February 9, 2026 • 42 mins
Most of us have people in our lives who love us — partners, friends, family — yet many of us still don’t feel as loved as we want to. Why is there such a gap between being loved and feeling loved? And what can we actually do about it?
Dr. Laurie sits down with social psychologists Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky and Dr. Harry Reis, co-authors of How to Feel Loved, to unpack the science behind this disconnect. They explain why feeling loved so often eludes us — even in close relationships — and share research-backed insights that can help us change the conversation, strengthen our connections, and feel more loved both now and in the relationships we build in the future.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
How to Feel Loved: The Five Mindsets That Get You More of What Matters Most
"Social Ties and Susceptibility to the Common Cold"
"Toward Understanding Understanding: The Importance of Feeling Understood in Relationships"
How to Win Friends and Influence People
How to Win Friends and Influence People for Teen Girls
"Self-Expansion Theory: Origins, Current Evidence, and Future Horizons"
"Everyday Prosociality in the Workplace: The Reinforcing Benefits of Giving, Getting, and Glimpsing"
"The Genomic Impact of Kindness to Self vs. Others: A Randomized Controlled Trial"
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. It's February, that time of year when we all
feel like we're being bombarded with messages about love. Think
lots of red hearts, adds for diamond rings, laingerie chocolates,
and on and on. For those of us with romantic partners,
(00:36):
there's pressure to make the perfect reservation, by the perfect gift,
and plan that perfect date night. And if you're single,
the season often comes with feelings of loneliness and fomo. Honestly,
this time of year doesn't always feel great. It's like
a huge Hallmark card being collectively shoved in all of
our faces. This whole season is supposed to be about love,
(00:57):
but that can raise some pretty big questions like is
this what love is really about? And if not, how
many of us are actually experiencing the kind of deep
connection we need to feel happy or even just okay.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
We ask people, you know, how often do they feel
loved and who do they feel loved most or leased by,
and we find that about seventy percent I believe don't
feel as loved as they want.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
This is a psychologist Sonya Lubermerski, an expert on the
science of happiness.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
They also said that there were romantic partners where the
people they most wanted to feel more loved from, so
they weren't getting as much as they wanted or even
in many cases needed.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
And this is the psychologist Harry Ves, an expert on
the science of relationships. Sonya and Harry have come together
to co author a new book called How to Feel
Loved The Five Mindsets That give You More of What
matters most. The book explores why so many of us
don't feel as loved as we'd like, but it also
explores what we can do to change that.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
I love talking about How to Feel Loved. The book
makes me feel loved and the experience of writing it
with Sonya was definitely a loving experience as well as
a literary experience.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
You guys, do seem like you had like I don't
know if it's bromance is not the right word, but.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
Something all right, we have great chemistry, right.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Stay tuned because in today's episode, the first of three
shows we're doing on the Science of Love, Sonya and
Harry will share some practical tips for strengthening our relationships
and not just romantic ones. We're also going to tackle
how to feel loved in the friendships, family ties, and
everyday connections we already have, plus the connections we're planning
to build in the future. We'll get into all of
(02:36):
Sonya and Harry's tips after some quick words from our sponsors.
So let's start with the big but obvious question, which
(02:56):
makes me think of a really bad ninety song. What
is love?
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Well, there are many different definitions of love. Indeed, I
think it's one of the most ambiguous words in the
English language. You know, we can love chocolate ice cream,
can the New York mets, and we can love our parents,
and we can love our partners. So there are many
different definitions. The definition that we use in the book
is talking about the kind of deep, embodied experience that
(03:23):
you have when you have affection and caring and warmth
for other people in your lives that you are connected to,
that your life is intertwined with.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Well, when a lot of people think of love, they
think about the thing that you feel for someone else,
like I love my partner, I love chocolate ice cream.
But you really focused on the flip side of that,
the experience that you have of other people loving you. Sonya,
why that focus for the book.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
As a happiness researcher, I think actually whether or not
you feel loved, and the extent to which you feel
loved by others maybe the most important factor in happiness.
And by the way, one reason is that we can
be loved, you know, we can have all these people
in our lives who objectively love us, but we don't
actually feel loved by them, or maybe not feel loved
by them as much as you want to be.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
So that's a really important distinction, Harry.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
I know this is something you thought about as a kid.
In your book, you admit how much you were tracking
how much you thought other people loved you. Could you
tell us a little bit about that middle school spreadsheeting.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
I was certainly an insecure kid, particularly in middle school.
Is where I really remember that experience most vividly. I
went to summer camp and I was in a bunk
with about ten other boys my age, and I remember
waking up one night at the middle of the night
when there was obviously some kind of activity going on
(04:44):
where they were planning some kind of a raid on
another bunk, and they hadn't woken me up to take
part in that, and I felt just awful. And I
remember just naturally spending a lot of my time tracking
other people's behavior. You know, who was hanging out with whom,
who were friends with whom? And were they including me
(05:05):
or not including me?
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Oh my gosh, I can feel that viscerally. I'm like
stuck with you on the bunk at like ten years old,
feeling that exactly. This is something that obviously you saw
as a kid, and I think we can all relate to.
But this is something that a lot of people are feeling,
not as middle schoolers but as adults. So this kind
of crisis of not feeling loved feel similar to another
crisis that Sonya is happiness researchers, we hear a lot
(05:27):
about this idea of the loneliness crisis. Is not feeling
loved the same as loneliness? Are there differences? What do
you think?
Speaker 3 (05:34):
I mean?
Speaker 2 (05:34):
You could argue that the root of loneliness is a
feeling of not feeling loved, not feeling loved, not feeling
like you belong, which really go together. And certainly you
can see that more and more people are acknowledging that
they are lonely or when you ask them, like how
many people do you have to talk to? You? You know,
in a crisis, there's fewer and fewer, less and less
with time. When you think about a lot of other
(05:56):
problems in our society, whether it's bullying or polarization or violence,
you could blame sort of not feeling loved or loneliness
for those problems as well. It's really even a bigger
problem than we think.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
So, Harry, what are some of the consequences of not
feeling loved psychologically? What happens when we don't feel that.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
When we don't feel loved. That feeling should not be
pooh pooed. It's not something that exists in isolation in US.
It goes along with many other kinds of consequences, certainly
a lack of emotional wellbeing and happiness, but it even
extends to the body and to our health. There are
scores of studies that show that the kind of feeling
(06:38):
that Sonya was describing are feelings that relate to just
about every health problem you can think of. For example,
heart disease is well known to relate to the feeling
of not being loved and feeling lonely. One of my
favorite studies is the study that was done in California
where they looked at cancer deaths and the absence of
(07:00):
meaningful connections, which certainly would be related to loneliness and
not feeling loved, predicted premature mortality from cancer and a
greater likelyhood that once you get cancer you would die
from it.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
Basically a lack of connection.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
That loneliness, the harm of that under the physical health
problems is equivalent to smoking fifteen cigarettes per day.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
That number is just so compelling, Right.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
I'll just throw in one more set of studies, which
I think are incredibly fascinating because these are experimental studies now.
So what they did in these studies is inject people
with a cold virus and then did some very sophisticated
work to see who got sick and who didn't get sick.
And guess what it was. The people who experienced themselves
(07:46):
as cut off from others and isolated were more likely
to get sick after having been exposed to the cold virus.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
It's so amazing that we see these physical effects of
not feeling left to do we understand the mechanism, Harry.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
That's a really important question, and it's one that a
lot of scientists are devoting their attention to. The First
thing I have to say is we don't really know.
The second thing I say is probably most of the
action comes from two places. One is simply happiness and
not being anxious, angry, depressed. Said, we know that positive
(08:24):
emotions trigger a whole series of biological responses that are
health promoting. We know that negative emotions trigger a lot
of biological processes that are harmful and deleterious, especially over
the long run. The second kind of way of thinking
about it, which is a little trickier, is the idea
that we probably have mechanisms within ourselves that are designed
(08:47):
by evolution to precisely carry out these connections. They're designed
to make us seek out others, to seek positive connections
with others, to respond well to them, to reciprocate to them.
And these mechanisms are within us, but we don't really
understand what they are and where they are. But there
are a lot of people trying to track that down,
(09:09):
and I suspect we'll know a lot more in the
next twenty years.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
So the consefences of feeling not loved are huge, But
the problem is so many of us are feeling that way.
And one of the things I loved about your book
is that it walks through why we're feeling that way,
and all the ways that our mind gets not feeling
loved wrong. I think one of the ways we get
this wrong is we assume that if we're not feeling
loved and then we have to have some sort of
personal failure like I'm not attractive enough, or I'm not
(09:35):
interesting enough, or I'm not smart enough. If only I
could be more lovable than I would feel loved. Sonya,
why is this idea a bit wrong?
Speaker 4 (09:43):
And I think you summarized it really well.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
First of all, Yeah, the idea that if you don't
feel love, we think that the solution is to make
ourselves more lovable sort of more interesting, more attractive, more kind,
more funny, or somehow get the other person to love
us more.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
And it sort of just turns out that doesn't work.
