How to Feel Loved (According to 28 Years of Research) | Sonja Lubomirski & Harry Reis

Key Takeaway

Feeling loved isn't about changing yourself or others—it's about changing the conversation. Start by lifting others up on the relationship seesaw: show genuine curiosity, listen to learn (not just to respond), and ask 'tell me more.' When you make others feel loved through authentic engagement, reciprocity naturally brings that love back to you. The key is in your control: lower your walls gradually, share beyond surface-level responses, and approach conversations as opportunities to truly know and be known.

Episode Overview

Happiness researchers Sonia Lyubomirsky and relationship scientist Harry Reis discuss their book 'How to Feel Loved,' explaining that feeling loved is the key to happiness and is largely within our control. They introduce the 'relationship seesaw' metaphor: by lifting others up through genuine curiosity and listening, you create reciprocity that lifts you up in return. The conversation explores five mindsets for deeper connection: sharing authentically, listening to learn, radical curiosity, and the importance of lowering emotional walls at the right pace. They emphasize that relationships and individual well-being are inseparable—a mutually reinforcing upward spiral where taking care of your nervous system makes you more available to others, and positive relationships make you happier, which improves relationships further.

Full Transcript

Transcript of How to Feel Loved (According to 28 Years of Research) | Sonja Lubomirski & Harry Reis from 10% Happier. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

If you want to feel more loved, you need to make the other person feel more loved. loved. loved. One of the most powerful things you can say to a person in conversation is sometimes people will be astounded that you asked that. All of the interventions that make people happier, make us feel more connected and more loved. We collect blood from participants before and after they do acts of kindness for others. Only in the group that does acts of kindness for others do we see changes in RNA gene expression.

Feeling loved is really in your control. It's not about changing yourself. It's not about changing the other person. It's about changing the conversation. How do you operationalize that advice if you can't fake it? Sonia Lubamirki and Harry Reese, welcome to the show. And in Sonia's case, welcome back. welcome back. welcome back. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Happy to be here. Happy to have you both here. Okay, Sonia, I'll start with you since you're the the returning ringer or veteran. The book is uh is called How to Feel Loved.

In this context, what do you mean by loved? loved? loved? Well, we define love very broadly. It's not just romantic love. That's uh you can love your colleague, your family member. Sometimes you even have a moment of love with a stranger. And we argue that many people are loved, but they don't always feel loved. And feeling loved is actually maybe the most important thing. It's maybe the really maybe the key to happiness. Harry and I started talking about this years ago. He's a relationship scientist. I'm a happiness scientist.

Those two fields don't often talk to one another. and we realized that maybe uh yeah the feeling loved is the key to to a happy life. It's crazy to me that those two fields don't often talk to each other because that would indicate at least to me that happiness researchers view happiness as an individual pursuit as opposed to a team sport. team sport. team sport. You could say that I think but but certainly happiness scientists talk a lot about the importance of relationships, right? the importance of having social connection and and in fact one way that I kind of came to this to this topic came to this book is that I've spent my career doing what are what are called happiness interventions which are basically clinical trials but instead of testing a vaccine or a medication we're testing a happiness practice like expressing gratitude or doing acts of kindness.

So we do experiments to test these practices. And after 28 years basically of doing this this work, it hit me one day that almost all of the interventions that work to make people happier. The reason they work is they make us feel more connected and more loved. Right? So if I write a gratitude letter to my mom, it makes me feel more loved by her. Right? If I do an act of kindness for a colleague, it makes me feel closer to them. And so almost all happiness practices are really are about feeling connected and feeling loved.

Now, you could argue maybe like meditation or physical exercise could be just solely indivi individual, but it's really fairly rare. Harry, you want to jump in on any of this? this? this? Yeah, I I couldn't agree more with what with what you said, Dan. You know, the idea that happiness researchers and relationship researchers weren't talking to each other is is crazy. um you know that they're so interlin as Sonia was describing the the what makes happiness intervention interventions work is almost always something about being more connected to other people and yet nobody was making that connection and by by the same token relationship researchers were all focused on having happy relationships and they were not talking about how those happy relationships affect the individual's well-being.

So, you know, when when Sonia and I realized this, we you know, that that's where the idea of the book came came into being that we wanted to have that conversation on the page. You know, I've done 10 years worth of interviews on this show, hundreds and hundreds of happiness researchers, relationships experts, meditation gurus, celebrities, and often you've I get people who are in one camp or another. they're on the, you know, self-care, let's call it that. Um, you know, that that could be, you know, your meditation practice, your exercise practice, your gratitude practice, uh, your relationship to your own demons, whatever it is.

And then I I have lots of people who talk about relationships, how to skillfully communicate, how to set boundaries, how to, you know, diagnose a narcissist in your life, all all of that. And I I think of it and I think it's this is this has come screaming out of the pages of your book too. The way I've started to think about this over recent years is these two buckets are indivisible. They're doing it we're doing a lot of damage by keeping them in separate buckets.

And what they're they're actually in a mutually reinforcing double helix like a kind of positive upward spiral. The more you take care of your own nervous system, the more you are available to other people. Relationships are so crucial to our happiness and and therefore when you have positive relationships, you get even happier, then your relationships get even better and up you go. Does all of the yammering I just did make sense to either or both of you? of you? of you? Makes total sense to me, Dan.

You know, the idea that you build happiness by building relationships, and when you build relationships, you build happiness. We know from a lot of different approaches that these upward spirals um are what makes life worth living. And one of my favorite examples is people often say things like you can you need to learn to love yourself be before you love others. And that's not true. I mean it's it's a kind of a b as you said like a birectional healic situation like yes like being compassionate and and loving yourself is going to help you have healthy relationships and yet you learn to love yourself through feeling loved and having healthy relationships as well.

So it's really kind of birectional dynamic. It's it's really a a fascinating process. process. process. Yeah. I mean, one great example of that is what do you do if you're lonely? We're in the middle of a loneliness epidemic globally. What's the advice? One piece of advice is volunteer. And so that that is it does a lot of things for you, but one of the things it does is remind you of your own nobility, the fact that you have something to offer. It's a kind of self-love, although not an obvious one in our individualistic culture.

