How to Feel Loved

In this pioneering work, a renowned happiness scientist and a top relationship researcher draw on the science of happiness, love, and human connection to offer a powerful framework to help readers appreciate and nurture what makes them feel truly loved.

We can be loved—and still not feel loved. Many people believe that if they behave the right way, say the right things, or make themselves more lovable, they will feel more loved. But this kind of reflexive thinking is fundamentally misguided, causing a disconnect that can lead to loneliness, depression, and self-doubt. Sonja Lyubomirsky, the world’s preeminent expert on happiness, and Harry Reis, one of the world’s leading experts on relationships and connection, have studied the complexities of well-being and love in depth. Truly feeling loved, they’ve discovered, differs widely from the actions that we usually associate with loving, being loved, and falling in love.

In this exceptional book, they present a radical, hopeful, and science-backed shift in how to think about love, revealing that feeling loved isn’t about making ourselves more appealing, available, and lovable—it’s about showing our full and vulnerable selves to others and encouraging our loved ones to reveal their full and vulnerable selves to us. This is true for romantic love but also for the love we feel in friendship, family, and beyond.

In How to Feel Loved, they introduce five powerful mindsets—tools to help us feel the love we crave with the people in our lives.

A Sharing mindset—showing our vulnerabilities and inner world, not just the polished parts

A Listening-to-Learn mindset—making space to truly tune in to another, not just to take turns speaking

A Radical Curiosity mindset—being genuinely interested in another and asking better questions

An Open-Heart mindset—being kind and affirming to another for who they truly are

A Multiplicity mindset—embracing the messy complexity in all of us

These mindset shifts give shape to a dynamic back-and-forth process the authors call the Relationship Sea-Saw, which will help readers remake their conversations in ways that enable them to deeply know those they love and become deeply known by them. It isn’t enough to be loved. To be truly fulfilled, we must feel loved. This book shows us how.