And actually, it doesn't mean that you need to sort
of change yourself.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
It doesn't mean to change the other person to somehow
notice and love you more. When we arguing in the
book is what we need to do is change conversation,
which is a much more feasible, much less overwhelming, because
when you think about a relationship, a relationship is really
a series of conversations, and we could change the conversation
in a way that makes you feel more loved by
(10:22):
making the other person feel more loved.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
To feel a little bit more loved, we need to
make other people feel loved. It almost feels like a
little bit of a paradox, or that we get it backwards.
What are some of the steps of making other people
feel loved?
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Well, one of the things we argue is that it's
the way you approach the conversations that makes them result
in the kinds of experiences in which you will feel
loved and the other person will feel loved. So our
argument is that if you approach the conversation with the
mindset of helping the other person feel loved something that
(10:59):
is after all controllable about you, that will set off
a cycle of interaction that will allow you to feel
more loved. So the approach, in other words, is to
listen carefully, to communicate to the other person that you're
really interested in what they have to say. You know,
so many of us approach conversations as this is my
(11:21):
chance to show off what I think and feel, And
that's the exact wrong approach. The right approach is to
help the other person do that. So when they tell
you about something that happened to them. One of the
simplest phrases you can use is tell me more and
mean it. Of course, to do that with genuine curiosity,
because when other people experience that, a little light bulble
(11:44):
goes off inside their heads says, Wow, this person's really interested,
and then they become interested in you as well.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Again, intuition is to make ourselves more lovable, sort of
to show off or positive qualities. Right, so we want
to speak and sort of show how kind and interesting
and funny and intelligent we are to impress the other person.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
And that does work.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
I mean, it may work to impress them, but it
doesn't really forge a connection.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
It doesn't really make them feel love it, or us
feel loved.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
We're too focused on how we are coming across to
the other person as opposed to how we're coming forward,
which is really like, well we can actually do to
make the other person feel better. There's a kind of
famous like dating advice, which is on a first date,
you don't want to make yourself feel better about yourself,
you want to make them feel better about themselves.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
But it's really counterintuitive. I think we assume that what's
under our control is showing off how great we are
getting other people to admire us. But what you're saying
is no, no, no, it's under your control. But what's
under your control is that you need to be responsive
to the other person.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
Right, that's the first step.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
You need to do that first.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
Yeah, But what.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Does taking that first step look like in practice? What
are the strategies we can actually use to feel more
loved and to strengthen the connections that matter most. We'll
dive into all those answers when the Happiness Lab returns.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
In a moment.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Social psychologists Sonya Lubermerski and Harry Reees want to help
a lonely world feel more loved, and they've come up
with five simple, evidence based mindsets that can help us
do just that. The first mindset is what they call sharing.
I asked Harry to describe what that looks like.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Sharing is simply the idea that in order to feel loved,
you need to open up about yourself. That is, let's
say I present a totally curated fantasy view of myself
to you. You may be impressed, and when you tell
me about how wonderful that sounds, how do I react? Well,
it feels hollow because that's not me. That's not the
(13:49):
me that I most feel. So when I hide myself
and instead emphasize all my positive qualities, it creates this
dynamic where the other person may well actually provide what
you're wanting, and yet it won't ring true because it's
not the person who I am. And instead, if you
can open up about the person that you really are,
(14:12):
then when there is some kind of positive feedbackcoming, it's
much easier to experience it as real, as genuine, and
as authentic. Now, it's important to realize that we don't
mean dump the story of your childhood on everybody in
the first five minutes you meet them. No, that's not
what we're saying. What we're saying is that you need
(14:33):
to simply be genuine and real in talking about who
you are, and over time you will be able to
tell those stories about your childhood and the weaknesses and
the shortcomings and the fears that you have. But that's
not something you do in the first five minutes. It's
something that comes down the road.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
So this kind of sharing is really good for us.
It makes us feel loved, it makes other people love us,
but it can be incredibly scary it and feel super awkward.
And Sonya, this is what you've called the paradox of vulnerability.
What's that?
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Yeah, So to feel loved, we need to be known.
If we're not really known to another person, who'll always
wonder would they still love me if they knew me?
Speaker 4 (15:15):
The paradox of vulnerabilities.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
And we think that if we reveal something vulnerable or
negative about us, maybe a self doubt, that we have,
an insecurity that we have, maybe even a trauma from
our childhood, that we would be liked less. And actually
it turns out that again when done at the right pace,
that actually we tend to be liked more when we
reveal something a little deeper about ourselves. Like I actually
(15:36):
was just talking to someone about After the Bay of
Pigs when John F. Kennedy admitted he made a mistake.
Apparently his approval ratings shot up.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Another thing I think we get wrong when it comes
to sharing is that we assume that people already know.
People say how's it going, and you're like fine, and
you kind of assume that people will see through, Well, no,
you're not fine. You're having a really tough day. This
is Perry, what you've called the illusion of transparency. I
think I can get it from the name, but walk
me through what this is.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Well, the illusion of transparency is the idea that we
think that what's going on in our heads is visible
to the people who we're interacting with. You know, my
wife is fond of saying to me, I can't read
your mind, and I want to say, but what do
you mean? You know me? You know, we've been together
for forty one years. But the reality is that other
(16:23):
people can't know what's in your head. They don't know
what your day was. And even if they know some
of the basic facts about what's going on, they don't
know how you experienced it. They don't know what your
experience of your life is like. So you really need
to be articulate about everything so other people can really
get it.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
And so we need to share. We need to make
things transparent. But what are some practical strategies for doing that? Well,
any of your favorite tips?
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Sonya?
Speaker 4 (16:51):
Really just starting small. Someone asks you how you are.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Instead of saying I'm fine, you might say, oh, I
had a rough day, or you know, I was sort
of struggling today a little bit, So kind of starting
small and then maybe revealing a little bit deeper and
deeper more of your kind of full self.
Speaker 4 (17:05):
The idea is that the other person hopefully will listen.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
If they listen well and are responsive to us, they
make us feel understood and valued and loved. That would
encourage us to open up even more. So that's sort
of the cycle that we talk about. And then if
we show genuine curiosity and we listen really well with
warmth to the other person, they're going to feel even
a little bit more safety, more trust, and it'll be
easier for them to open up a little bit more.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Yeah, And what I would add to it is the
idea that in our close relationships, such as with your
living partners, it's very easy to build in a ritual
of you know, how was your day. But what a
lot of people do when they do how was your
day is, you know, recount a few facts and then
go on to answering their emails. And perhaps most of
(17:52):
us are so tired at the end of the day
that we don't really want to go into it. But
the whole point is that you do have to go
into it, and you know, to make that a priority
as opposed to the last thing that you do, and.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
To ask each other questions, and I would say, the
right kind of question.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
One of the points we make in our book is
that with longer term relationships, we sort of tend to
assume that we sort of know the person. You know,
when we first start meeting someone, whether it's a colleague
or a friend or a romantic partner, right, we ask
them a lot of questions, like we're so curious about them,
and then after a while we just kind of feel like, oh,
we now know this person, So we often stop asking,
(18:30):
which is actually kind of really sad because everyone's always changing,
Like we're always having new experiences and thoughts and doubts
and fears and dreams and wishes, right, And so to
keep asking questions sort of these kind of deeper questions
I think is really important.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Well, we just make the point, which I think would
be really useful. It's not the sharing of information that
is the important part of it. It's the conversation that
follows from sharing that's important. So if the sharing doesn't
lead to a conversation, it's just a monologue or an interview.
But when it leads to a conversation that's genuine, that's
(19:07):
where the benefit comes from from and.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
This idea that conversation gets to the second important mindset
that's so critical for making other people feel loved. We
need to start listening to learn. How is listening to
learn different than we normally go about listening?
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Well. One of the things that's so interesting about listening
research is that if you ask people are you a
good listener, something like ninety percent of people will say
that they are a good listener. If you ask people,
do the people around you listen well to you? That
number drops to about eight percent. It tells you that
there's a real gap there.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
I think most people feel like they're like pretty good listeners,
but it turns out that most of us are not
good listeners, including myself. When we're listening, we're really like
rehearsing our answer that we're going to give. And I
do this all the time. It's like we're waiting for
like the mic to be given to us, and so
we're sort of listening to respond instead of listening to learn.
And so it really requires a kind of retraining of
(20:06):
our mind. And one way to do that is to
try to listen like you're gonna be tested on it.
The next day, Harry and I went to a listening workshop.
We were divided into diads, into pairs of two, and
we told us story to the other person, and then
we were supposed to retell the entire story. I remember
I was paired up with this woman and I was
listening so hard. I mean, I really wasn't listening very hard,
(20:28):
like I'm gonna be quizzed on it, because I was.
Because then I was asked to kind of retell the
whole story, and I have to tell you. I mean,
I think I did a pretty good job, but there
were so many things I got wrong and she was
like no, no, I never said that, or like no, no,
that's not how it happened.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
And so the first first is sort of listening like
you're gonna be quizzed on it.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
But then the second is to ask questions and ask
the kind of questions that showed the person you were
really listening, maybe you were even taking it to the
next level, maybe even better, you had an insight about
what they were telling you, because that makes the person
feel so seen, like wow, that person really wants to
know about.