And so that's that's an example that you can access the upward spiral from either side. You know, Brooke, we actually we we talk a little bit about loneliness because it's so important. One can argue that feeling lonely is essentially not feeling loved and not feeling like you belong. And you know, people have tried to sort of do loneliness interventions. They're they're incredibly hard to do. You can't just kind of throw friends at lonely people because they tend to be suspicious and of of that, you know, like why does this person, you know, really want want to do with me?

And so, so, um, prompting lonely people to do acts of kindness, like you said, to volunteer is actually in my mind maybe like the only kind of successful sort of loneliness intervention that that we have. have. have. Yeah. And to take that one step further, you can look at all the loneliness interventions that have been posed. You know, for example, in uh the surgeon general's book, he provided a quite a number of interventions for loneliness. They all involve simply getting yourself in the presence of other people in a productive and constructive way.

Let's go back to this word loved. It's not done yet. toward the final stages, I hope, of finishing this 8-year long book project that I myself have been on. So, I have a lot of jealousy of of the two of you having given birth. I totally agree. My book's about love, and I totally agree with your broad definition of love. We we do it a disservice in our culture. I mean, by the way, you other languages have many words for love. We've got one word to describe everything from romantic relationships to how we feel about cookies.

And that that I think is doing a real disservice to it. And the fact that you guys are taking the this innate capacity, this mamalian capacity we have to give a It's like anything kind of north of neutral for a stranger momentarily for somebody you see on the news for whom you wish compassion to your spouse, to your kids, to your family. To to me all of that seems like love. Is that does that jive with how you're seeing things? things? things? I'll let Harry answer that question.

Yeah. Well, um, you know, to be fair, we're we're defining love in a very broad way as you suggest. You know, it it can be almost any kind of caring, affectionate person, feeling for another person. We don't want it to be a grabag for any kind of positive sentiment you might have. You know, you might feel admiration for somebody else. You might feel respect for them. You might feel that somebody was fun and and exhilarating to be with. We're not talking about that kind of thing.

What we're talking about is caring, concern, affection for another person's well-being. well-being. well-being. Yes. Yes. What what I think Plato said, love is to will the good of of the other. other. other. Uh that's a great quote. We should have used that in the book. Yeah. Basically, yeah. Wanting the other person to be happy, feeling like they matter in your life, feeling like you matter in their life. And again, our the focus on our book is really not on loving the other, but on feeling loved, cuz that's really what we what we all want, feeling like you matter to the other person and your well-being matters to them.

to them. to them. You said before that that's the key to happiness. Is there more to say, Sonia, on on that score? Because I I don't think think think if you stop people on the street and say, "What what's the key to happiness?" that most people in our consumerist, capitalistic, competitive, capitalistic, competitive, capitalistic, competitive, clout seeeking, uh, selfie taking culture would say that, but I could be wrong. wrong. wrong. Yeah. Yeah. I think well, a lot of people say think that it's about those external things, you know, we call extrinsic, right, goals, you know, money, fame, beauty, power.

As researchers, like we kind of know that's not true and and it's it's constantly surprising to us that people still kind of believe that. We're we're many of us are sort of continue to pursue those things. You know, more success, more accomplishment. Yeah. Popularity, status, power. I see that all the time. And yet, you know, lots of people kind of the grandmother's wisdom is sort of relationships, connection, love really is critical. You know, on your deathbed, that's kind of what people, you know, say is most important to them.

So, so yeah. So, we we really focused on how to help people uh feel more loved and that and that it's sort of not it's actually not as sort of difficult as we think because it seems like it's like it would be really hard like it would be like out of your control, right? Like how do how do I get someone else to love me more like maybe I need to make myself more lovable or I need to change myself in some way or I need to change the other person in some way.

In our book, we we actually provide a really like empowering message. feeling life that is really in your control because it's not about changing yourself. It's not about changing the other person. It's about changing the conversation. And when you think about it, a relationship is basically a series of conversations. And so, so our book is really about like what takes place during those conversations, how you can make yourself and the other PE person feel more loved in those conversations, which seems a lot more like tractable, a lot more feasible, right, to accomplish.

So the along those lines now that you've taken us to the to the practical aspects of the book one of the central metaphors in the book and maybe Harry you can tackle this is the relationship seessaw. Well we we came up with the idea of the relationship seessaw because we wanted to capture the back and forth that goes on when people engage in the kind of conversations that let them feel loved. So, you know, the idea of the seessaw is that you can begin the process by lifting the other person up.

Now, what do we mean by lifting the other person up? We mean elevating their sense of self, elevating parts of them that they normally would keep hidden so that they're encouraged to talk about themselves, to really open up, to show curiosity, to listen with with a genuine interest in the other person, not not to listen and, you know, just waiting for your turn to enter the conversation. The and the beauty of this is that when you lift the other person up, just like when you're sitting on a seessaw, that in turn gives them the opportunity to lift you up on on your end of the seessaw.

And so there's so our approach to to this idea of feeling loved is very much of a back and forth. You feel loved by helping the other person feel loved, which encourages them to help you feel loved. And so there's a back and forth that builds up. It's it's a cycle that one of our colleagues calls a broaden and build cycle. U you broaden yourself by listening to the other person with curiosity and you build a strong a connection with them. Another way to think about it is like we're all walking around with walls around us and we don't really show that much.

It's, you know, when when you you realize it, it's sort of you see it everywhere, you know, everywhere like people are just walking around and they're kind of they're only showing the tips of their self, the the the kind of shiny positive parts. And you can't really feel loved if you're if you have this wall around you because you'll always wonder if that person really knew me, you know, what's behind that wall, would they love me? And so the key to feeling loved is really lowering those walls and becoming known to the other person.

you know, maybe not 100% known, but like know more than did before and to really truly know the other, right? To help help them lower the walls. And how do you do that? As Harry said, you show genuine curiosity in the other person. You show uh you really listen to them, which gives them a sense of sort of safety and trust and and like you know, how often does it happen that someone is so excited to hear your story, so excited to know more about your inner life or the details of your day, right?

