Unfortunately, TikTok accounts that explain machirulo tricks to flirt with women are becoming more and more fashionable (because in his head the heteronormative relationship is the only one that exists), which talk about how important it is for a man he bodycount of your partner or what They think it’s best if we don’t succeed at work.
These types of profiles, which I will not name in this article so as not to give visibility, are telling the world flirting techniques like the one we are explaining to you today, stating that they are infallible, when in reality they are very toxic. One of them is the “push and pull” flirting technique. They sell it to us as seduction, but in reality it is a form of manipulation that we are going to disassemble and explain from top to bottom so that you can detect if it happens to you, and send whoever is doing it to you.
What is the “push and pull” flirting technique?
The psychologist, sexologist and couples therapist, Maria Esclapez, explains what this flirting strategy called “push and pull” consists of, which although it is a technique that many describe as seduction, is actually a type of manipulation. The “push and pull” technique consists of having a person write to you constantly, making you even love bombing, to disappear and take days to answer later.
“He thinks that this way you will die wanting to talk to him or her,” he adds, and the truth is that he is not seducing us with this behavior, he is manipulating us.
An example to understand the “push and pull” technique would be that he calls us every day, says good night and good morning, and tells us how great we are for, say, a week. He shows a lot, a lot of interest, but when a week passes he disappears by art of ghosting, and we don’t know anything about that person. The uncertainty of not knowing what has happened and the unanswered questions that we ask ourselves (have I done something wrong? Has something happened to him? Was he angry because of something I said?), generate anxiety. But anxiety disappears when it reappears the person who manipulates, getting all our attention, just what he was looking for.
Why we get hooked on the “push and pull”
These types of strategies work with intermittent reinforcement. We could say that intermittent reinforcement is what has always been known as giving one of lime and one of sand. The psychologist explains in her book I love me, I love you that in intermittent reinforcement, our partner “sometimes behaves well with you (reinforcement) and sometimes behaves badly with you (punishment)” and warns that this behavior engages and is “one of the most typical phenomena, as well as dangerous, of toxic and dependent relationships”, as for example in the relationships Boomerang.
I love myself, I love you: A guide to developing healthy relationships (and improving the ones you already have) (Bruguera Tendencies)
In addition, he explains that “intermittent reinforcement is one of those that is learned the fastest and conditions the strongest” and that is exactly what is achieved with that toxic “push and pull” technique.
Why is the “push and pull” technique dangerous?
This type of behavior produces a change in our emotions that causes us to be fine on some days and not on others. Like in a roller coaster in which some days we are down and others, up. And it is a manipulation that Esclapez defines as “a form of control and emotional blackmail, whose objective is to make the victim think, feel or act, without realizing it, the way the manipulative person wants”.
In addition to producing uncertainty, as we have already explained, It can cause anxiety and generate a dependency. with the other person, as explains the psychologist on her Instagram account. What’s more, if she finally ends up in a relationship, she will be toxic and dependent. We will have learned that love with that partner is a swing and we will normalize a situation that harms our mental health.
Esclapez explains that “consciously carrying out a behavior that involves the mental distortion of the other person in order to obtain something of that person, without their knowledge, is manipulation.” And it’s important to “get something”. It is one thing for him to take a while to answer you because he is busy, and another thing for him to disappear in a drastic way with an ulterior motive.
If we disappear but before we explain why we are going to do it (I have a problem at work, I am going to take a course that lasts all morning, I have a flight to Mexico in 10 minutes…), we will be practicing the affective responsibility we’ve been talking about so much lately. If, on the contrary, we disappear and do it with another intention and without warning, we will be manipulating the other person.
If you detect that they are doing the “push and pull”, friend, realize: If he manipulates you, it’s not love. Flees.
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Photos | Through My Window (Netflix)
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