Manipulators are good at gaining trust but not so good at retaining it.

‘There is nothing more intimate in life than simply being understood’

As I see it, in many of my mediations, the key to gaining trust lies in each person being:

Predictable

Dependable

Responsive to their partners need

This creates a safe haven of love and intimacy.

Manipulators count on our image of them as trustworthy as a substitute for actually being trustworthy.

I often hear the following narrative of past love when I am witnessing a pattern of manipulation.

Magic entered my life bringing with it true romance, amazing sex and a feeling of being swept off my feet, in a kind of bubble. I believed that this deep connection would last a lifetime.

Indeed, this heady experience is capable of becoming a long-lasting connection based on emotional intimacy.

Unfortunately, this can’t happen if your partner is not capable of emotional intimacy!

People who become emotionally intimate do so by becoming emotionally vulnerable with their partner, revealing themselves. Without self-disclosure there can be no intimacy.

Intensity, on the other hand, involves drama, anxiety, uncertainty and fear. It’s all about push-pull, hot-cold, high-low.

Bonding created by intense-emotional highs and lows-is maintained by surges of dopamine during the highs, and an intense craving for more, during the lows.

A pattern of intermittent reinforcements is quickly established in which there is a positive reinforcement alternated with punishment (a pattern of abuse and reward) developing the strongest emotional bond.

Relationships based on intensity and intermittent reinforcement are similar to an addiction to drugs.

These manipulative, exploitative relationships form a traum bond, a highly addictive attachment to a person who is hurting you.

The signs of a trauma bond include the inability to detach and self-destructive denial.

I have flown and the fallen, and I have swum deeper and drowned, but there should be more to love than, ‘I survived it’

To know that you are loved for who you are, and to know someone else, in all their vulnerability and love them as they are, can be one of life’s most fulfilling experiences.

Intensity, on the other hand, is the opposite of fulfilling. It can be exhausting, draining and ultimately meaningless and empty.

Therefore, ask yourself if your relationship is a safe haven in which you feel loved and accepted for being yourself.