That doesn't happen very often. You know, most of us are just h engaging in small talk really. And so when that person like shines that light on you, you, you know, you feel safe to kind of like lower that wall a little bit to go up from, you know, that seesaw uh and then you reciprocate because reciprocity is incredibly powerful, uh, compelling, right? Harry often says this most, right? You you say this most strong, one of the strongest principles, right, of social behavior. And then you shine the light back at them.

I believe reciprocity is probably the the strongest most potent norm that we have in social relations. When one person does something good to you, you tend to do a good thing for them. When one person treats you badly, you tend to treat them badly. So the idea is that if you show genuine curiosity in another person, they're going to show genuine curiosity in you. And another implication of this is if you want to feel more loved, what you need to do first is try to make the other person feel more loved.

And I mean, I've thought about this in our in my relationships when there's been a time when and and most people by the way acknowledge there's at least one relationship in their life where they would like to feel more loved by. So if we all kind of consider that, you know, I've thought like how do I, you know, how do I get this person to to love me more? But so it's a little counterintuitive to actually to start by my myself by listening more to them and showing curiosity in them to sort of lift them up first.

So So actually the control is kind of in my the ball is in my court. my court. my court. Yeah. So I get that the ball is in in our courts. It can feel like a bit of a tall order because Okay. So you're I'm walking around feeling unloved whether I'm aware of that or not. And you're saying I I need to do two things that are both of them difficult. One is really reach out and engage with somebody that I might have some resentment towards and hear them out.

And the second is drop my armor and display a willingness to be known. That I can see a lot of that the these these suggestions jabbing at, you know, our our stinginess, the stinginess that some of us might feel emotionally. Yeah. Lot lots of times people feel like I'll show interest in you, but I want you to show it to me first. And the problem is, of course, how do you get someone else to show interest in you? How do you get someone to be curious about you?

You know, you can't just sit there and say, "Okay, be curious about me." What what is in your control, and this is a point we bring up often in the book, what's in your control is the idea that you can show interest in another person. You can start the cycle. that's that is in your control. And so it does take a bit of uh what you might call altruism, you know, to say, I'm going to start this by helping you feel more loved. But but that's how the cycle works.

And that's the most effective way that you can actually make it happen. And you know, a reporter recently I was talking about this said to me, "Oh, well, you know, this is so much work, you know, and my readers are going to rebel and they're going to say, 'L I'm already like so overwhelmed like and now you're asking me to to do all this work and to sort of show curiosity in another person and listen to them when I'm the one who's feeling unloved and and like yes, that that's exactly right.

You know, relationships do take work." And I but I would argue that it's a beautiful kind of work, right? Like when you when you show when you have that connection with someone and you're you're really interested in what they have to say and they're interested back in you hopefully like that's a beautiful moment, right? So so I wouldn't even call it work, although it does take initiative. Brief illustrative aside, I have an 11-year-old son and sometimes hard to get him talking and he and I were having lunch right before this taping and I was asking him a bunch of questions and he was being not communicative and so I just kind of backed off and ate my lunch and let him come to me and he did he actually said, "What have you been working on today?" And I told him, "I've been mostly just kind of fretting a little bit about this book project that I keep talking about." He said, "Well, what are you worried about?" I said, "Well, I've been thinking today about the subtitle." And then it goes off the rails.

is like, "You should make the subtitle a your mom joke." joke." joke." It's like, "Okay." Uh, yeah. Well, that was as far as we're going to get in a constructive conversation. But it is a good example of like I did express some curiosity in him. It didn't quite work cuz he's, you know, you know, 11-year-old boy and they're unpredictable. But then I kind of backed off. I I made my bid. I didn't press it too hard. And then he he came to Well, if it's any consolation to you, Dan, I spent the past week with my daughter who's 30 and same same dynamic exactly the way you describe.

It is it is amazing how rare that rare that that kid that kids say to the parent, you know, what what are you thinking about? You know, what what's going on in your life lately? But it's uh yeah, it's so com it's so compelling, right? It's so powerful when someone shows an interest in us, you know, and it's so hard, I would say, to to do the opposite to be that to to show genuine curiosity. You can't fake it, right? you really have to find something.

You know, I I have four kids and and sometimes they're talking about something they're really interested in like video games or something. I just really honestly have no interest in the details of this video of the video game and but you know but our job really if we want to feel more loved by them is to try to find something, you know, that we can share. You know, we fortunately have found like TV shows that we watch together and one of my 14-year-old and I are obsessed with Mad Men right now.

And so we like watch every we watch episode every night and we read the recaps and we and discuss it. So we found something right that we can share. But it's it's really you can't fake that genuine curiosity any other person in her life. Okay. So let's talk about some more practical tools here. You've got these five mindsets that you recommend in terms of helping us to operate the seesaw. The first is the sharing mindset. Son, you you want to take that one? one? one? Sure.

Sure. Sure. So, um, you know, we we we were talking about how important it is to to show more of yourself, sort of a deeper, fuller version of yourself to the other person because you can't really feel loved if the other person doesn't know you. If you always wonder if they knew me that they wouldn't love me. And that's a really hard one for a lot of people. A lot of people have hold things close to the vest. They have these walls and we have these walls to protect ourselves and and that's that's important.

You know, they serve a function, but when they're too high, you know, we can't we can't know, we you know, we can't we can't really connect with another person if we don't like lower our walls a little. And how do you do that? Pacing is really important. You know, you don't just reveal your deepest secret and trauma right away to the other person. You have to really read the room. Um, I often say I wish high schools and colleges had courses on emotional intelligence or social skills, right?

Because that's something that's really hard to teach. Like at what moment do you reveal that one particular thing about yourself to that person, right? You really have to kind of read that person and and do it at the right time. So I would start small. You know, if someone asks you how are you, instead of saying I'm fine, maybe you say, oh, I had a rough day today. Or Dan, as you said, I've been fretting about something today. Right? So that's just like very really starting small and then if you get a good response, you can go a little bit deeper and a little bit deeper.

See how they react. Allow them to ask questions and to to respond to you. I had a meeting at my house the other day with uh three of my team members, Caroline, Abby, and Ben. And it was a great meeting and I was thinking as I was in the middle of the meeting how important it is to hire. Well, I'm on my second company now, and I've just seen over and over again that perhaps the most important variable uh when you're building a business is the quality of the people you hire.

