How to feel more loved, with Harry Reis, PhD

Even in our closest relationships, we can sometimes feel misunderstood and disconnected. Relationship researcher Harry Reis, PhD, coauthor of How to Feel Loved: The Five Mindsets That Get You More of What Matters Most, talks about the difference between being loved and feeling loved; the five “mindsets” that help people build stronger relationships; and why listening, vulnerability and curiosity are key to feeling more loved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:31Speaker 01

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• 1:01Kim Mills?

  Feeling loved is something all of us want. It's essential to our health and happiness. But we don't always get to experience it, even in our closest relationships. You probably have people in your life who care about you deeply: your friends, your family, a spouse or a partner. And yet, you sometimes still feel unseen or disconnected from them. Why is that? What's the difference between being loved and feeling loved? How do psychologists define love in the first place? Why is feeling loved so essential? And why can it sometimes be so hard to achieve, even when love is there? What gets in the way? And what mindsets or habits can help people feel more loved in their everyday lives?

• 1:46Kim Mills?

  Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills.

• 2:01Kim Mills?

  My guest today is Dr. Harry Reese, Dean's Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Rochester. His research focuses on intimacy and understanding in close relationships, and especially on how being responsive to our partners shapes our relationships. Dr. Reese is an APA Fellow and has published more than 250 papers in academic journals. He has received distinguished career contribution awards from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and the International Association for Relationship Research, and his work has been featured in media outlets including NPR, The New York Times, and Scientific American. His new book, written with happiness researcher Dr. Sonia Lierwamerski, is called How to Feel

• 2:43Kim Mills?

  Loved: The Five Mindsets That Get You More of What Matters Most. Dr. Reese, thank you for joining me today.

• 2:49Speaker 03

  It's a pleasure to be here today, Kim.

• 2:52Kim Mills?

  The title of your book is How to Feel Loved, so let's start there. How do you define love in your work, and what's the difference between being loved and feeling loved?

• 3:02Speaker 03

  Well, we take a very broad approach to the word love. Love is one of the most ambiguous words in the English language. When you think about it, it can apply to a romantic relationship, it can apply to how parents feel about their children, and it can apply to how you feel about chocolate ice cream. So, we tried to find a definition that would fit with most kinds of human relationships that people have. And so, we defined love in terms of feelings of caring and connection and warmth, the kind of feeling that one gets when one feels understood, cared for, appreciated, and seen.

• 3:47Speaker 03

  So, our definition very explicitly goes beyond romance, although romance is certainly covered in that as well. You asked about the difference between being loved and feeling loved, and that's a very important distinction to us and to most people.

• 4:03Speaker 03

  Being loved is what other people express and regard with respect to you. Feeling loved is how you feel about what they're doing. You know, somebody can love you, somebody can express love to you by giving you presents, by telling you how much they care, by sending you Valentine's Day cards. Feeling loved is when you take it in inside, when you feel, yes, that person really gets me, that person really cares about me, that person is really concerned about my well-being. And that's a very, very crucial distinction, because many people are loved and yet they don't feel loved.

• 4:43Kim Mills?

  What does the research tell us about why feeling loved is so important?

• 4:48Speaker 03

  Well, feeling loved is so important because it connects to just a variety of things that are so important for people's lives. Take, for example, the loneliness epidemic. People who are lonely don't feel loved. On the other hand, people who are not lonely most definitely do feel loved. So, one way to think about it is at the root cause of a general sense of ill-being and disconnection. And that ill-feeling in return is responsible for so many important things in life. For example, when people don't feel loved, they don't work as effectively. Young people in school don't do as well.

• 5:31Speaker 03

  And, much more interestingly, I think, is the idea that it's not only our mental and emotional health that suffers, but it's also our physical health, it's our proneness to disease, and interestingly enough, people who don't feel loved tend to die sooner.

• 5:49Kim Mills?

  Are there misconceptions people have about love that make it harder for some of us to actually feel loved?