Speaker 4 (21:02):
My inner life. Right, So ask each other questions.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
And so this idea of feeling seen suggests there's all
these benefits to being listened to. But Harry, what are
some of these benefits and are there also benefits when
you are doing the listening.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
Well, there are many benefits of feeling listened to. It
leads people to feel more trust in you, It improves
the relationship. They're a wonderful study done by our colleague
Guy Ichikov in Israel shows that burnout is much less
of a problem when teachers in particular feel listened to
by their principles. Other studies show than couples when they
(21:38):
feel listened to, conflict goes much better. And it's not
necessarily that they are better able to resolve conflict. It's
that the conflict becomes less pernicious, people become less defensive,
and as a result, they end up feeling better even
if that original issue hasn't been resolved. So it builds
(21:58):
trust and connection and a real sense of partnership and interdependence.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
It sounds like if you're boosting people's sense of trust,
if you're boosting the sense of partnership, then the listener
will also get these benefits as well.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Have an example actually from just recently, I was talking
to a friend who basically said that she didn't feel
very loved by her adult daughter who's about like twenty
eight years old, and so she's like trying to figure
out how to feel more loved by dorl Like, maybe
she can talk to her and say, I don't feel
loved by you, and I said, well, actually the thing
to do is to listen to her. Start by listening right,
(22:33):
just by making her feel love first, sort of, to
show genuine curiosity and really listen to what she cares.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
About, and to just take that a step further. One
of the all time classics in this area is Dale
Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. If you
look at his six rules of how to do that,
they're all about listening to the other person. They're all
about making the other person feel that you're interested in them,
(23:02):
you value them, you care about them.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
You had one Dale Carnegie suggestion in the book that
I loved this idea that if you want to make
other people feel loved, you should ask questions that the
other person will enjoy answering. I love that one.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
I love del CARNEGIEY.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
I've read that book like three times that there's like
a version for teen girls, and I actually bought that
book to give it to my daughters. I have three daughters,
and actually one of my daughters is twelve, and she
told me just the other day that she remembered one
of her friends mentioning some kind of sport that her
friend was really really into.
Speaker 4 (23:32):
And then a month later she's like, mom, I remembered
that she really liked this sport.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
So I asked her, blah blah blah, you know, tell
me about this sport, and the girl was like so
excited and just started going on and on about this
passion of hers.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
Right, So it's pretty simple actually yet.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
To remember what it is the other person really wants
to talk about, and then to ask them about it.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
So that was mindset number two, we need to listen
to learn a little bit better. Mindset three is one
that we know benefits are happiness. It is that we
need to get really curious. Sonya, you've called this idea
radical curiosity. What's the radical part of radical curiosity?
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Sometimes people have trouble understanding the difference between good listening
and curiosity, and so I like to sort of use
this example.
Speaker 4 (24:12):
Imagine listening to a lecture or a podcast for that matter.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
And maybe you're like really listening, well, you're taking notes,
and maybe you're even tested on it and you get
an A plus. But it doesn't mean you're curious, right,
So you can be a great listener without actually being curious.
To be curious is to be genuinely interested, and sometimes
it's to be interested in the topic, and sometimes it's
to be interested in the person.
Speaker 4 (24:33):
So let's say I'm really into basketball and you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Basketball, Like, I may not be interested in you at
all as a person, but I'm curious about the topic.
I think it's more powerful when you're really curious about
the person again, kind of like you make a new
friend or you're falling in love and then you're just
sort of curious about anything about their life, right, And
so genuinosity when you just sort of want to know
more and more and you're like, in the moment, you're
experiencing flow, you're not distracted. This is kind of some
(24:57):
of the symptoms of genuine radical curiosity.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
I love the basketball analogy because it fits with a
piece of advice that you had in your book that
I really enjoyed. This idea of focusing on the person
rather than the topic. It's one thing to be like, oh,
basketball sounds cool, Like tell me about the scores or
the core. I don't know. I'm not into basketball so
that much about basketball, embarrassingly, But rather than do that,
you don't even have to worry about not knowing about
the topic, because what you care about is the person.
(25:22):
How did you get into basketball? How does basketball make
you feel? You're kind of digging into the person rather
than the topic, which is a powerful way to activate
this social curiosity. And sonya, I know that you've done
some work on the benefits of curiosity. What have you
found so far in your lab?
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
One of my students medicine did her what we call
her second year project and of our master's thesis, the
Intervention on Curiosity. She basically asked people over the course
of a week to engage in some kind of curious behavior.
So we really enjoyed looking at the examples. These are undergraduates,
so it was like, oh, I discovered this new kind
of dance and I wanted to learn more about this
sort of dance. Or my friend had a recipe, so
(25:59):
I was learning about how to make this dish. It
could be anything, right, And so we found that people
who actively and intentionally tried to be more curious every day,
they showed more positive they showed fewer negative motions, greater wellbeing,
greatest sense of self worth, interestingly, and greatest sense of
autonomy or control.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
So it seems like curiosity has all these benefits, both
maybe to how we're feeling, but also to the relationship
into helping other people feel loved, Harry, are there any
best practices for kind of engaging your curiosity in conversation
making other people realize that you are in fact curious.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Well, there's in fact a great irony to this idea.
Think about how people go about weeding through the many
people they see on online dating sites. Most people will
have a checklist, and they're typically looking for someone who
shares their interests. In fact, there are many niche sites.
You know, there's a site for mustache lovers, a site
for farmers, there's a site for baseball fans, and so
(26:55):
you're looking for someone who matches the interest that you
already have. But the idea of curiosity fits with an
important theory we have in relationships called self expansion theory,
which is the idea that one of the reasons we
form close relationships is to expand our sense of self
and that can mean learning new things. So you know,
(27:18):
I don't like opera very much, but if I were
to pair up with someone who's into opera, if I
was curious, I would say, wow, teach me about opera.
Let me learn about what's interesting about opera. And you
can expand yourself in those ways. So one of the
things that's really nice about the idea of curiosity, and
(27:38):
when Sonya talks about there being social curiosity and thing curiosity,
is sometimes those things are actually merged because you become
interested in another person by being interested in what interests them.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
So far, we've covered three at the major mindsets Harry
and Sonya recommend for feeling more loved, sharing, listening to learn,
and radical curiosity, but we still have two more to explore,
plus some guidance on what to do when you've tried
all these strategies and you still don't feel as loved
you'd hoped. We'll cover all that when The Happiest Lab
returns from the break. We're back with social psychologists Sonya
(28:30):
Lubermriski and Harry Reese, who are sharing the mindsets that
research shows we need to embrace in order to feel loved.
Number four mindset on their list is what Harry has
called open heartedness.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
An open hearted mindset means being genuinely caring toward the
other person, certainly giving them the benefit of the doubt,
simply being as concerned as we can for their welfare,
being kind, being generous, being altruistic. For example, when they
tell you something that maybe sounds a little bit shady,
(29:03):
have the most benign interpretation that you can think of
what they're doing in the most positive of light, and
you'll find that when you do that, the other person
tends to respond much more positively, rather than getting defensive
and closed up from it. One of the things that
we talk about in the book is the idea of
a communal relationship, a relationship that's defined in terms of
(29:27):
caring about the well being of the other and expecting
that they care about your wellbeing. Nearly all of our
most satisfying relationships are communal relationships with our children, with
our parents, with our romantic partners, with the people we
would call a best friend. Those are the relationships that
are most deeply meaningful to people.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
It probably seems obvious that being on the receiving end
of an open art mindset feels really good. Right, people
are caring about you, wanting you to be happy. But Sonia,
some of your lovely work has shown the benefits of
giving the open heart mindset kind of extending kindness and compassion.
What does the research show about the benefits of that.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Yeah, it's one of the most powerful things you can
do to improve your own happiness is to show an
open heart towards other people. Basically, if you want to
be happy, try to make other people happy and so
in our studies, for example, we ask people to do
random acts of kindness for other people over the course
of say four weeks a month usually, and then one
of the most important comparison conditions is we ask people
(30:28):
to do acts of kindness for themselves, which is also nice,
which also is self care or self indulgent acts. It
feels good to something kind for yourself, but that tends
to be more fleeting, Right, So you get yourself at
ice cream, you get a massage, you take a nap,
so it feels good in the moment, doesn't necessarily carry
over a month later. We actually have a study where
we compared givers and receivers in a workplace where we
(30:50):
ask some people to be the givers and others the receivers.
We literally found evidence to support this better to give
than to receive. The receivers became kind of happier right away,
but the givers actually experienced benefits less stress, less depression,
even greater well being four months.
Speaker 4 (31:06):
Later, sixteen weeks later.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
So we find that people who do acts of kindness
for others, essentially who show an open heart mindset towards others,
become happier and also feel more connected in general.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
You also have some data showing that it makes people
more successful too. Write We have.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
A study with kids nine to eleven year old kids
where we asked the kids to do acts of kindness
for others, and we find that when they did acts
of kindness for others generally in their family, they came
back to the classroom and they actually became more popular.