That's why you need Zip Recruiter. When you post your job, Zip Recruiter suggests screening questions to help you hone in on top candidates faster. And today, you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/10%. Te. Te. Zip Recruiter's matching technology immediately finds qualified candidates that check all your boxes. Zip Recruiter recommends screening questions you can easily add to get the highest quality applicants. Want to see who's recently active? Zip Recruiter's filters can show you. Four out of five employers who post on Zip Recruiter get a quality candidate within the first day.

Try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/10%. ziprecruiter.com/10%. ziprecruiter.com/10%. That's ziprecruiter.com/te. You don't need a personal trainer to hit your uh 2026 goals. All you need for a personalized workout is FitBot. Fitbot creates a personalized workout routine based on your goals, your fitness level, and your available equipment. The workouts adapt to your growth, so each workout is challenging enough to push you to make progress. Fitbod tracks your muscle recovery so you can avoid burnout and keep up your momentum. It's fine-tuned by experienced certified personal trainers to bring best practices and exercise science directly to you.

Achieve your New Year's resolutions and learn new movements the right way with over a thousand demonstration videos. As you know, I am a huge fan of exercising. I'm a daily exerciser unless something has gone badly wrong with my schedule. And I have checked out FitBod. It looks great. I love the fact that they've got all of these videos and you can tailor it to whatever equipment you have around you, either in your home or if you're traveling. It's a great product. Level up your workout in the new year.

Join FitBod today to get your personalized workout plan. Get 25% off your subscription or try the app free for 7 days at fitbod.me/10%. That's fit tb.me/ten nep nep nep e r ce n t. This is you you've kind of answered this, but I just want to put a fine point on it. I've had Bnee Brown on the show many times. I love her and she talks a lot about vulnerability or disarmament, you know, bringing down the walls that we think protect us but actually make us miserable, lock us in.

And yet the question is always like, how do you do it without, as you say, trauma dumping or bleeding all over the place? starting as well, you kind of kind of know that, you know, it's really magical when it happens. You know, I had a a zoom actually once where I was pitching giving a talk, you know, I had a talk to give and it was just a professional zoom and we were kind of talking and then but I was talking about this book actually because it was about a year ago we were writing this book and about the importance of sort of sharing and the guy who I was pitching to who's sort of the organizer of this conference said, you know, I just had a baby you know, I just had a baby and it's really been hard on our relationship, you know, since we had a baby, which by the way is very common.

Um, and just the way he said it, it was like it just kind of broke the fourth wall. And I think we've all had this experience where we're kind of engaging this sort of small talk or middle talk or or kind of very like professional and suddenly someone says something that's just a little bit like pier pierces the surface, right? And then it's like a magical moment where you suddenly forge a connection, right? Because most of the time we're trying to impress the other person, right?

It's like Dan, we're talking to you now. We want you to know that we're smart and funny and kind and interesting, right? Like we're we're trying to impress you, but that and maybe you'll be impressed, but it doesn't forge a connection if we only stay on that level. What really forges a connection is that if we share something a little bit about ourselves, you share something about yourself. You sort of we puncture that that kind of small talk. The second of the five mindsets, and Harry, I'll throw this to you, is the listening to learn mindset.

What's that's about? What's that about? Well, the listening tole learn mindset says that one of the ways to approach conversations is to listen to the other person as if there was a qu going to be a quiz tomorrow. Most people listen to to prepare their response. That is most people listen waiting for their turn to enter the conversation and oh, here's what I'm going to say next. Listening to learn means that you have a genuine curiosity about the other person. That you really want to know not only what they're telling you, but you want to know more about it.

So, one of the most powerful things you can say to a person in conversation is tell me more. It's really easy and sometimes people will be astounded that you ask that and they'll really go into opening up in a much more vulnerable and deeper way. So the idea of listening to learn is that when we listen to another person, we're we're we're listening to connect. We're listening to find out what that person is really all about, what makes them tick. And we want to find out as much as possible.

And so we approach the conversation with that kind of a mindset, not the mindset of, you know, I'll wait till they finish talking, smile nicely, and then tell them about myself. you recommend aside from tell me more, you recommend something called level three questions. What's that? I think I'll I'll I'll get I'll handle that or sorry, Harry, what did you want? No, I I'm going to let Sonia take that. I was going to say that because I think I remember writing writing out the different levels.

So, I think asking questions is really important because when you think about people when people think of listening, they think of like you're just sort of, you know, like making like you're kind of staring at the other person and you're you're like doing the non-verbals and and you're, you know, you look like you're really engaged. I actually I actually don't love that when people do that to me because I'm like, are they are they really listening or they just sort of being per performative listening, right?

And so, but asking when you ask questions, that's when you can really tell the person is really listening. And so one of my favorite examples is actually my best friend lives in Barcelona. And so we uh leave each other voice memos all the time because of the time difference. And so I will, you know, tell a story about my life or something I'm thinking about and then she will ask questions. And the level three questions, the level one is kind of like, oh, what happened? You know, level three, I don't even remember what level two is, but level three is when you're asking a question that shows that you really understand and then you're kind of taking what you said, what they said to a new level.

So my friend will, you know, will will make it make an observation or ask me a question that that gives me a new insight, you know, that I've never had before. Like, you know, that's not easy to always do, but it's sort of that's what really shows me that she's listening, right? It's not it's not the kind of looking like you're listening, you know, like making eye contact. It's it's the, you know, it's a showing that she's really like going to like a deeper level that than maybe even I considered.

So, um, that's beautiful when that happens. Yeah. And I'm let me just add uh one thought to that. You know, listening is is an idea that gets a lot of attention in the media today. And in some ways, what that attention is exactly the wrong kind of attention because what many of those programs do, they talk about, you know, smile six times, lean forward, paraphrase what the other person says. They give you a bunch of tools that you can artificially apply in a conversation that don't necessarily allow you to really figure out what is this person telling me?

How can I help them go deeper with it? How can I elaborate on it? And that requires attending to them and really tuning what you do and say to, you know, where they're going and what they're saying. If they're telling you about something happy, then you you know, you can try to share their excitement and talk about what a wonderful thing it is. And if they're talking about something sad, you can try to help them more deeply understand what they're feeling. they're feeling. they're feeling. Okay.

