He Was Hot. Then Cold. Then Warm Again. I Spent a Year Learning the Pattern. | The Intermittent Reinforcement Trap

He was warm one week and gone the next. No explanation. No pattern she could predict. And she spent a year trying to calibrate her availability to produce his warmth. This is the full first-person account of intermittent reinforcement — the psychological mechanism B.F. Skinner documented in the 1950s, applied to human relationships, and the reason it is one of the most difficult manipulation patterns to recognize and exit. The Skillful Art of Manipulation.