So literally, the other kids liked them more when they
did acts of kindness at home.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
So something must have rubbed off on them.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
So when they came back to the classroom, maybe they
just seem more positive, more confident. Maybe they weren't more
helpful in the classroom as well. We also find genomic
benefits to acts of kindness for others. So people who
do acts of kindness for others relative to for themselves,
they show changes in their RNA gene expression associated with
a healthier immune profile, so sort of less pro inflammatory
(32:01):
gene expression in some studies, greater anti viral gene expressions.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
So these are all associated with better immune health.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
We're feeling better, we're helping our immune systems when we're
doing these nice things for other people. Another way that
we can become open hearted towards the people that we
are trying to love better is to see them in
all of their facets. And that gets to the final
mindset that you've talked about as boosting our ability to
love others. This idea of multiplicity, Harry, what's multiplicity and
why is it so important for making others feel loved well?
Speaker 3 (32:30):
Multiplicity is the idea that we all have many selves,
many parts to ourselves. Some of these parts are genuinely wonderful,
you know, the positive traits we have, and some of them,
shall we say, less terrific things that we've been embarrassed by, shortcomings, weaknesses,
flaws in our character. We go to great pains to
(32:52):
hide these, and one of the things that can really
boost a relationship tremendously is the idea of acknowledging those
flaws in another person and being accepting of them, even
being loving towards them. One part of that is simply
coming up with the most benign interpretation that you can
(33:12):
for a shortcoming, but another way is simply to recognize, well,
I don't like what you did, but I recognize that
there's many sides to you. So when we don't focus
so much on the negative character attribution for a person's
shortcomings and instead focus on, well, you may have done
something that wasn't desirable, but that's just one part of you,
(33:36):
and you've probably done many wonderful things in your life.
Part of the importance of that is that allows the
other to feel loved and accepted. But the other side
of that is that if you start to adopt that
idea towards yourself, to have compassion for your own shortcomings
and your own weaknesses, you make it that much more
(33:56):
likely that you will feel loved. If you focus on
bad things that you've done and you feel like those
things rule out being happy, that they rule out anyone
ever expressing love to do you make it impossible to
feel loved? So acknowledging that humans have multiple size and
we've all done things that we wish we hadn't done,
(34:19):
will make it that much more likely that we can
feel loved.
Speaker 4 (34:23):
I want to add that it's so hard.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
I think we are all kind of judgmental, maybe sort
of evolutionarily speaking, that served us well to kind of,
you know, when we see someone engage in a bad
behavior that we maybe need to kind of be wary
of that person.
Speaker 4 (34:39):
So it's really, really hard. I actually had the experienced
recently where I.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Was on Zoom meeting a new group of people, and
we had these prompt stands, and one of the prompts
was name something that you have changed your mind about
my insert And I'm kind of regretting that I said
this is that I have a friend who did a.
Speaker 4 (34:56):
Very bad thing.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
And so I said that he did this very bad thing,
but I still his friend. You know, I sort of
see him in this sort of very messy complexity. He
made a mistake, He has lots of other good size
and I have to tell you, I'm not going to stay
it on air, but I said what he did, and
people just looked at me like, oh my god, I
feel like they were judging me for not being judgmental enough.
So anyway, that's kind of an extreme example. But I mean,
(35:19):
think about like all of us at our lowest moment,
right if anyone saw us at our lowest moment, we'd
be pretty ashamed.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
So let's remember that. But again, I also wanted to.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Sort of reiterate what Harry said about turning multiple city
mindset also the open heart mindset onto ourselves and sort
of having compassion for ourselves and having self love for ourselves.
It'll help us feel loved in part because when you
think about there are people who love us, imagine them
sort of pouring love on us, but it's not getting in,
and so it's like a cup of love and there's
(35:49):
sort of a lid on it and sort of not
getting in. And I think of like self love and
self compassion as a way to open that opening at
the top. When you really love yourself, people see that
by the way, they sort of reflect that appraisal of yourself,
and you also see their love is more authentic. If
you have self love for yourself, you'ren't suspicious of other
people's kindness. But you see as authentic that person really
(36:10):
does love me, you know when they say that positive
thing about me, when they give you that compliment, that's
actually real and genuine. So yeah, you're sort of making
that opening wider and easier to receive love from others
and thus to feel love by others.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Any practical strategies for increasing your ability to see others
as there multiple messy selves that can be loved anyway, Well, the.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Most of this one is, no matter what you hear,
make your first place to go to be seeing it
in a non judgmental way. I mean, we all have
this tendency. This on you is describing to respond emotionally,
to respond judgmentally short circuit it. When you hear about
something that someone did, make your first thought be why
(36:54):
might they have done something that they didn't mean to
do in that situation?
Speaker 1 (36:59):
And if it's with how all these mindsets go together?
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Right?
Speaker 1 (37:02):
What you're describing in that case is, if you're feeling judgmental,
try to shut off the judgment and turn on a
little bit of curiosity. Then you can listen to learn
about why the person really did it exactly.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
Curiosity Actually, caste is so useful imagine in the middle
of a fight with your spouse, they're really angry, and
you stop yourself and you think, I'm so curious why
they're so angry. Right, That is a powerful technique. But yeah, again,
just like everything gets better with practice. I used to
be I think a lot more judgmental. I'm sure I
still am at times. But when I hear like a
(37:32):
friend will say, can you believe what this guy blah
blah blah did? Now, more often than not, my first
reaction is to think about, like, why that person did
that thing, and often I imagine them as a young child. Actually,
to see someone as a young child, it often is
actually helpful to reduce that judgment.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
And of course to just build on this. One of
the things that's really important to not be judgmental about
is being judgmental. You give yourself permission to be judgmental
and then back away from it.
Speaker 4 (38:04):
I need to be self compassionate about myself when I'm judgmental.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Thank you and so all of these since they're super helpful,
But you end your book with I think one of
the most important things that we need to do, which
is that we need to start using them first, that
we need to apply love to others first before we
can get back the love to ourselves.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
Exactly, you go first, you listen, and you show curiosity.
You make the other person feel loved first. Your goal
is to make the other person feel good, not to
make yourself feel good. But the second thing I just
want to add a caveat that's really important, is that
once in a while, or maybe even more than once
in a while, you try everything and it doesn't work,
and the person still doesn't respond, and they still don't share,
(38:43):
and they don't reciprocate.
Speaker 4 (38:44):
But reciprocity is a really powerful rule of social behavior,
very powerful. Usually it works, but once in a while
it doesn't.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
And then if it doesn't, maybe that's the time to
reconsider the relationship, maybe to pause, maybe to walk away,
maybe to kind of accept it as it is. But
I did want to sort of add that so that
people understand that once in a while it's not going
to work.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Well, I would add to what Sonya said, this is
not a five minute thing. It's not that you listen
for five minutes and you say, see they're not responding
to me. It's not working. Think of it as a
long term investment where you have to do it gradually. Sometimes,
as Sonya says, other people will not respond to it.
You can make it a topic of conversation to see
(39:25):
if that might kickstart the process. But if that doesn't
work and it continues, maybe it's time to look elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
Any finite pieces of advice for folks who want to
feel loved a bit more.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
My final word is that if you want to feel
more loved, you don't have to change yourself. You don't
have to change the other person. You just have to
change the conversation. So it is absolutely in your control.
I think that's a very very powerful message.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Love it, Harry.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
I would say that prior to doing this work, I
was not a very good listener, and in particular I
was a pretty judgmental listener. And so one of the
things I've learned is to be much less judgmental and
to be much more curious about the people I'm talking to.
You'd have to ask my wife if I've been successful
(40:12):
at it. But it feels like it's made a big
difference to me.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
Well, I have to say that reading the book has
made a big difference to me. It really does change things.
It makes conversations more fun, it makes you feel like
you matter more, and it makes you feel like you
belong more. So thank you so much for sharing all
this work with everyone and with my listeners today.
Speaker 3 (40:30):
It's been delightful chatting with you, Laurie.
Speaker 4 (40:32):
Yeah, it's my pleasure, Laurie.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
Even though it may not feel like it. The science
shows that feeling more loved is under your control, but
we don't always know the best way to make that happen.
So if you're feeling a little underloved at this Valentine season,
why not try some of the strategies that Sonya and
Harry talked about today. You could get just a tad
more curious with a friend, or commit to recognizing your
partner's multiplicity a bit more authentically. Or why not try
(40:57):
a quick act of kindness to boost your connection and
your positive mood. And if you want even more research
backed advice about how to feel loved, check out Harry
and Sonya's new book, How to Feel Loved The Five
Mindsets That Get You More of What Matters Most, which
is out this week. If you have thoughts about today's
episode or the science of love generally, we'd love to
hear them. You can email us at Happiness Lab at
(41:19):
pushkin dot fm to tell us what you liked or
ask a question. You can also sign up to learn
more about the science of happiness and join my free
newsletter on my website, Doctor Lauri Santos dot com. That's
d R l a u ri E Santos dot com.