So, let's get to the next mindset. I'll leave it to you to the two of you who who tackles it. It's called the radical curiosity mindset. Well, I'll I'll start because I I I've thought a lot about kind of distinguishing listening from curiosity and and and sort of my favorite example is imagine you're sitting in a lecture like you're a college, you're a student, you know, you're sitting at a lecture and you're listening really well to the lecture and you're taking great notes and you're even asking these level three questions about the lecture and then there's a test on the lecture and you get an A+ on the test, right?

So, you're great at listening, but you know what? You could be completely not curious at all about the topic of the lecture and still get an A+. And so curiosity is really something that's beyond that. It's it's it's an enthusiasm. I think Harry, you're the one who sort of talked about the importance of sort of enthusiasm and excitement and energy that comes with curiosity. It's when you're you're not just like Yeah. you're not just sort of listening is really more of a a process. And curiosity is a Yeah.

I'm not sure exactly how to how to describe it. It's it's more of an enthusiasm. It's something as I always said you can't fake that. Like you really you want to know more and you know it when it when you see it, right? And it's not that common, right? Like what was the last time you were like at a dinner party or a reception or you know some something with people and someone was so excited to hear your story, right? They're like leaning in and their eyes are bright and they're smiling and they just can't wait for you to finish your story, right?

that doesn't actually happen that often and it's it's rare and it's so powerful and compelling. and compelling. and compelling. How do you operationalize that advice if if you can't fake it? If it's if you're not if it's not a skill you can develop. Well, it is a skill you can develop because enthusiasm because enthusiasm because enthusiasm involves being genuinely curious about what the other person tells you. Sonia's example of of of listening to a lecture is a good idea. You know, you can memorize everything that you're told and get an A+ on the exam, but do you really care about it?

But if you take a class where you really care about what the topic is and you really want to learn, that wanting to learn comes across and it allows you to incorporate the information so much better and you're not going to forget it the day the exam is over. When people do this in conversations, when you show enthusiasm, it it's a remarkably powerful experience. One of the places we see this most clearly is in teaching. And teachers who are enthusiastic about the process of teaching and about the subject matter that they're teaching are the ones who communicate that to to their students.

And there dozens of studies uh that support that idea. And but it's true. It is hard to teach curiosity, but I think we all can find something of interest in something. Maybe not always, right? Right. There's been times where I've been I've actually tried to do this in my life where like I used to go to these kids' birthday parties where you kind of you have to talk to these other parents that you have no interest in talking to. Right. And and I'm trying to find something and I'm talking to some dad and I'm saying, "Well, tell me about a recent trip you took.

Oh, you went to Greece." Well, I've never been to Greece or tell me the most interesting thing about that. And so you you can find something of interest in in in most topics, you know, but it does take sort of but it does take sort of effort and energy like we we've done studies actually we did one of my students did a study where she asked people sort of every day engage in at least like one curious behavior and so and people didn't have any trouble doing that.

I mean that that was very broad. So they were like, you know, they said things like, "Oh, I I um I learned about this new sort of type of dance and so I was interested in it. So I decided to to go online and learn about all, you know, about about this dance or like a friend, you know, cook something new and and so I decided to sort of learn and and I was curious about this this recipe, you know. Um and so and so everyone, you know, people didn't seem to have trouble finding something to be curious about every day." Or we're also doing a study um in with conversations where we're going to ask people to like in a conversation with a friend or a partner to to ask them some questions about something that you're curious about.

And I think we all can can do that. I don't Yes. To find something of interest to talk about. talk about. talk about. One aspect of this I do think is trainable. The enthusiasm part, the genuinely being happy for somebody else. There's a ancient 2600year-old Buddhist technique. It's called muda practice m- u di t-a and it's sometimes translated as sympathetic joy or just I think of it as the opposite of shod and freud the happiness taking happiness and other people's happiness and there's there are these meditation practices where you envision people you know um happy and you send phrases like obey your happiness increase and this can make you the type of person that other people want to call when they have good Exactly.

We all we all yeah like charismatic people right or another set type of people who are who show enthusiasm about whatever you have to say. But I have two two notes about that. One is compion I think is another word in English for that for muda right this that being happy when someone for someone else's happiness there's a there's an adage that appears in many different forms that says a happiness shared is a happiness doubled and and we've done a lot of research on that actually that shows when when you relate good news to another person and they show that kind of enthusiasm about your happiness your happiness grows and their happiness grows grows.

So when you can share good news, if the other person can really, you know, it mean saying that, oh that's nice, good for you, that that doesn't get anything, but wow, that's the best thing I ever heard, you know, or that's the best thing that's happened this week. That produces this kind of bu uh building up for both people. You can't actually, I think, fake enthusiasm at the beginning and then it becomes real. It's kind of like laughter when you start laughing and you force yourself to laugh and then you actually keep laughing for real.

And so, so actually we haven't really, we didn't talk about this in the book, but I actually think there's something to that where you sort of can kind of look and seem enthusiastic and actually that will turn into real enthusiasm. But the other the other thing I want to mention is that there are cultures and I'm I'm from Russia myself. You know, I was born in the Soviet Union where there's sort of a notion of the evil eye. And I think there's some cultures where it's hard this idea of the happiness shared is a happiness, you know, doubled.

Um I think it's a little bit hard to experience or it's not as common, right? Because because showing happiness to others sometimes is perceived as having sort of detrimental effects or could bring bad luck to you. So that's kind of a very interesting little side note. And again, just to reset for the listener, these are mindsets that can help you operate the relationship seesaw. That is kind of one of the controlling metaphors for this book that that Harry and Sonia have written. The fourth mindset is the openhearted mindset.

I'll make that a jump ball. Whatever whichever one of you wants to take it, you can take it. Well, I'll take it. But to say basically one way to think about the open heart mindset is mindset is open heart mindset is basically feeling feeling kindness and warmth and bonding towards another person, wishing them well, wanting their dreams to come true. And one way I think about that mindset is I think most relationships that are kind of stable and sort of reasonably healthy are characterized by the open heart mindset.