• 5:54Speaker 03

  Well, the great irony in all this, I think, is the idea that people often will realize that they don't feel as loved as they want. And what they will do is often counterproductive. That is, it is often the kind of thing that actually makes it harder to feel loved rather than helping them feel loved. For example, one of the things that people will do is they try to make themselves as attractive as possible, as successful as possible, as strong as possible, as accomplished as possible. And if you doubt that people will try this, just take a look at profiles that people post on online dating. Those profiles are always trumpeting one's virtues.

• 6:39Speaker 03

  They never mention one's shortcomings. They never mention the things that make one a unique human being. And the reason that I say that these strategies are counterproductive is that they may well help you feel admired. It may well make other people think, wow, that person is really impressive. But that's not what feeling loved is about. Feeling loved is about being recognized and appreciated for the total person that one is. And if you only present a curated image of your strengths and accomplishments, you never allow the other person to see the real you, and you never allow yourself to feel what they might express about the real you.

• 7:24Speaker 03

  So one of the central theses of our book is the idea that in order to feel loved, one has to be able to express the full, total self that one has, warts and shortcomings, as well as strengths and accomplishments.

• 7:42Kim Mills?

  Do you run the risk of having everything backfire when you say to somebody, I don't feel like you love me enough? I mean, what approach do you take in order to get somebody to give you that love and let you feel that you really are appreciated?

• 7:56Speaker 03

  I think that question is guaranteed to produce a backlash. Because, you know, if somebody says that to me, I'm gonna get defensive. I'm gonna, well, what do you mean? I'm trying to tell you how much I love you, damn it. You know, our sense of the way you go about things, if you don't feel as loved as you would like to feel. Is to initiate a series of conversations with another person that allow love to be expressed freely back and forth. So, one of the things that you can do, and this may sound ironic because it starts off with helping the other person feel loved.

• 8:39Speaker 03

  So, we offer a series of mindsets in our book. And the one that I think is the best place to start is one that we call Listen to Learn. The Listen to Learn mindset says, when you're talking to another person, really listen to them as if they were going to be a quiz tomorrow. So often, when we're so-called listening to another person, we're preparing our response to the next, you know, what are we going to say next? Where are we going to go? How can I change the topic? Oh, how do I get out of this conversation to talk to this other person? Or how do I impress you with, you know, how I know so much about the thing you're talking about?

• 9:19Speaker 03

  All of those things interfere with creating a real, meaningful kind of connection. And if you instead approach the other person with a real, genuine curiosity, with a real sense of, "I'd really like to know more about that because that's really interesting to me. I'd like to know what makes you tick. I'd like to know why you feel that way. When you went to that movie last night, what was it about that movie that you really liked?" And something really interesting happens then. It's almost like a light bulb goes off in the other person's head. They say, huh, this person's really listening to me. And that often can trigger the kind of conversation

• 10:03Speaker 03

  that we think eventually leads to feeling loved.

• 10:07Kim Mills?

  Okay, so that's one of the mindsets, the Listen to Learn mindset. But there are five in the book. So, can you talk about the others? What are they?

• 10:15Speaker 03

  Well, I actually slipped a second one in there.

• 10:18Speaker 03

  Because the listen to learn mindset goes closely with the second mindset that is called radical curiosity. The idea of being and expressing curiosity about the other person. You know, people are so interesting. You know, we psychologists are perennially interested in what makes people tick, what drives their behavior. So when you show enthusiasm, when you show energy, when you show that you're really and genuinely interested in the other person, that's what ticks off the process. Now, close to that is a third mindset, which we call the open heart mindset, which essentially

• 10:59Speaker 03

  has the idea that when one shows interest in another person, it can't just be, you know, I'm taking notes for the test tomorrow. It's got to be accompanied by a sense of caring and concern, a sense of compassion for the other person, a sense that you're really interested in their well-being. You really want to express positive benevolent feelings toward them. Some listeners may be thinking, but wait a minute, what he's talking about is going to help the other person feel loved. How does that make me feel more loved? And the answer lies in a process that's very well-known to researchers who study social interaction.