Coming up on next week's episode of The Happiness Lab,
we'll hear from a social scientist turned dating expert about
(41:41):
the right way to find your soulmate.
Speaker 5 (41:43):
According to the research, if you've tried dating on apps
and there's just this big effort reward gap that's happening
where you're swiping and swiping and swiping, you're messaging, you're
rarely meeting up, and it makes sense that you're among
the seventy eight percent of online daters who report experiencing burnout.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
That's the next installment in our series on the science
of love on The Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos,
Pushkin. It's February, that time of year when we all
feel like we're being bombarded with messages about love. Think
lots of red hearts, adds for diamond rings, laingerie chocolates,
and on and on. For those of us with romantic partners,
(00:36):
there's pressure to make the perfect reservation, by the perfect gift,
and plan that perfect date night. And if you're single,
the season often comes with feelings of loneliness and fomo. Honestly,
this time of year doesn't always feel great. It's like
a huge Hallmark card being collectively shoved in all of
our faces. This whole season is supposed to be about love,
(00:57):
but that can raise some pretty big questions like is
this what love is really about? And if not, how
many of us are actually experiencing the kind of deep
connection we need to feel happy or even just okay.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
We ask people, you know, how often do they feel
loved and who do they feel loved most or leased by,
and we find that about seventy percent I believe don't
feel as loved as they want.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
This is a psychologist Sonya Lubermerski, an expert on the
science of happiness.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
They also said that there were romantic partners where the
people they most wanted to feel more loved from, so
they weren't getting as much as they wanted or even
in many cases needed.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
And this is the psychologist Harry Ves, an expert on
the science of relationships. Sonya and Harry have come together
to co author a new book called How to Feel
Loved The Five Mindsets That give You More of What
matters most. The book explores why so many of us
don't feel as loved as we'd like, but it also
explores what we can do to change that.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
I love talking about How to Feel Loved. The book
makes me feel loved and the experience of writing it
with Sonya was definitely a loving experience as well as
a literary experience.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
You guys, do seem like you had like I don't
know if it's bromance is not the right word, but.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
Something all right, we have great chemistry, right.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Stay tuned because in today's episode, the first of three
shows we're doing on the Science of Love, Sonya and
Harry will share some practical tips for strengthening our relationships
and not just romantic ones. We're also going to tackle
how to feel loved in the friendships, family ties, and
everyday connections we already have, plus the connections we're planning
to build in the future. We'll get into all of
(02:36):
Sonya and Harry's tips after some quick words from our sponsors.
So let's start with the big but obvious question, which
(02:56):
makes me think of a really bad ninety song. What
is love?
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Well, there are many different definitions of love. Indeed, I
think it's one of the most ambiguous words in the
English language. You know, we can love chocolate ice cream,
can the New York mets, and we can love our parents,
and we can love our partners. So there are many
different definitions. The definition that we use in the book
is talking about the kind of deep, embodied experience that
(03:23):
you have when you have affection and caring and warmth
for other people in your lives that you are connected to,
that your life is intertwined with.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Well, when a lot of people think of love, they
think about the thing that you feel for someone else,
like I love my partner, I love chocolate ice cream.
But you really focused on the flip side of that,
the experience that you have of other people loving you. Sonya,
why that focus for the book.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
As a happiness researcher, I think actually whether or not
you feel loved, and the extent to which you feel
loved by others maybe the most important factor in happiness.
And by the way, one reason is that we can
be loved, you know, we can have all these people
in our lives who objectively love us, but we don't
actually feel loved by them, or maybe not feel loved
by them as much as you want to be.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
So that's a really important distinction, Harry.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
I know this is something you thought about as a kid.
In your book, you admit how much you were tracking
how much you thought other people loved you. Could you
tell us a little bit about that middle school spreadsheeting.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
I was certainly an insecure kid, particularly in middle school.
Is where I really remember that experience most vividly. I
went to summer camp and I was in a bunk
with about ten other boys my age, and I remember
waking up one night at the middle of the night
when there was obviously some kind of activity going on
(04:44):
where they were planning some kind of a raid on
another bunk, and they hadn't woken me up to take
part in that, and I felt just awful. And I
remember just naturally spending a lot of my time tracking
other people's behavior. You know, who was hanging out with whom,
who were friends with whom? And were they including me
(05:05):
or not including me?
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Oh my gosh, I can feel that viscerally. I'm like
stuck with you on the bunk at like ten years old,
feeling that exactly. This is something that obviously you saw
as a kid, and I think we can all relate to.
But this is something that a lot of people are feeling,
not as middle schoolers but as adults. So this kind
of crisis of not feeling loved feel similar to another
crisis that Sonya is happiness researchers, we hear a lot
(05:27):
about this idea of the loneliness crisis. Is not feeling
loved the same as loneliness? Are there differences? What do
you think?
Speaker 3 (05:34):
I mean?
Speaker 2 (05:34):
You could argue that the root of loneliness is a
feeling of not feeling loved, not feeling loved, not feeling
like you belong, which really go together. And certainly you
can see that more and more people are acknowledging that
they are lonely or when you ask them, like how
many people do you have to talk to? You? You know,
in a crisis, there's fewer and fewer, less and less
with time. When you think about a lot of other
(05:56):
problems in our society, whether it's bullying or polarization or violence,
you could blame sort of not feeling loved or loneliness
for those problems as well. It's really even a bigger
problem than we think.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
So, Harry, what are some of the consequences of not
feeling loved psychologically? What happens when we don't feel that.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
When we don't feel loved. That feeling should not be
pooh pooed. It's not something that exists in isolation in US.
It goes along with many other kinds of consequences, certainly
a lack of emotional wellbeing and happiness, but it even
extends to the body and to our health. There are
scores of studies that show that the kind of feeling
(06:38):
that Sonya was describing are feelings that relate to just
about every health problem you can think of. For example,
heart disease is well known to relate to the feeling
of not being loved and feeling lonely. One of my
favorite studies is the study that was done in California
where they looked at cancer deaths and the absence of
(07:00):
meaningful connections, which certainly would be related to loneliness and
not feeling loved, predicted premature mortality from cancer and a
greater likelyhood that once you get cancer you would die
from it.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
Basically a lack of connection.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
That loneliness, the harm of that under the physical health
problems is equivalent to smoking fifteen cigarettes per day.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
That number is just so compelling, Right.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
I'll just throw in one more set of studies, which
I think are incredibly fascinating because these are experimental studies now.
So what they did in these studies is inject people
with a cold virus and then did some very sophisticated
work to see who got sick and who didn't get sick.
And guess what it was. The people who experienced themselves
(07:46):
as cut off from others and isolated were more likely
to get sick after having been exposed to the cold virus.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
It's so amazing that we see these physical effects of
not feeling left to do we understand the mechanism, Harry.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
That's a really important question, and it's one that a
lot of scientists are devoting their attention to. The First
thing I have to say is we don't really know.
The second thing I say is probably most of the
action comes from two places. One is simply happiness and
not being anxious, angry, depressed. Said, we know that positive
(08:24):
emotions trigger a whole series of biological responses that are
health promoting. We know that negative emotions trigger a lot
of biological processes that are harmful and deleterious, especially over
the long run. The second kind of way of thinking
about it, which is a little trickier, is the idea
that we probably have mechanisms within ourselves that are designed
(08:47):
by evolution to precisely carry out these connections. They're designed
to make us seek out others, to seek positive connections
with others, to respond well to them, to reciprocate to them.
And these mechanisms are within us, but we don't really
understand what they are and where they are. But there
are a lot of people trying to track that down,
(09:09):
and I suspect we'll know a lot more in the
next twenty years.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
So the consefences of feeling not loved are huge, But
the problem is so many of us are feeling that way.
And one of the things I loved about your book
is that it walks through why we're feeling that way,
and all the ways that our mind gets not feeling
loved wrong. I think one of the ways we get
this wrong is we assume that if we're not feeling
loved and then we have to have some sort of
personal failure like I'm not attractive enough, or I'm not
(09:35):
interesting enough, or I'm not smart enough. If only I
could be more lovable than I would feel loved. Sonya,
why is this idea a bit wrong?
Speaker 4 (09:43):
And I think you summarized it really well.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
First of all, Yeah, the idea that if you don't
feel love, we think that the solution is to make
ourselves more lovable sort of more interesting, more attractive, more kind,
more funny, or somehow get the other person to love
us more.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
And it sort of just turns out that doesn't work.
And actually, it doesn't mean that you need to sort
of change yourself.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
It doesn't mean to change the other person to somehow
notice and love you more. When we arguing in the
book is what we need to do is change conversation,
which is a much more feasible, much less overwhelming, because
when you think about a relationship, a relationship is really
a series of conversations, and we could change the conversation
in a way that makes you feel more loved by
(10:22):
making the other person feel more loved.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
To feel a little bit more loved, we need to
make other people feel loved. It almost feels like a
little bit of a paradox, or that we get it backwards.
What are some of the steps of making other people
feel loved?
