Almost everyone in the world has suffered anguish after being rejected at some point in our lives. We talk about those “loves that mark us”, those difficult and long-suffering loves that we see in literature, in the history of art and in our daily dramas. Why does the rejection of someone we are interested in have such an impact on us? Why is it that when someone rejects us or is indifferent, we are more interested and in some cases it generates a strange obsession? What is the mystery hidden behind that which we cannot have or which 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 they are not reciprocated, why are there people who reject the people they like and if it is effective to use rejection as a seduction technique to attract the person they love.
How a person acts when rejected
There is an interesting behavior that emerges in the face of all that we cannot have and that drives us to make efforts and over efforts to achieve it. We obstinately 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 is happening here? Why does the rejection of someone we are interested in have such an impact on us? If we are supposed to want the other person we are interested in to pay attention and interest to us, why do we fall in love and attract more and more every time the opposite happens?
These questions are not new, nor do they occur to me. They have been the subject of study over time and there is very interesting research on the matter. One of them, perhaps my favorite, is one made by a anthropologist and biologist, Helen Fisher, who together 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 having been rejected or abandoned by the person they loved. The experiment consisted of each of the participants having to see a photograph of the loved or desired person while their brain activity was observed and analyzed.
- 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. That is to say, rejection generates real and important physical and psychological reactions and in this sense the attempt to reconnect with the other person is an attempt to recover the lost homeostasis.
- Imbalance. Human beings are always in search of recovering what makes us feel good, but here is the trap: what gives us pleasure is not necessarily the best thing for us.
- Search for pleasure. This same thing happens in the cycle of addictions and is what traps and confuses us so much. Our brain understands that what gives us pleasure is good for us and begins to desperately request it in the face of its abstinence.
- Despair. In the face of rejection, something similar happens to addicts when they look for drugs to satisfy their pain and that is that not only do I desperately request something, but when I don’t get what my body asks of me, I begin to look for it with more strength and I am able to everything in order to achieve 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 that the neuronal chemistry that occurs at the brain level in these types of situations is so strong that frustration and need They lead the person to act erratically and desperately.
What does a person feel when they are not reciprocated?
What happens on a neural and emotional level when the person we love rejects us?
- Brain chemical alteration. When a person is rejected, a chemical neuronal alteration is generated in their brain where the brain decreases (something similar to what happens in depression and obsessive-compulsive disorders) and there is an activation of the cingulate cortex (which is the same area that is active against physical pain).
- Pain and anxiety. Our brain reacts to social exclusion in a very similar way to how it does to physical and emotional pain and that is why we experience these types of emotions so intensely and in a multi-symptomatic way and the greater or more unexpected the rejection, the greater It is the feeling of anxiety and the variety of symptoms 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:
- 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 the person who left and repeats in their mind the possible errors that occurred, looking for possible solutions that will allow them to recover the lost person. They obsessively dedicate their time, energy and attention to others whom they seek insistently and in different ways; Messages, letters, calls arise, common places are frequented, etc. There is a great desire to be reunited and that is why people protest, in the hope of recovering the lost object.
- frustration phase. The person does not want to accept that they were rejected emotionally 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 how addicts experience it when they lose a substance that gives them pleasure and that is when they seek it more strongly. Terence’s phrase “The lower my hope, the more ardent my love” is applicable here. In this phase, the person seeks the encounter so strongly that sometimes he even humiliates himself. All this is because there is a lack of a substance in the brain: .
- Phase of melancholy or depression. It is when the person lowers his arms and at that point his emotions are more depressive. It is a stage of adaptation to loss, where the person tends to withdraw more. The chemical elements that made the attraction and need for the other possible have already decreased, so you begin to see everything more clearly, you begin to accept the loss and connect with the feeling that perhaps the person was not as good as we thought.
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 suffering that a human being can endure. The sorrow, the fury and many other feelings can invade the brain with such vigor that the person can barely eat or sleep. The degrees and nuances of this intense discomfort vary to the same extent as people do among themselves.” (Fisher, 2007).
Does rejecting a person to attract them work?
Does passing someone work? Let’s analyze the situation:
- No, it is harmful and toxic. Having said all the above, my idea would never be to encourage neural and emotional play with another person. I think that would be harming the other and falling into a toxic game.
- There should always be respect. Furthermore, I think that starting that type of dynamic is a bit perverse and is far from the idea of growing up loving another through acceptance, affection and care, which is how I like to understand what healthy love is.
- It is healthy to set limits. I do believe that sometimes we confuse love with crossing boundaries 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 a couple is not real or healthy. Love as a couple requires conditions and I hope these are explicit conditions, because if I don’t express what I expect from the other as a couple, then I’m going to charge them in some way and the other won’t understand why I’m now asking them for what I didn’t ask them for before. or why now I put conditions on our love and then, without getting the response I expect, I will be frustrated and disappointed again and again.
- Rejection is not a good strategy. In the initial phase of falling in love, “rejecting” a person can “work.” But not in the sense in which we usually understand the word rejection, that is, I am not referring to “today I look for you and tomorrow I don’t” or “I stop talking to you as a strategy to make you fall in love.” Although these types of behaviors could attract due to the reward circuit they generate and that we explained above, they will do so in a toxic and unhealthy way and nothing good will come in the future from these types of dynamics.
- It is necessary to dose. But setting limits for 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 measuring the dedication as the relationship progresses, yes. It is good and even necessary. Although this could be experienced by the other person as a rejection and I will explain why later. It is a necessary rejection for the other and for ourselves.
Why are there people who reject the person they like?
Why do some people use rejection as a strategy to attract a person they like?
- Lack of relationship education. No one has been taught them 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 this can probably be the case, due to what happens at the brain level in the other when we give them something that gives them pleasure and then deprive them. of it.
- Bad experiences. People who tend to use this as a seduction strategy are people who generally have not experienced a satisfactory, permanent and healthy relationship and are in search of one. 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, long-term relationship, you should know that it is not a useful or healthy attitude.
- Excess of fantasy and lack of reality. A person who continually rejects you is probably a person who doesn’t know what he wants, a person who doesn’t know how to communicate, or a person who just wants to make you feel things and believes that that is the only way. Intermittent reinforcements equal a in love. Not knowing what is going to happen to 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 there are plenty of rejections is a person who does not have very good self-esteem and who is also lacking many things that will come into play in the relationship. Until the game is over. Sooner or later the rejected partner will get bored of this constant intermittency and will find security in another.
In general, we talk about a person who has something for…