obsessive compulsive disorders) and there is an activation of the cingulate cortex (which is the same area that is activated in the face of physical pain).
• Pain and anxiety. Our brain reacts to social exclusion in much the same way as it does to physical and emotional pain and that is why these types of emotions are we live so intensely and in a multisymptomatic way and the greater or the more unexpected the rejection, the greater the feeling of anxiety and the variety of symptoms that we experience.

Thanks to the experimental research carried out by Fisher, this emotional and behavioral process that the rejected person goes through was divided into the following phases:

1. Protest phase. When the loved one moves away, the abandoned person initially begins to feel a state of intense restlessness and a mixture of "Nostalgia and longing". In this phase, the person thinks all day about who left and repeats in his mind the possible errors that have occurred, looking for possible solutions that allow him to recover the lost person. They obsessively dedicate their time, energy and attention to the other whom they are looking for insistently and in different ways; messages, letters, calls appear, common places are frequented, etc. There is a great longing for reunion and that is why they protest, hoping to recover the lost object.
2. Frustration phase. The person does not want to accept that he was emotionally rejected and this has a very strong neural correlate. The desire to be with someone and not be able to be with that person is experienced in a similar way to what addicts experience when they lose a substance that generates pleasure and that is when they seek it with more strength. Here Terence's phrase is applicable "The less my hope is, the more ardent my love is." In this phase, the person seeks the meeting so strongly that sometimes he even humbles himself. This is all because a substance is missing from the brain: dopamine.
3. Stage of melancholy or depression. It is when the person lowers their arms and at that point her emotions are more depressing. It is a stage of adaptation to loss, where the person tends to withdraw more. The chemical elements that made the attraction and need of the other possible have already dropped, then everything begins to be seen more clearly, you begin to accept the loss and connect with the feeling that perhaps the person was not as good as we believed.

What a rejected person feels can be summed up with this quote from Helen Fisher:

“The rejection of the loved one plunges the unrequited lover into one of the deepest and most disturbing emotional sufferings that a human being can endure. The pain, the fury and many other feelings can invade the brain so vigorously that the person can hardly eat or sleep. The degrees and nuances of this intense discomfort vary as people do each other. " (Fisher, 2007).

Does passing someone work? Let's end the situation:

• No, it is harmful and toxic. Having said all the above, my idea would never be to promote neural and emotional play with another person. I think that would be hurting the other and falling into a toxic game.
• There must always be respect. Also, I think that starting these types of dynamics is a bit perverse and is far from the idea of ​​growing up loving an other through acceptance, affection and care that is how I like to understand what love is healthy.
• It is healthy to set limits. I do think that sometimes we confuse love with a crossing of limits and giving everything for the other person; all my time, all my being, all my activities, etc. and it is not like that. Unconditional love in the couple is not real or healthy. The love of a couple requires conditions and hopefully these are explicit conditions, because if I do not manifest what I expect from the other as partner, then I am going to charge him somehow and the other will not understand why now I ask him what I did not ask him before or why now I put conditions on our love and then, without getting the answer I hope for, I am going to be frustrated and disappointed over and over again. time.
• Rejection is not a good strategy. In the initial phase of infatuation, "rejecting" a person can "work". But not in the sense in which we usually understand the word rejection, that is to say, I do not mean "today I'm looking for you and tomorrow not" or "I'll stop talking to you as a strategy to fall in love." Although this type of behavior could attract by the circuit of rewards that they generate and that we explain previously, they will do it in a toxic and unhealthy way and nothing good will come in the future from that kind of dynamics.
• It is necessary to dose. But setting limits to the other, saying no when we don't want to do something, pointing out what I like and dislike, respecting my needs and my personal spaces and dosing delivery as the relationship progresses, if it is good and even necessary. Although this could be experienced by the other person as a rejection and I will explain later why. It is a necessary rejection for the other and for ourselves.

Perhaps what I mention here is difficult to understand, but the initial dynamics in a relationship refer us to childhood behaviors. At the beginning, in every relationship, both parties act like little children who need to be demarcated the path of what is allowed and not allowed, We also need reinforcements to be dosed so that we can give them the value they have and not get used to them badly and wait for them. because if. But also like how children work, we will initially resist these small and necessary limits, we will protest, we will try to get away with it and do what our desire wants to do and, indeed, in the face of the refusal, we will We will feel when faced with a rejection, but it will be a rejection that in the long run helps us to grow together as a couple and will make the other perceive me What a person who is loved, respected and made respected and loved in the same way and that is extremely attractive.

Why do people use rejection as a strategy to attract a person they like?

• Lack of education in relationships. No one has been taught the foundations of a healthy love and most of what we learn is through our experience. This is why many people have learned that by rejecting another person there are benefits and the truth is that probably This may be the case, due to what happens at the brain level in the other when we give him something that gives him pleasure and then deprive him of it.
• Bad experiences. People who tend to use this as a seduction strategy are people who have generally not experienced a satisfactory, permanent and healthy relationship and are in search of it. Indeed, being like this can be a challenge and a mystery that will make you look more attractive in the eyes of others, but if your goal is a healthy and long-term relationship, you should know that it is not a useful attitude or fury.
• Excess of fantasy and lack of reality. A person who continually rejects you is probably a person who does not know what he wants, a person who does not know how to communicate or a person who only wants to make you feel things and believes that that is the only way. Intermittent reinforcements are equal to a ambivalent attachment in love. Not knowing what is going to happen with your relationship and not being clear if your partner will continue to be there is a strong generator of anguish and insecurity.
• Low self-esteem. A person who stays in a relationship where rejections are unnecessary is a person who does not have very good self-esteem and that is also lacking in many things that will be put into play in the relationship. Until the game is over. Sooner or later the rejected partner will get bored of that constant intermittence and will find security in another.

In general, we are talking about a person who has something to solve and that is perceived by both parties, but he is also a person who generates many gaps in the other and that the couple will feel it and resent it and although that emptiness has unconsciously been one of the initial attractions, in the long term it is not sustainable because it generates a lot hurt. Specially in insecure people or distrustful.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to Does rejecting a person attract them?, we recommend that you enter our category of Feelings.

• Fisher H. (2004) Why we love. Nature and chemistry of romantic love. Lau rus: Spain
• Fisher H. (2007) Why we love and deceive ourselves. TEDX