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Well, one of the things we argue is that it's
the way you approach the conversations that makes them result
in the kinds of experiences in which you will feel
loved and the other person will feel loved. So our
argument is that if you approach the conversation with the
mindset of helping the other person feel loved something that
(10:59):
is after all controllable about you, that will set off
a cycle of interaction that will allow you to feel
more loved. So the approach, in other words, is to
listen carefully, to communicate to the other person that you're
really interested in what they have to say. You know,
so many of us approach conversations as this is my
(11:21):
chance to show off what I think and feel, And
that's the exact wrong approach. The right approach is to
help the other person do that. So when they tell
you about something that happened to them. One of the
simplest phrases you can use is tell me more and
mean it. Of course, to do that with genuine curiosity,
because when other people experience that, a little light bulble
(11:44):
goes off inside their heads says, Wow, this person's really interested,
and then they become interested in you as well.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Again, intuition is to make ourselves more lovable, sort of
to show off or positive qualities. Right, so we want
to speak and sort of show how kind and interesting
and funny and intelligent we are to impress the other person.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
And that does work.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
I mean, it may work to impress them, but it
doesn't really forge a connection.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
It doesn't really make them feel love it, or us
feel loved.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
We're too focused on how we are coming across to
the other person as opposed to how we're coming forward,
which is really like, well we can actually do to
make the other person feel better. There's a kind of
famous like dating advice, which is on a first date,
you don't want to make yourself feel better about yourself,
you want to make them feel better about themselves.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
But it's really counterintuitive. I think we assume that what's
under our control is showing off how great we are
getting other people to admire us. But what you're saying
is no, no, no, it's under your control. But what's
under your control is that you need to be responsive
to the other person.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
Right, that's the first step.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
You need to do that first.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
Yeah, But what.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Does taking that first step look like in practice? What
are the strategies we can actually use to feel more
loved and to strengthen the connections that matter most. We'll
dive into all those answers when the Happiness Lab returns.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
In a moment.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Social psychologists Sonya Lubermerski and Harry Reees want to help
a lonely world feel more loved, and they've come up
with five simple, evidence based mindsets that can help us
do just that. The first mindset is what they call sharing.
I asked Harry to describe what that looks like.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Sharing is simply the idea that in order to feel loved,
you need to open up about yourself. That is, let's
say I present a totally curated fantasy view of myself
to you. You may be impressed, and when you tell
me about how wonderful that sounds, how do I react? Well,
it feels hollow because that's not me. That's not the
(13:49):
me that I most feel. So when I hide myself
and instead emphasize all my positive qualities, it creates this
dynamic where the other person may well actually provide what
you're wanting, and yet it won't ring true because it's
not the person who I am. And instead, if you
can open up about the person that you really are,
(14:12):
then when there is some kind of positive feedbackcoming, it's
much easier to experience it as real, as genuine, and
as authentic. Now, it's important to realize that we don't
mean dump the story of your childhood on everybody in
the first five minutes you meet them. No, that's not
what we're saying. What we're saying is that you need
(14:33):
to simply be genuine and real in talking about who
you are, and over time you will be able to
tell those stories about your childhood and the weaknesses and
the shortcomings and the fears that you have. But that's
not something you do in the first five minutes. It's
something that comes down the road.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
So this kind of sharing is really good for us.
It makes us feel loved, it makes other people love us,
but it can be incredibly scary it and feel super awkward.
And Sonya, this is what you've called the paradox of vulnerability.
What's that?
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Yeah, So to feel loved, we need to be known.
If we're not really known to another person, who'll always
wonder would they still love me if they knew me?
Speaker 4 (15:15):
The paradox of vulnerabilities.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
And we think that if we reveal something vulnerable or
negative about us, maybe a self doubt, that we have,
an insecurity that we have, maybe even a trauma from
our childhood, that we would be liked less. And actually
it turns out that again when done at the right pace,
that actually we tend to be liked more when we
reveal something a little deeper about ourselves. Like I actually
(15:36):
was just talking to someone about After the Bay of
Pigs when John F. Kennedy admitted he made a mistake.
Apparently his approval ratings shot up.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Another thing I think we get wrong when it comes
to sharing is that we assume that people already know.
People say how's it going, and you're like fine, and
you kind of assume that people will see through, Well, no,
you're not fine. You're having a really tough day. This
is Perry, what you've called the illusion of transparency. I
think I can get it from the name, but walk
me through what this is.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Well, the illusion of transparency is the idea that we
think that what's going on in our heads is visible
to the people who we're interacting with. You know, my
wife is fond of saying to me, I can't read
your mind, and I want to say, but what do
you mean? You know me? You know, we've been together
for forty one years. But the reality is that other
(16:23):
people can't know what's in your head. They don't know
what your day was. And even if they know some
of the basic facts about what's going on, they don't
know how you experienced it. They don't know what your
experience of your life is like. So you really need
to be articulate about everything so other people can really
get it.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
And so we need to share. We need to make
things transparent. But what are some practical strategies for doing that? Well,
any of your favorite tips?
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Sonya?
Speaker 4 (16:51):
Really just starting small. Someone asks you how you are.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Instead of saying I'm fine, you might say, oh, I
had a rough day, or you know, I was sort
of struggling today a little bit, So kind of starting
small and then maybe revealing a little bit deeper and
deeper more of your kind of full self.
Speaker 4 (17:05):
The idea is that the other person hopefully will listen.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
If they listen well and are responsive to us, they
make us feel understood and valued and loved. That would
encourage us to open up even more. So that's sort
of the cycle that we talk about. And then if
we show genuine curiosity and we listen really well with
warmth to the other person, they're going to feel even
a little bit more safety, more trust, and it'll be
easier for them to open up a little bit more.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Yeah, And what I would add to it is the
idea that in our close relationships, such as with your
living partners, it's very easy to build in a ritual
of you know, how was your day. But what a
lot of people do when they do how was your
day is, you know, recount a few facts and then
go on to answering their emails. And perhaps most of
(17:52):
us are so tired at the end of the day
that we don't really want to go into it. But
the whole point is that you do have to go
into it, and you know, to make that a priority
as opposed to the last thing that you do, and.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
To ask each other questions, and I would say, the
right kind of question.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
One of the points we make in our book is
that with longer term relationships, we sort of tend to
assume that we sort of know the person. You know,
when we first start meeting someone, whether it's a colleague
or a friend or a romantic partner, right, we ask
them a lot of questions, like we're so curious about them,
and then after a while we just kind of feel like, oh,
we now know this person, So we often stop asking,
(18:30):
which is actually kind of really sad because everyone's always changing,
Like we're always having new experiences and thoughts and doubts
and fears and dreams and wishes, right, And so to
keep asking questions sort of these kind of deeper questions
I think is really important.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Well, we just make the point, which I think would
be really useful. It's not the sharing of information that
is the important part of it. It's the conversation that
follows from sharing that's important. So if the sharing doesn't
lead to a conversation, it's just a monologue or an interview.
But when it leads to a conversation that's genuine, that's
(19:07):
where the benefit comes from from and.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
This idea that conversation gets to the second important mindset
that's so critical for making other people feel loved. We
need to start listening to learn. How is listening to
learn different than we normally go about listening?
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Well. One of the things that's so interesting about listening
research is that if you ask people are you a
good listener, something like ninety percent of people will say
that they are a good listener. If you ask people,
do the people around you listen well to you? That
number drops to about eight percent. It tells you that
there's a real gap there.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
I think most people feel like they're like pretty good listeners,
but it turns out that most of us are not
good listeners, including myself. When we're listening, we're really like
rehearsing our answer that we're going to give. And I
do this all the time. It's like we're waiting for
like the mic to be given to us, and so
we're sort of listening to respond instead of listening to learn.
And so it really requires a kind of retraining of
(20:06):
our mind. And one way to do that is to
try to listen like you're gonna be tested on it.
The next day, Harry and I went to a listening workshop.
We were divided into diads, into pairs of two, and
we told us story to the other person, and then
we were supposed to retell the entire story. I remember
I was paired up with this woman and I was
listening so hard. I mean, I really wasn't listening very hard,
(20:28):
like I'm gonna be quizzed on it, because I was.
Because then I was asked to kind of retell the
whole story, and I have to tell you. I mean,
I think I did a pretty good job, but there
were so many things I got wrong and she was
like no, no, I never said that, or like no, no,
that's not how it happened.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
And so the first first is sort of listening like
you're gonna be quizzed on it.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
But then the second is to ask questions and ask
the kind of questions that showed the person you were
really listening, maybe you were even taking it to the
next level, maybe even better, you had an insight about
what they were telling you, because that makes the person
feel so seen, like wow, that person really wants to
know about.
