Stop, collaborate and listen – why ‘being loved’ doesn’t necessarily mean you feel that way

Looking for inspiration for today’s post, I ended up going to the APA’s flagship podcast Speaking of Psychology – needless to say, I was not disappointed. The episode I’m referring to is #381 How to feel more loved, with Harry Reis PhD.

Psychology Professor Harry Reis is the co-author of How to Feel Loved: The Five Mindsets That Get You More of What Matters Most (written with happiness researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky). In the podcast episode linked above, he discusses with host Kim Mills the five mindsets the book is based around, as well as the distinction between being loved and actually feeling as if you are. I’ll leave it to the experts to enlighten you with the facts here and instead tell you why I found this interesting.

You may have read some of my other posts about my slightly untraditional (some may even go as far as calling it skewed) view on the topic of love, or you’ve read my book and realised that I have no clue how to interpret any signs of love (or accept it as truth if uttered in actual words), as I’ve only ever been on the receiving end of the conditional kind throughout my formative years. Strangely enough, that tends to make you sceptical whenever someone claims to love you without wanting anything in return or trying to make someone else jealous.

Regardless of my lived experience, I found Reis’ voice oddly disarming, and the way in which he spoke of the book and the mindsets told me that this was genuine and not just a stunt to boost book sales (not that that’s something the APA tends to do anyway, but still worth a mention). Some unsurprising statistics got to me straight away, of course, because people that feel lonely tend to feel that way because they feel that they are not loved – not unlovable/unworthy of love or that they do not love themselves, just that they don’t feel like they are not loved by others. Secondly, lonely people tend to die younger. To me, this means unloved=early death. So, let’s move on to the solution to this before we head straight into the depths of the abyss, because there is one (or, five, rather).

Turns out, you need to open yourself up to love in order to feel it. Not to receive it, yeah? Because people can love you regardless of your realising it, but you need to let your guard down a bit for the love to pierce the veil, so to speak.

The first thing they mentioned was active listening, as in you have to learn to really listen to the other party of a conversation, rather than spending that valuable time thinking about what you want to say next. Now, I’ve always considered myself to be a great listener, because I do do that; I listen intently and ask follow-up questions based on their words, rather than my own interpretation of them or on how I’d like them to perceive me. But that was when I realised that, even though I’m a decent listener, I am absolute shit at letting them ask me anything personal. I do not partake in the sharing. Thus, I make it very difficult for (most) people to get to know all of me, the real me. So, when people like them claim to “love” me, I’ll know that they don’t know everything, hence their love cannot be true. (Of course I’ll assume they wouldn’t like the whole package if presented to them).

Effectively, I am denying myself even the chance to feel loved. And that’s probably why I tend to feel loneliest when I’m surrounded by people who so blatantly share a mutual love of each other. I mean, how very dare they, eh?

So, it’s not really about being a good listener as such, but a good communicator. Daring to embark on that two-way kind of conversation. Now, if I’d known more than two people to ever handle all of my shit without making a swift and very Irish exit, it might not seem so damned terrifying a concept. But, like with every other toxic habit, you’ll have to put the work in to create sustainable change. The least I could do is try. I know where I want to start, at least, and that’s by getting my hands on that book. Also, if there’s an audio version with Harry Reis available, I’d gladly get back on Audible faster than you can say emotional wounds.

That’s it for today. I shall see you next Tuesday. Until then, may I interest you in a clever podcast that’s quite unique in not being either a complete time suck or horribly inaccurate and/or both?

If you’re a Spotify user, you can listen to the full episode by clicking on the link below. If not, you can find them on Apple Music and the link at the very top.

• Spotify