• 11:44Speaker 03

  The idea that reciprocity is one of the strongest rules of social behavior that we have. So think, let's say you do the three mindsets that I was just talking about. Well, that will lift the other person up, much like on a seesaw when you go down and you help the other person rise up. And then what happens? They return the favor. And it's the returning the favor that gives you an opportunity to express the fourth mindset. And the fourth mindset is about being open and sharing and vulnerable about oneself. So disclosing things that are real about oneself.

• 12:25Speaker 03

  Not just talking about superficial attitudes, not just talking about the weather, not just trumpeting one's strengths, but instead getting to a point where one can share what makes one a unique human being, what's special, what's interesting. And that, and when the other person responds positively to that, that's when you kick off the back and forth dynamic of sharing and listening and sharing and showing appreciation, and it goes back and forth. And as a result of those kind of conversations, a person is likely to feel loved.

• 13:03Kim Mills?

  I'm gonna play devil's advocate for a minute here. You say in the book that the key to feeling more loved is not to change yourself. But then you offer some strategies that actually might ask some people to be different, you know, to listen better, to ask more questions, to be more interested in the other person. I mean, for some people, that could be a pretty fundamental change. You know, some folks, as you said, they're not good listeners. They're just waiting for the opportunity to say what it is that they want to say. So how do you respond to that? I mean, don't you have to change in some way?

• 13:35Speaker 03

  I love that question. And, and what I would say is, we're suggesting that you don't change yourself, but that you change your behavior. It's not saying you need to be more attractive, you need to publish more articles, you need to go to the gym more often. We're not saying you need to change who you are. We're saying you need to change the way you interact with other people. You know, for some people, some of these behaviors may seem a little foreign. So one way to think about it is as an experiment. Try doing something different. When you're talking to someone tonight and they tell you about something that happened to them, say, "Tell me more. I'd really like to know more about what that meal felt like.

• 14:17Speaker 03

  What, which of the foods did you really like the best?" And, and experiment with that. That doesn't require changing your personality. It doesn't require changing who you fundamentally are as a person. It simply means adopting a different orientation, a different approach when you're talking to somebody.

• 14:35Kim Mills?

  We're going to take a short break. When we return, I'll talk more with Dr. Reese about how to get these conversations started.

• 14:43Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 15:13Speaker 04

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• 15:43Kim Mills?

  So if you've identified a relationship in your life where you think you'd like to feel more loved, how do you start? What do you do first?

• 15:52Speaker 03

  In principle, you can start with any of the mindsets. The one that I like to start with when I'm trying to create these kinds of feelings is the listen to learn one. It's the one I think that's most controllable. You can simply walk into the next conversation and start to ask the person questions about what they're saying. Don't try to get in your strengths and your accomplishments. Simply talk more about what the other person's interested in. Now, interestingly enough, this is not entirely a new suggestion. In 1938, Dale Carnegie wrote the second bestselling book of all time, How to Win Friends and Influence People. And one of his major tips is,

• 16:36Speaker 03

  "Talk about what the other person is interested in and do it sincerely." And that's exactly what we're suggesting. That when you listen to learn and when you show radical curiosity and an open-hearted mindset, you're paying attention to what the other person says and you're doing it in a way that conveys a very strong feeling of, "I'm really interested in you and your experience."

• 17:02Kim Mills?

  And you would think if you love the other person and you want to be loved back, that this should be easy, right? I mean, you want to do this.