Speaker 4 (21:02):
My inner life. Right, So ask each other questions.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
And so this idea of feeling seen suggests there's all
these benefits to being listened to. But Harry, what are
some of these benefits and are there also benefits when
you are doing the listening.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
Well, there are many benefits of feeling listened to. It
leads people to feel more trust in you, It improves
the relationship. They're a wonderful study done by our colleague
Guy Ichikov in Israel shows that burnout is much less
of a problem when teachers in particular feel listened to
by their principles. Other studies show than couples when they
(21:38):
feel listened to, conflict goes much better. And it's not
necessarily that they are better able to resolve conflict. It's
that the conflict becomes less pernicious, people become less defensive,
and as a result, they end up feeling better even
if that original issue hasn't been resolved. So it builds
(21:58):
trust and connection and a real sense of partnership and interdependence.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
It sounds like if you're boosting people's sense of trust,
if you're boosting the sense of partnership, then the listener
will also get these benefits as well.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Have an example actually from just recently, I was talking
to a friend who basically said that she didn't feel
very loved by her adult daughter who's about like twenty
eight years old, and so she's like trying to figure
out how to feel more loved by dorl Like, maybe
she can talk to her and say, I don't feel
loved by you, and I said, well, actually the thing
to do is to listen to her. Start by listening right,
(22:33):
just by making her feel love first, sort of, to
show genuine curiosity and really listen to what she cares.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
About, and to just take that a step further. One
of the all time classics in this area is Dale
Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. If you
look at his six rules of how to do that,
they're all about listening to the other person. They're all
about making the other person feel that you're interested in them,
(23:02):
you value them, you care about them.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
You had one Dale Carnegie suggestion in the book that
I loved this idea that if you want to make
other people feel loved, you should ask questions that the
other person will enjoy answering. I love that one.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
I love del CARNEGIEY.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
I've read that book like three times that there's like
a version for teen girls, and I actually bought that
book to give it to my daughters. I have three daughters,
and actually one of my daughters is twelve, and she
told me just the other day that she remembered one
of her friends mentioning some kind of sport that her
friend was really really into.
Speaker 4 (23:32):
And then a month later she's like, mom, I remembered
that she really liked this sport.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
So I asked her, blah blah blah, you know, tell
me about this sport, and the girl was like so
excited and just started going on and on about this
passion of hers.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
Right, So it's pretty simple actually yet.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
To remember what it is the other person really wants
to talk about, and then to ask them about it.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
So that was mindset number two, we need to listen
to learn a little bit better. Mindset three is one
that we know benefits are happiness. It is that we
need to get really curious. Sonya, you've called this idea
radical curiosity. What's the radical part of radical curiosity?
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Sometimes people have trouble understanding the difference between good listening
and curiosity, and so I like to sort of use
this example.
Speaker 4 (24:12):
Imagine listening to a lecture or a podcast for that matter.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
And maybe you're like really listening, well, you're taking notes,
and maybe you're even tested on it and you get
an A plus. But it doesn't mean you're curious, right,
So you can be a great listener without actually being curious.
To be curious is to be genuinely interested, and sometimes
it's to be interested in the topic, and sometimes it's
to be interested in the person.
Speaker 4 (24:33):
So let's say I'm really into basketball and you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Basketball, Like, I may not be interested in you at
all as a person, but I'm curious about the topic.
I think it's more powerful when you're really curious about
the person again, kind of like you make a new
friend or you're falling in love and then you're just
sort of curious about anything about their life, right, And
so genuinosity when you just sort of want to know
more and more and you're like, in the moment, you're
experiencing flow, you're not distracted. This is kind of some
(24:57):
of the symptoms of genuine radical curiosity.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
I love the basketball analogy because it fits with a
piece of advice that you had in your book that
I really enjoyed. This idea of focusing on the person
rather than the topic. It's one thing to be like, oh,
basketball sounds cool, Like tell me about the scores or
the core. I don't know. I'm not into basketball so
that much about basketball, embarrassingly, But rather than do that,
you don't even have to worry about not knowing about
the topic, because what you care about is the person.
(25:22):
How did you get into basketball? How does basketball make
you feel? You're kind of digging into the person rather
than the topic, which is a powerful way to activate
this social curiosity. And sonya, I know that you've done
some work on the benefits of curiosity. What have you
found so far in your lab?
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
One of my students medicine did her what we call
her second year project and of our master's thesis, the
Intervention on Curiosity. She basically asked people over the course
of a week to engage in some kind of curious behavior.
So we really enjoyed looking at the examples. These are undergraduates,
so it was like, oh, I discovered this new kind
of dance and I wanted to learn more about this
sort of dance. Or my friend had a recipe, so
(25:59):
I was learning about how to make this dish. It
could be anything, right, And so we found that people
who actively and intentionally tried to be more curious every day,
they showed more positive they showed fewer negative motions, greater wellbeing,
greatest sense of self worth, interestingly, and greatest sense of
autonomy or control.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
So it seems like curiosity has all these benefits, both
maybe to how we're feeling, but also to the relationship
into helping other people feel loved, Harry, are there any
best practices for kind of engaging your curiosity in conversation
making other people realize that you are in fact curious.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Well, there's in fact a great irony to this idea.
Think about how people go about weeding through the many
people they see on online dating sites. Most people will
have a checklist, and they're typically looking for someone who
shares their interests. In fact, there are many niche sites.
You know, there's a site for mustache lovers, a site
for farmers, there's a site for baseball fans, and so
(26:55):
you're looking for someone who matches the interest that you
already have. But the idea of curiosity fits with an
important theory we have in relationships called self expansion theory,
which is the idea that one of the reasons we
form close relationships is to expand our sense of self
and that can mean learning new things. So you know,
(27:18):
I don't like opera very much, but if I were
to pair up with someone who's into opera, if I
was curious, I would say, wow, teach me about opera.
Let me learn about what's interesting about opera. And you
can expand yourself in those ways. So one of the
things that's really nice about the idea of curiosity, and
(27:38):
when Sonya talks about there being social curiosity and thing curiosity,
is sometimes those things are actually merged because you become
interested in another person by being interested in what interests them.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
So far, we've covered three at the major mindsets Harry
and Sonya recommend for feeling more loved, sharing, listening to learn,
and radical curiosity, but we still have two more to explore,
plus some guidance on what to do when you've tried
all these strategies and you still don't feel as loved
you'd hoped. We'll cover all that when The Happiest Lab
returns from the break. We're back with social psychologists Sonya
(28:30):
Lubermriski and Harry Reese, who are sharing the mindsets that
research shows we need to embrace in order to feel loved.
Number four mindset on their list is what Harry has
called open heartedness.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
An open hearted mindset means being genuinely caring toward the
other person, certainly giving them the benefit of the doubt,
simply being as concerned as we can for their welfare,
being kind, being generous, being altruistic. For example, when they
tell you something that maybe sounds a little bit shady,
(29:03):
have the most benign interpretation that you can think of
what they're doing in the most positive of light, and
you'll find that when you do that, the other person
tends to respond much more positively, rather than getting defensive
and closed up from it. One of the things that
we talk about in the book is the idea of
a communal relationship, a relationship that's defined in terms of
(29:27):
caring about the well being of the other and expecting
that they care about your wellbeing. Nearly all of our
most satisfying relationships are communal relationships with our children, with
our parents, with our romantic partners, with the people we
would call a best friend. Those are the relationships that
are most deeply meaningful to people.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
It probably seems obvious that being on the receiving end
of an open art mindset feels really good. Right, people
are caring about you, wanting you to be happy. But Sonia,
some of your lovely work has shown the benefits of
giving the open heart mindset kind of extending kindness and compassion.
What does the research show about the benefits of that.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Yeah, it's one of the most powerful things you can
do to improve your own happiness is to show an
open heart towards other people. Basically, if you want to
be happy, try to make other people happy and so
in our studies, for example, we ask people to do
random acts of kindness for other people over the course
of say four weeks a month usually, and then one
of the most important comparison conditions is we ask people
(30:28):
to do acts of kindness for themselves, which is also nice,
which also is self care or self indulgent acts. It
feels good to something kind for yourself, but that tends
to be more fleeting, Right, So you get yourself at
ice cream, you get a massage, you take a nap,
so it feels good in the moment, doesn't necessarily carry
over a month later. We actually have a study where
we compared givers and receivers in a workplace where we
(30:50):
ask some people to be the givers and others the receivers.
We literally found evidence to support this better to give
than to receive. The receivers became kind of happier right away,
but the givers actually experienced benefits less stress, less depression,
even greater well being four months.
Speaker 4 (31:06):
Later, sixteen weeks later.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
So we find that people who do acts of kindness
for others, essentially who show an open heart mindset towards others,
become happier and also feel more connected in general.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
You also have some data showing that it makes people
more successful too. Write We have.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
A study with kids nine to eleven year old kids
where we asked the kids to do acts of kindness
for others, and we find that when they did acts
of kindness for others generally in their family, they came
back to the classroom and they actually became more popular.
