How to Manipulate Someone into Loving You
By: Angela Volkov
Tags: Humor, World Domination, Psychology, Attraction, Relationships

People find you compelling, personable, and physically attractive — the trifecta, the rare triple-threat. And have we mentioned, the dulcet tones of your voice? All the same, they’d rather just stay friends… therapist and client, parole officer and parolee, and what have you.

But fret not, all you luckless libertines and star-crossed Casanovas out there, science has got your back.

Fear is the heart of love

Is it better to be feared or loved? For a self-serving beast such as man, the bondage of fear is far stronger stuff than the attachments of mere affection. Or at least, so claimed Machiavelli (albeit, only sardonically).

I say, you don’t have to choose: use fear to make them love you.

Their pulse races, they’re weak at the knees, and their stomach is aflutter with butterflies — could it be love? Or does your presence merely provoke apprehension and anxiety? Quite possibly, the object of your affection will have trouble disambiguating such feelings… to your advantage.

While introspective blindness refers to the fact that we are not always aware of the factors which influenced our decisions, enabling us to be fooled by magicians and scientists alike, misattribution of arousal refers to our being in the dark regarding the causes of our emotions.

Thus, we might attribute our anxiety to a placebo (and sleep all the better for it), or the excitement of crossing a suspension bridge to that of clapping eyes on an attractive stranger on its other side.

And the good news is, you don’t need to dangle off carnival Ferris Wheels or boil bunnies to achieve this effect. (That’s right, I just equated The Notebook to Fatal Attraction.) Instead, simply make McKamey Manor the location of all future dates. First you’re signing liability waivers to the world’s most frightening haunted house, then before you know it, you’re signing that marriage certificate…

Dark desires

Treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen? Are there lessons to learn from callous cads and manipulative man-eaters? If it’s true that having an edge makes one more interesting, then could having three make one simply irresistible?

The Dark Triad is the constellation of subclinical narcissism (self-aggrandising), Machiavellianism (manipulative), and psychopathy (given to extreme disregard for others).

By Matinee71 — Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83969119

In fluid flux between social predator and parasite, such people flourish in a variety of circumstances, from acquiring leadership positions in the workforce, to attracting and sometimes even poaching partners — at least in the short-term.

Dark Triad types are not interested in serious relationships, rather they enjoy one-night-stands and friends-with-benefits due to a narcissistic need to have their ego validated by a procession of people, while high levels of psychopathy renders ‘booty calls’ and other sexually-exploitative relationships appealing. Lastly, their slippery Machiavellian nature ensures they shift strategies seamlessly according to target.

Love ’em and leave ’em mating strategies are said to be more advantageous for men than women, who must invest in a smaller number of offspring. However, it’s also true that for women, short-term strategies can be beneficial as they grant (temporary) access to highly-desirable partners.

Although men more commonly possess Dark Triad traits, both male and female DT types are sexually promiscuous, impulsive, sensation-seeking and competitive. Further, they possess similar personality traits, such as being higher in extraversion, and lower in agreeableness and conscientiousness.

However, of the three traits, only narcissists are perceived as attractive. Turns out confidence gets you further than duplicitousness. So perhaps projecting an aura of vibrancy and drive is worthwhile if you wish to attract a romantic partner — just as long as you leave rest of the negativity behind.

By the way, the Short Dark Triad test (SD3) is available here — test yourself.

A lingering afterimage

“An imago is an image of a loved one, buried in the unconscious, carried with us all our lives.” — Hannibal Lecter, NBC’s Hannibal

We trudge familiar paths — or is it that we’re stuck in a rut? — unknowingly replicating the patterns of our childhoods. Only, this time, we’ll finally have the perfect love that we never received growing up.

The concept of imago, first proposed by Hendrix and Hunt in 1980, refers to a romantic love reminiscent of our early familiar attachments, and our need to control and reshape such a relationship as a means of erasing the trauma of the past.

Whether you buy into this or not, the fact remains that our relationship with our caregivers have a profound impact on us. According to attachment theory, children have one of the following attachment styles to their caregivers: secure, avoidant, anxious, or disorganised, which functions as a prototype for all future relationships.

Furthermore, the appearance and age of our caregivers also has a hand in determining who we’ll be (unconsciously) drawn to as partners. For example, in a study of young heterosexual women, it was found that they were attracted to men the same age as their father at their time of their birth, with the same eye colour, and who were domineering (or not) to the same degree. (The effects of similarity to caregiver is also apparent for men, and same-sex parent.)

The method of your courting should now be clear to you: break into their home, make off with their family album, and model yourself physically and psychologically after the parent who no longer appears in Christmas Day photos after their tenth birthday.

(Don’t actually do this!)