In fact, it's almost like it's almost like a definition of a a relationship. Like if you don't have warmth and kindness towards someone, you know, what's the point, right? Like you're not going to probably be in a relationship with them, you know, with some exceptions, you know, you know, with maybe a family member. You don't you don't have a choice to to be around. And so I think open heart in some ways, yeah, it's the most common. It's uh you know it's uh uh it characterizes a lot of relationships.

Um and but when you when you lack it you know then you know then you have you know it's you have very little you there's really huge costs right when you're not showing warmth and and kindness towards towards the other person. It's uh yeah really it's really unhealthy right? Would you would you agree with that Harry? Totally agree. And you know that and there's a lot of research that shows and some and some of the best studies are Sonia studies um that shows that when you do something kind for another person you benefit you know perhaps the other person benefits if what you do do is effective enough but the you benefit from the act of doing it.

There are studies that even show that you know this produces an increase in dopamine in the brain by doing something kind. If you, you know, if if you can do one kind thing every day, that's just a small and easy way to increase your happiness. And you know, like we have studies that compare doing acts of kindness for others to doing acts of kindness for yourself, right? So Dan, you mentioned self-care before. And so self-care is is wonderful. You know, I'm a big fan. And yet it might make you feel good in the moment, but doesn't necessarily translate to how happy you are a week later or a month later.

And so we find that doing acts of kindness for others is more happiness inducing than doing acts of kindness for yourself. But more than that, we've done studies of maybe two or three studies now where we where we collect blood from participants before and after they do acts of kindness for others or for themselves. And we find that only in the group that does acts of kindness for others do we see changes in RNA gene expression. So we're talking about immune gene expression. we see reduced pro-inflammatory gene expression.

So more inflammation is bad, right? So you want to have less pro-inflammatory gene expression. So that's associated with a with a stronger immune profile. So so not only does doing acts of kitis for others make people happier, more connected, but also there's a suggestion that it makes you healthier. They boost your immune health. This is why the Dalai Lama calls it wise selfishness. You know, if you want to be selfishly, you should do it the right way because kindness is what actually will make you happier.

Okay. Final mindset. The multiplicity mindset. The multiplicity mindset is the idea that we all have parts of ourselves that are desirable and admirable. And we all have parts of ourselves that are less desirable and perhaps even repulsive on some level. Acknowledging that it's okay to have weaknesses, it's okay to have shortcomings is a major part of being able to feel loved with another person. Now, this go this cuts both ways in terms of your connection with another person. You have to acknowledge and recognize that they have parts of themselves that are not really that good.

You know, they they may have shoplifted when they were younger. They may have done something even worse than that. That doesn't make them a bad person. It means that they have a part of themselves that is something that they're not particularly proud of. The interesting part of the multiplicity mindset is that it also gives you permission to have weaknesses and shortcomings. So many one of the reasons that we hide our vulnerabilities is that we're afraid that you're going to think that I really am, you know, an an undesirable person.

But if uh if I understand the idea of multiplicity, then I realize that I can have weaknesses and letting you know about them isn't necessarily going to turn you off uh to me. So, you know, Walt Whit Whitman expressed this idea in his poem. You know, I contain multitudes. We all contain things that we're proud of. And we all can and we all contain things that we're less than proud of. And acknowledging that a full person has all of these is one important way of of allowing yourself to feel loved and allowing you to feel love toward another person.

And I want to add that it's a really this is a really hard one to embrace the multiplicity mindset because I think at heart we're all kind of judgmental about other people and we're judgmental about ourselves. You know, one of my pet peeves is have you noticed that everyone's ex is a narcissist. Like everyone's ex is a narcissist or sometimes their parent is a narcissist, right? And you know what? We're all narcissists. It's narcissists. We're all narcissists. It's a continuum. I'm a little bit narcissistic and so are so are both of you.

And sometimes I'm sometimes I'm kind and sometimes I'm selfish and sometimes I'm loyal and sometimes I'm not. Right? So we all have those qualities. Now we don't want to again dump those on others right away, you know? So timing matters, but but I think it's just something that's just really important to to keep in mind to embrace and and try to be one of my actually New Year's resolutions is to try to be less judgmental. You know, when you hear someone doing something bad, actually my a new kind of approach that I'm taking is if I hear about a bad behavior, you know, friend will say, "Oh, can you believe this guy did this?" Right?

And I and I at first I'm like, "Oh my god, yes, I can't believe it. That's so awful." But my second reaction after I've kind of like calmed down is I I see the little boy inside that man who did that bad thing and that little boy is maybe threatened or insecure or whatever, right? And so you could always find a a charitable or some explanation set it in context so that that really helps us all I think to to recognize everyone's humanity and how all of us have these sort of messy complicated insides.

insides. insides. Yes. Yes. Yes. And and an essential part of this is that recognizing the multitude in another person opens the door to forgiveness. Someone has wronged you in a pretty significant way. If you're going to be judgmental about it and say, "Oh, they're just a bad person for that." that makes it impossible for the relationship to continue. But if you recognize that there may have been some reason they did this bad thing that can help explain it, it opens the door to forgiving them and moving on with the connection.

connection. connection. I think it's crucial to point out that there's a difference between explanation and uh excusing. Yes. Absolutely. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And and I would also say there's an important difference between forgiving and forgetting. Uh forgiving means not forgetting, forgetting, forgetting, right? So forgiving is not forgetting. Forgiving is not condoning. Forgiving is not excusing. Uh forgiving is not pardoning or or rationalizing. It's it's yeah it's something you do for yourself actually not not for the other person. The best B2B marketing often gets wasted on the wrong people.

I can't tell you how often I'm scrolling and I get served ads for stuff I have no interest in. So when you want to reach the right professionals, use LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over a billion professionals, including 130 million decision makers. And that's where it stands apart from other ad buys. You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, seniority, skills, company revenue, so you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience. It's why LinkedIn ads generates the highest B2B return on ad spend of all major ad networks.

Seriously, all of them. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com/happier. That's linkedin.com/happier. You know my views on sleep. It's incredibly important. And as a lifelong insomniac, I am always interested when there's a way to improve my sleep. A company called Lisa, L E SA, sent me this mattress cover, this foam upgrade to my existing mattress, which I very easily and quickly strapped right on top of the mattress on which I sleep and uh it has made my bed much more comfortable, which has helped my sleep, which is a major service that Lisa has provided to me and can provide to you.