So literally, the other kids liked them more when they
did acts of kindness at home.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
So something must have rubbed off on them.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
So when they came back to the classroom, maybe they
just seem more positive, more confident. Maybe they weren't more
helpful in the classroom as well. We also find genomic
benefits to acts of kindness for others. So people who
do acts of kindness for others relative to for themselves,
they show changes in their RNA gene expression associated with
a healthier immune profile, so sort of less pro inflammatory
(32:01):
gene expression in some studies, greater anti viral gene expressions.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
So these are all associated with better immune health.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
We're feeling better, we're helping our immune systems when we're
doing these nice things for other people. Another way that
we can become open hearted towards the people that we
are trying to love better is to see them in
all of their facets. And that gets to the final
mindset that you've talked about as boosting our ability to
love others. This idea of multiplicity, Harry, what's multiplicity and
why is it so important for making others feel loved well?
Speaker 3 (32:30):
Multiplicity is the idea that we all have many selves,
many parts to ourselves. Some of these parts are genuinely wonderful,
you know, the positive traits we have, and some of them,
shall we say, less terrific things that we've been embarrassed by, shortcomings, weaknesses,
flaws in our character. We go to great pains to
(32:52):
hide these, and one of the things that can really
boost a relationship tremendously is the idea of acknowledging those
flaws in another person and being accepting of them, even
being loving towards them. One part of that is simply
coming up with the most benign interpretation that you can
(33:12):
for a shortcoming, but another way is simply to recognize, well,
I don't like what you did, but I recognize that
there's many sides to you. So when we don't focus
so much on the negative character attribution for a person's
shortcomings and instead focus on, well, you may have done
something that wasn't desirable, but that's just one part of you,
(33:36):
and you've probably done many wonderful things in your life.
Part of the importance of that is that allows the
other to feel loved and accepted. But the other side
of that is that if you start to adopt that
idea towards yourself, to have compassion for your own shortcomings
and your own weaknesses, you make it that much more
(33:56):
likely that you will feel loved. If you focus on
bad things that you've done and you feel like those
things rule out being happy, that they rule out anyone
ever expressing love to do you make it impossible to
feel loved? So acknowledging that humans have multiple size and
we've all done things that we wish we hadn't done,
(34:19):
will make it that much more likely that we can
feel loved.
Speaker 4 (34:23):
I want to add that it's so hard.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
I think we are all kind of judgmental, maybe sort
of evolutionarily speaking, that served us well to kind of,
you know, when we see someone engage in a bad
behavior that we maybe need to kind of be wary
of that person.
Speaker 4 (34:39):
So it's really, really hard. I actually had the experienced
recently where I.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Was on Zoom meeting a new group of people, and
we had these prompt stands, and one of the prompts
was name something that you have changed your mind about
my insert And I'm kind of regretting that I said
this is that I have a friend who did a.
Speaker 4 (34:56):
Very bad thing.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
And so I said that he did this very bad thing,
but I still his friend. You know, I sort of
see him in this sort of very messy complexity. He
made a mistake, He has lots of other good size
and I have to tell you, I'm not going to stay
it on air, but I said what he did, and
people just looked at me like, oh my god, I
feel like they were judging me for not being judgmental enough.
So anyway, that's kind of an extreme example. But I mean,
(35:19):
think about like all of us at our lowest moment,
right if anyone saw us at our lowest moment, we'd
be pretty ashamed.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
So let's remember that. But again, I also wanted to.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Sort of reiterate what Harry said about turning multiple city
mindset also the open heart mindset onto ourselves and sort
of having compassion for ourselves and having self love for ourselves.
It'll help us feel loved in part because when you
think about there are people who love us, imagine them
sort of pouring love on us, but it's not getting in,
and so it's like a cup of love and there's
(35:49):
sort of a lid on it and sort of not
getting in. And I think of like self love and
self compassion as a way to open that opening at
the top. When you really love yourself, people see that
by the way, they sort of reflect that appraisal of yourself,
and you also see their love is more authentic. If
you have self love for yourself, you'ren't suspicious of other
people's kindness. But you see as authentic that person really
(36:10):
does love me, you know when they say that positive
thing about me, when they give you that compliment, that's
actually real and genuine. So yeah, you're sort of making
that opening wider and easier to receive love from others
and thus to feel love by others.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Any practical strategies for increasing your ability to see others
as there multiple messy selves that can be loved anyway, Well, the.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Most of this one is, no matter what you hear,
make your first place to go to be seeing it
in a non judgmental way. I mean, we all have
this tendency. This on you is describing to respond emotionally,
to respond judgmentally short circuit it. When you hear about
something that someone did, make your first thought be why
(36:54):
might they have done something that they didn't mean to
do in that situation?
Speaker 1 (36:59):
And if it's with how all these mindsets go together?
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Right?
Speaker 1 (37:02):
What you're describing in that case is, if you're feeling judgmental,
try to shut off the judgment and turn on a
little bit of curiosity. Then you can listen to learn
about why the person really did it exactly.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
Curiosity Actually, caste is so useful imagine in the middle
of a fight with your spouse, they're really angry, and
you stop yourself and you think, I'm so curious why
they're so angry. Right, That is a powerful technique. But yeah, again,
just like everything gets better with practice. I used to
be I think a lot more judgmental. I'm sure I
still am at times. But when I hear like a
(37:32):
friend will say, can you believe what this guy blah
blah blah did? Now, more often than not, my first
reaction is to think about, like, why that person did
that thing, and often I imagine them as a young child. Actually,
to see someone as a young child, it often is
actually helpful to reduce that judgment.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
And of course to just build on this. One of
the things that's really important to not be judgmental about
is being judgmental. You give yourself permission to be judgmental
and then back away from it.
Speaker 4 (38:04):
I need to be self compassionate about myself when I'm judgmental.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Thank you and so all of these since they're super helpful,
But you end your book with I think one of
the most important things that we need to do, which
is that we need to start using them first, that
we need to apply love to others first before we
can get back the love to ourselves.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
Exactly, you go first, you listen, and you show curiosity.
You make the other person feel loved first. Your goal
is to make the other person feel good, not to
make yourself feel good. But the second thing I just
want to add a caveat that's really important, is that
once in a while, or maybe even more than once
in a while, you try everything and it doesn't work,
and the person still doesn't respond, and they still don't share,
(38:43):
and they don't reciprocate.
Speaker 4 (38:44):
But reciprocity is a really powerful rule of social behavior,
very powerful. Usually it works, but once in a while
it doesn't.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
And then if it doesn't, maybe that's the time to
reconsider the relationship, maybe to pause, maybe to walk away,
maybe to kind of accept it as it is. But
I did want to sort of add that so that
people understand that once in a while it's not going
to work.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Well, I would add to what Sonya said, this is
not a five minute thing. It's not that you listen
for five minutes and you say, see they're not responding
to me. It's not working. Think of it as a
long term investment where you have to do it gradually. Sometimes,
as Sonya says, other people will not respond to it.
You can make it a topic of conversation to see
(39:25):
if that might kickstart the process. But if that doesn't
work and it continues, maybe it's time to look elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
Any finite pieces of advice for folks who want to
feel loved a bit more.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
My final word is that if you want to feel
more loved, you don't have to change yourself. You don't
have to change the other person. You just have to
change the conversation. So it is absolutely in your control.
I think that's a very very powerful message.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Love it, Harry.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
I would say that prior to doing this work, I
was not a very good listener, and in particular I
was a pretty judgmental listener. And so one of the
things I've learned is to be much less judgmental and
to be much more curious about the people I'm talking to.
You'd have to ask my wife if I've been successful
(40:12):
at it. But it feels like it's made a big
difference to me.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
Well, I have to say that reading the book has
made a big difference to me. It really does change things.
It makes conversations more fun, it makes you feel like
you matter more, and it makes you feel like you
belong more. So thank you so much for sharing all
this work with everyone and with my listeners today.
Speaker 3 (40:30):
It's been delightful chatting with you, Laurie.
Speaker 4 (40:32):
Yeah, it's my pleasure, Laurie.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
Even though it may not feel like it. The science
shows that feeling more loved is under your control, but
we don't always know the best way to make that happen.
So if you're feeling a little underloved at this Valentine season,
why not try some of the strategies that Sonya and
Harry talked about today. You could get just a tad
more curious with a friend, or commit to recognizing your
partner's multiplicity a bit more authentically. Or why not try
(40:57):
a quick act of kindness to boost your connection and
your positive mood. And if you want even more research
backed advice about how to feel loved, check out Harry
and Sonya's new book, How to Feel Loved The Five
Mindsets That Get You More of What Matters Most, which
is out this week. If you have thoughts about today's
episode or the science of love generally, we'd love to
hear them. You can email us at Happiness Lab at
(41:19):
pushkin dot fm to tell us what you liked or
ask a question. You can also sign up to learn
more about the science of happiness and join my free
newsletter on my website, Doctor Lauri Santos dot com. That's
d R l a u ri E Santos dot com.
Coming up on next week's episode of The Happiness Lab,
we'll hear from a social scientist turned dating expert about
(41:41):
the right way to find your soulmate.
Speaker 5 (41:43):
According to the research, if you've tried dating on apps
and there's just this big effort reward gap that's happening
where you're swiping and swiping and swiping, you're messaging, you're
rarely meeting up, and it makes sense that you're among
the seventy eight percent of online daters who report experiencing burnout.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
That's the next installment in our series on the science
of love on The Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos,
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