• 17:10Speaker 03

  Oh, I will say that it is not easy. I would actually say that it's hard. I will tell you, as we were preparing to do this book, Sonya and I attended a workshop in Israel on listening, run by Guy Ichikoff, who's one of the world's leading researchers on listening. Both of us went into that meeting thinking we were really good listeners. We came out of that meeting thinking we got a lot to learn. It's really hard. And actually, some of Guy's research shows that a large majority of us feel like we're good listeners. Yet, when you ask people, "How good a listener is that person?", the percentages plummet. The difference is immense. And even today, to be honest,

• 17:54Speaker 03

  there are times when I'm talking to my wife, when she says, "Why don't you do that listening thing you talk about in your book?" Listening is hard because it really requires putting yourself to the side and really trying to immerse yourself in what the other person is saying and doing. And that's something that we're not used to out here in the Western world. We've grown up with the idea that the way to move ahead is to show people how good you are, to show people your accomplishments, to individuate yourself compared to other people. And this is suggesting that you do the opposite.

• 18:32Kim Mills?

  I know you just mentioned Sonia, Dr. Lubomirsky, who is a well-known happiness researcher, and she was a guest on a previous episode of this podcast. Why did you decide to write the book together and unite these two areas of research, relationship science and happiness science?

• 18:48Speaker 03

  Oh, there's a wonderful story behind that. You know, Sonia and I had known each other for a long time because we're in the same field and we would see each other at meetings and such, but we never had worked together. And then somewhere around six years ago, we were having a conversation and I naively asked her, "What's the number one thing for making a person happy?" And without blinking an eye, she said, "Good social relations." And then she said to me, "What's the number one thing that makes for good social relations?" And I said, you know, "Feeling loved and connected." And we realized that in both of our disciplines, which are very different areas of research

• 19:33Speaker 03

  within psychology, because we're so siloed as a field, that both of us were actually talking about the same thing, and yet we had never come together. And that's when one of those magical moments happened. We don't actually remember which one of us said we should write a book, but one of us said that, and the rest is history. You know, we spent a lot of time sharing ideas from our own individual perspectives, our own literatures, and gradually they came together in an outline for this book.

• 20:06Kim Mills?

  Let me shift gears a little bit and ask, what happens when a person is trying to connect with another one and the other person just isn't really responding to these strategies? What should you do at that point? Is that a signal that you're basically looking for love in all the wrong places, as the song goes?

• 20:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, that's a great, that's a great comment, Kim. You know, I think one should not expect this to work overnight. If you meet somebody on a first date, let's say, and after three minutes it's not working, I don't think that disqualifies the person. Sometimes it takes time and sometimes it can happen in a few conversations. Sometimes it can take weeks or months. But if you reach the point where it just isn't happening, then it's time to move on. And there certainly will be times when that is the case. You know, we don't claim 100% effectiveness.

• 21:04Speaker 03

  Now, sometimes you'll need to be in a relationship with that person because you work with them or because you see them at family gatherings. And if that's the case, you know, fine, just accept it and take it for what it is. But if it's, you know, a more voluntary relationship and not one where you don't necessarily need to continue, well, then, you know, the thing to do is, you know, is to move on. There was actually a New Yorker cartoon recently about this idea where it showed a man or woman talking and the man says, can you please finish talking about yourself quickly so I can spend the next two hours talking about myself? And if you're with that kind of a person, then I think the thing to do is to, you know, say thank you very much and move on.

• 21:48Kim Mills?

  Now, you just mentioned a moment ago, being in relationships with people at work. I mean, are we looking for love from the people we work with?

• 21:56Speaker 03

  Well, in a certain sense, yes. You know, it's certainly not the same as in a romantic relationship. It's certainly not even the same as in a family relationship. But at the same time, in most work organizations, we're working with other people and working successfully with other people is an essential component of doing the job in the right way. And we want to feel that we are valued. We want to feel that other people see our contributions, that they value those contributions, that they're glad to have us as a teammate. I've been impressed recently with how many professional football players talk about feeling valued. Being loved by their teammates.