Lisa makes all kinds of mattresses from the mattress cover that I received to actual mattresses themselves. They've got a lineup of beautifully crafted mattresses tailored to how you sleep. Each mattress is designed with specific sleep positions and feel preferences in mind. From night one, you'll feel the difference. Premium materials that deliver serious comfort and full body support no matter how you sleep. Lisa mattresses are meticulously designed and assembled right here in the USA for exceptional quality. Plus, they back it all up with free shipping, easy returns, and a 120 night sleep trial.

I also want to say Lisa is not just about sleep, it's about impact. They donate thousands of mattresses each year to those in need while also partnering with organizations like CleanHub to help remove harmful plastic waste from our oceans. Go to lisa.com for 30% off mattresses. Plus, get an extra $50 off with promo code happier. Exclusive for my listeners. That's less sa.com promo code happier for 30% off mattresses plus an extra $50 off. Support our show and let them know we sent you after checkout. Lisa.com promo code happier.

Okay, so we've just gone through these five mindsets that can help us operate the aforementioned relationship seessaw. Do you have thoughts about how to apply these mindsets in different contexts? Because as we established at the beginning of this conversation, you're talking about love in a capacious way um inclusive of romantic relationships, parenting relationships, workplace, strangers, etc. strangers, etc. strangers, etc. We we have a chapter um uh where we talk about sort of applying mindsets and sort of different kinds of relationships. For example, whether it's with your kids or with your colleagues versus your romantic partners.

And obviously, it's going to look a little different, although though I think less different than one thinks. I mean, some obvious examples, sharing mindset, right, with your kids. Uh, you're not going to want to share some parts of yourself with your children, you know, because it's not gonna it's gonna might it might scare them. It just not might might not be healthy for your relationship with them. You might not want to share everything with your boss, right? Um, but it doesn't mean that you don't share it all, right?

That that you have to sort of be wise about it. So, that's that's a that's just one example. But something like listening and curiosity I think applies to pretty much any context, any relationship. I can't really think of a context where it's sort of bad to listen, right, Harry? Like when is it ever unhealthy to listen or be curious, right? right? right? Except for when you're doing it too much, you know, moderation, right? I'm a big fan of moderation. We should do everything in moderation, including moderation, right?

So, so maybe if you're too curious and we know people, for example, with high functioning autism uh become so curious about certain topics, right? special interest that that that could actually take them away from other sort of things that they need to be doing in their life. So, so maybe sometimes curiosity could kill the cat, right? It could be a little too much. Uh everything in moderation. And by the same token, I would add I can't think of a situation in which having an openhearted mindset would be uh would be a bad thing.

It's always a good thing even even in a competitive world. um you know in in the in the world of competitive sports for example um you know the athletes who have a warm-hearted um approach to their competitors it doesn't make them compete any less but it makes them not want to hurt the other and it makes them feel like you know the competition is a joy because you're bringing out the best in each other. each other. each other. I I'd like to argue to bring open heart mindset more to work contexts.

Um we talked about sort of love in a very broad sense we don't use the word love enough I think at work um it just seems like it's inappropriate right and yet you know loving your colleagues being really warm toward towards your colleagues your you know people who work for you with you you know who supervise you uh I think that's beautiful I think the world would be better place if we if we use that that word love more often um my friends and I say we love each other all the time in fact sometimes I'll be on the phone I'll be like I love you so much and kids are like confused.

They're like, "Who are you talking to?" Like, "I'm talking to my friends." You know, why why don't we say we love you more to each other? You know, that's that's one of my I guess goals is try to get the world to be uh to use that word more often. often. often. I was in in North Carolina over over the holiday and uh we were riding the shuttle bus to pick up our rental car and I got to talking with the bus driver. I was showing some curiosity toward him and eventually he talked about how he loved his colleagues.

Now this is a shuttle bus driver working for a rental car company and yet he loved the people he worked with and he he actually used that word. The whole goal here is to is to help us feel loved. Um the whole goal of your project, what are some of the principal barriers in this room? We've been talking about the some of the skills we can develop, but what are the barriers we might bring to the table and then how do we work with them? Well, I think I think the barriers the primary barrier that we bring to these situations is that we approach the conversation with the wrong mindsets.

Um, we assume that the way to get love from another person is to talk about your many accomplishments. you know, how many awards have you won? How many articles have you published? Um, you know, even even how many charitable acts have you done um over over the holiday? We we believe that we need to impress the other person with our desiraability. And the irony is that we think this goes in exactly the wrong direction. um that this creates a wall, a barrier of sorts between yourself and the other person because it it you know it sets up a an ideal that the other person perhaps you know they'll be impressed but they can't connect to it.

Absolutely. And um and something that I also want to add that um well first of all it is it can be hard it can be effort. I again I don't want to use the word work because I think it's a it's a positive kind of beautiful kind of work. Uh it does take effort to sort of switch your have switched your mindset off of like maybe off of yourself and onto another person to try to make another person to try to make someone else feel loved first.

You know, can be it needs to be intentional. It needs to be effortful. Um but one huge caveat I think we haven't really talked about um is once in a while you will do everything right and you'll use the five you'll embrace the five mindset and you will you'll do you know that dynamic reciprocal uh you know thing that that happens on the seessaw and it's not going to work and once in a while that person is not going to respond. you know, maybe when you tell their story, your story, they're not going to really listen and be curious or maybe they're not going to share.

Um, and once in a while that's going to happen. And and what maybe you haven't chosen well the person to feel loved by. That's something important. You have to choose well maybe that person is just not going to make you feel loved. And so you need to maybe put a pause on that relationship. Maybe put maybe walk away from it or maybe just accept that you're not going to feel loved by that person. So I do we do want to sort of you know bring in that caveat that that once in a while that's going to happen.

Are there other ways to diagnose the viability of your various relationships? Well, one way to diagnose the viability of of of this whole approach is to experiment with it is to try it and not plunge right in, you know, deeply, but rather, you know, take baby steps into it it it and see if the other person responds. You know, the idea of the seessaw is not that, you know, I support you for half an hour and then you support me for half an hour. It's much more of a I support you for, you know, a brief moment in a conversation.

