PASSIONATE PIGEONS …THE BASIS OF LOVE ADDICTION
For those of you who didn’t pay attention to Psych #101 in college (me!), here’s a basic lesson in Operant Conditioning as observed in pigeon behavior. No, I’m not comparing you to a pigeon…well, maybe, just a little.
B.F. Skinner, a famous experimental psychologist, tried teaching pigeons by “conditioning” them to peck a lever for food in response to a neutral stimulus, say a bell. So every time the bell rang, the pigeons flocked over for feeding time. Ok. So far so good. (We can easily observe this pigeon behavior in little kids when the bell rings and they stampede in for milk and cookies.) He “conditioned” the pigeons to pair bell and food. We’ve conditioned our children to start salivating when they hear the recess bell!
Once the pigeons have mastered this form of “Operant Conditioning” (fancy word for getting the pigeons all hyped up when they hear a bell), Skinner decided to try “de-conditioning” the learned response. (Patience, I’m getting somewhere, trust me.) He found that if he systematically stopped giving the goodies when the bell rang, the pigeons stopped coming over for the treats. Their behavior was extinguished. Then he tried “Intermittent Reinforcement’ when every once in a while, randomly, the pigeons got a treat. Those darn pigeons would just keep pecking those levers even if the effort rarely resulted in a treat. It made no sense, the effort was surely not worth the reward. But who ever claimed pigeons were terrifically bright?
But we assume humans are a tad brighter than these birdbrains. Hmmmm. How about playing slot machines? How brilliant is that? How many nickels do you feed mindlessly into the slots, pull the lever hoping that this time you’ll win! Or how many times an hour (a minute?) do you check your phone to see if someone texted or left a message? And how reinforcing it is when, YEAH! You got a text! What if I were to suggest you didn’t check your phone for three hours? How much anxiety would you feel????? Withdrawal sucks.
OK. Let’s jump to relationships. There’s a term “Love Addiction” which is a catchall phrase meaning that you get “addicted” to love and dive compulsively into, what you hope is, a budding relationship. And you wait for your love interest to call. And you wait. And you call your friends and discuss why he/she hasn’t called or texted yet. What could it mean? Did you do something wrong? Is he or she ghosting you? And finally, they call! All’s right with the world! You have a great time together and then you wait for them to call again. And wait. Because they called the last time, right? Perhaps the other person likes you but is not really available for a relationship? Perhaps that person is dating other people as well as you? Perhaps you are overvaluing the importance of the relationship to the other person? Perhaps it’s time to end this since you’re obviously not getting what you want and you’re an anxious wreck and driving your friends crazy with your ruminations. And then they ring, you go out, have a great time and all the reasons you gave yourself to leave go out the window. If the person never calls again, OK, painful, but endgame. If the person keeps calling, then you have the beginning of a solid relationship. But this intermittent reinforcement makes it oh so difficult to end, to give up hope that this time you’ll “win” a relationship. Think Pigeon!
Intermittent reinforcement has been proven to be the most difficult form of learning to extinguish. Doesn’t mean you can’t do it, just have to create your own artificial extinguishing situation. I’m sure you’ve heard your friends, and therapists, suggest you just block any communication from your love interest. After a while, the link in your brain fades. This gives you a fighting chance to extinguish the connection without getting triggered again with false hope by a random call or invitation out. I’m not being cavalier, I know it’s a very difficult thing to do, to put yourself in a state of love deprivation. But, try to remember, this isn’t really love.
OK. Here’s a vignette from my bumpy past. I was head over heels with a charming, Columbia graduate. Did I mention he was gorgeous! Ok, slight problem he was addicted to gambling and became a bookie to pay off his gambling debts. He’d call, YEAH! We’d go out, have a terrific time, and then I wouldn’t hear from him for a painfully long time. Just when I was going to give up on him, he’d call! And off I went into fantasy land. I remember complaining to a close friend, “Can you believe he didn’t call again?!”, and my friend, shaking his head with disbelief, responded, “I can’t believe you still think he would!” My therapist, at the time, asked me to think about who the real gambler was. Ouch.
Intermittent reinforcement is a study in false hope. It’s a heart-drain and soul sapping; painful to stop and painful to continue. It is also a subtle, but effective, thief…stealing your day to day existence from you. You can’t be present for your life if you’re so preoccupied with whether someone will call or see you again; whether the relationship is on or off; what you should do/don’t do next. You’re emotionally MIA.
Try to remember, extricating yourself from this no-win situation frees your good energy to pursue real intimacy. That’s true hope. And courage. Now, go find your life, it misses you!