• 22:40Speaker 03

  And that's certainly a setting where you wouldn't expect to see people use that kind of terminology. You know, it's different. It doesn't have, well, obviously, it doesn't have the romantic component. It may not even have the strong emotional component. But it definitely has the part about being seen and understood and appreciated. And and the feeling that other people at work are really concerned about your well being. You know, when people at work express condolences when some when someone in your family passes away, when they celebrate your birthday or some accomplishment of yours at work. That's a way of saying we love you as someone in our group.

• 23:20Kim Mills?

  You know, we're all looking for love somewhere. And there's been a lot of discussion lately about people forming emotional connections with chatbots. Can can you feel something akin to love from a chatbot or an AI companion? Or is there something essential that that's missing? Or are we just deluding ourselves?

• 23:39Speaker 03

  Uh, that's my favorite question, Kim.

• 23:43Speaker 03

  Let's say you're starving. You go to the store and you pick up a Snickers bar and you eat it. You will stop being hungry for a little while. It satisfies your hunger. When people are lonely, when people are not feeling loved, a chatbot can do a great job of filling that need. You know, the the one of the reasons why chatbots are so effective is that they've been trained on our research. They're good at what they do. They know how to express appreciation and care and concern for your well being, because they know exactly the right words. And there's a lot of emerging research that shows that people find the feedback

• 24:25Speaker 03

  that chatbots give you effective and rewarding. So in a in an immediate sense, those chatbots can be effective.

• 24:36Speaker 03

  However, let's talk about the long term. Can they be effective in the long term? And the answer, I think, is no. And the reason for that is that if you just stop and think for a second, you realize that the chatbot doesn't love you. The chatbot hasn't made a choice to love you. The chatbot is simply an algorithm spewing out words that it's been programmed to give you. Those words feel very good. But when you introspect about those over time, you realize, you know, what is this? It's a computer program. And so the way we talk about it in our book is the idea that a real loving relationship

• 25:21Speaker 03

  is like having a nutritious meal. A relationship with a chatbot is like eating a candy bar. Now, let me contradict myself. Let's move 150 years into the future. We now have androids that look like human beings, that feel like human beings, that move like human beings, that are indistinguishable from human beings by any kind of eyeball test, and have AI programmed into their brains. In other words, they would pass the Turing test in being indistinguishable from a human being. At that point, my answer to your question might well be very different.

• 26:06Speaker 03

  Because at that point, we might actually be able to live our lives with a non-human version of a human and at the same time, get all the goodies that we get from close relationships. So I think, you know, my reservations about AI friendships and AI-loving relationships are very much applicable to 2026.

• 26:33Speaker 03

  When that will change, I can't tell you. I don't think it will be tomorrow. But I think it's inevitable that we will reach that point at some point in the future.

• 26:44Kim Mills?

  Well, just to wrap up here, what are you working on now? I mean, what are the questions that you're still trying to answer? Have you kind of figured out the loving issue? And have you moved on to other things? Where are you now?

• 26:55Speaker 03

  I'm really focusing my work on the listening component right now. Trying to more specifically chart how listening affects people, what the components of good listening are. You know, there are a lot of workshops out there that one can take on listening. And they're very sort of behavioral skill oriented. So they'll tell you to make eye contact, to say the person's name three times, to smile four times. And while that can be a start, it's not really what listening is about. What listening is about is connecting with another human being. It's really getting into their soul, so to speak.

• 27:37Speaker 03

  And so what I'd like to do is, you know, more careful work on figuring out exactly how listening works and why it's effective.

• 27:48Kim Mills?

  Well, Dr. Ries, I want to thank you for joining me today. This has been very enlightening.

• 27:52Speaker 03

  Oh, it's a pleasure to be with you, Kim.

• 27:54Kim Mills?

  You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology on our website at speakingofpsychology.org, or on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you've heard, please subscribe and leave a review. If you have comments or ideas for future episodes, you can email us at [email protected]. Speaking of Psychology is produced by Lee Weinerman. Thank you for listening to the American Psychological Association. I'm Kim Mills.

• 29:09Speaker 05

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