How do you respond? If you don't respond in in an in a supportive, enthusiastic way toward me, maybe that's a sign that it's not going to work. Um, so you you know, you can sort of experiment with it at a relatively safe and basic level um to see to see if it's working. And you know what, we actually had a very interesting experience when we were writing the book and we had sort of our initial drafts. We sent a few friends and acquaintances and um and we were surprised like two there I had two guy friends read the book and um and they wrote me and they said you know your book um led me to break up with my girlfriend.

So two different people different people different people actually used the the book and used the mindsets in a way that we did not intend but we actually now think is very useful is they use the mindsets to as a diagnostic tool of their relationships. And so one friend said you know your book made me realize that my girlfriend really doesn't share and she really doesn't listen. And another guy said, you know, your book made me realize that my girlfriend just has has sort of ceased to show any curiosity in my work or in my life.

And so they ended up breaking up. I mean, I assume that they had discussions first. Um, and so and so that that's another way to sort of think about it is that like are you know how to what extent are these five mindsets being embraced in your relationship? And if they're not, you know, how can you fix that? And if you can't fix that, then maybe that's uh that's telling you something important. Yeah. You know, a common feeling that people have, and this is especially true uh for couples who go into couples therapy, is that one person feels like they're doing all the lifting.

So, they're in the seessaw and they feel like they're lifting the other person and they feel like they're not getting lifted back. And one of the best ways to check on that is to have a conversation about it. um to you know to to ask the the other person you know to do more lifting, ask them why they're perhaps they're not doing the lifting. Um and that can be a very power that can not only be a diagnostic tool but it can also be a therapeutic tool.

And we actually created a quiz where people can it's it's on our website how to feel love.com where people can um kind of gauge the extent to which they're kind of they're you know they're embracing the five mindsets in in a particular relationship and then sort of and then they get feedback to say you know maybe you know you're you're really good at sharing but you're not so good at listening and here are some tips. So I think that's again I think that that we hope that people will find that useful.

useful. useful. But there's an important thing to keep in mind and what Sonia said just brought this up for me. Um you know how much you're lifting the other person because you're doing it right. You're actively involved in it. Sometimes you don't know that the other person is actually trying to help lift you up. um but for some reason it's not getting across um because you don't know what's in the other person's head. You don't know what their motivation is. You don't know what their intention is.

So by uh having by checking it out such as on our our quiz or by simply conversing about it um you can find out well maybe there were times that the other person was doing the lifting and you you know you weren't quite open to it. you weren't quite realizing it and and that can be an important part of this process. Also, I believe in the book you you talk about if only myths. Is it worth discussing what some of those are? I mean, we we Yeah, absolutely.

And maybe we should have started the conversation discussing them, but we already talked about them a little bit. the sort of that I that little Harry had said that one of the problems is people kind of embrace the wrong mindset or sort of think about think in a way that is not helpful about about their relationships and why they they they don't feel loved or how to feel more loved and the if only myths are basically what what he had said earlier which is that you know many of us believe that to feel more like I will feel I will be more loved if only uh you know the other person knew about all my accomplishments and all my positive qualities qualities qualities Um, or I would feel more loved if if uh the other person didn't know about some of my weaknesses and flaws, um, and sort of bad behaviors.

Um, or I'd feel more loved if I were more successful, if I had more, you know, money, fame, power, beauty. Um, um, we think, you know, we think that that's the solution. Um, and and it's not the solution, right? that I think as that that we make pretty clear. One of the things I believe you take on, one of the this is one of the if only myths that I believe you talk about is that our relationship would work if only our partner spoke our love language.

And you guys take a hard run at the concept of love languages. The concept of love languages is flawed because it makes the assumption that if only my partner spoke the love language that is most important to me then I would be happier. Um and research shows that that's just not the case. Uh for one thing um the basic elements that everybody wants in their relationship um expressions of affection um kindness are true regardless of whether that's your primary love languages or or not. Also, it it the research very clearly shows that if your partner tries to speak your love lang, your particular love language, the thing you say that you value most in a love relationship.

Um, that doesn't make the relationship any better than if they speak one of the other languages. Um, there's just not a lot of evidence that this kind of primary importance uh makes all that much of a difference. Well, I and I don't want to jump in. First of all, I I love the idea of love languages. I mean, and and you know, they're they become so popular everywhere. If you go on dating apps, you know, people say what their love languages are. You know, I think they're a great curistic, you know, to talk about sort of how we give and express love.

It just turns out that, you know, as Harry kind of alluded to, you know, there there supposed to be five love languages, right? Um words of affirmation. Can we like review them? just words of affirmation, quality time, gifts, physical touch, and acts of service. Okay, so those are five, but it turns out that everyone really there's two of them that like everyone prefers. So that's one kind of myths about the love language. It's not that like we all have these these different ones and we have to match.

So we we all want quality time and acts of a and words of affirmation, right? So those are the two that seem the researchers that everyone prefers. It also turns out that of course there's lots more than five. There's many more love languages, right? One of my favorites is giving the your partner freedom is is one of like sort of another love language, but there's there's many many many others. It turns out that matching in the love languages doesn't predict how good your relationship or how how long is going to last.

And then really my favorite finding is it turns out your relationship is better off with like the higher number of langu languages the other person expresses their love in. Right? So it turns out like the more the better, right? So it's not the fit issue that you know I like like mine actually one of my top ones is physical touch. You know it's not that it has to be physical touch. It's just the more there the more the better. The more the marrier, right? So so I I I I but I still love the idea.

So I don't want to kind of reject it as a heristic. It just has some some flaws. Before I let you go, is there anything you were either of you were hoping we would get to that we haven't gotten to? Well, one of the things that is that many people have asked us us about is the idea of whether you can feel loved by a chatbot. Um, that's certainly a timely idea and you the popular media has had has had has had numerous examples of this kind of thing and our take on it is kind of a mixed take.

Um, but but the bottom line is probably not. Um the the positive side of it is that I if you're not feeling much love in your life, um a chatbot can fill that void. Um you know, if if you uh if you're starving, um a McDonald's burger will probably help you um not not feel hungry. Will it provide much nutrition? No. Um, the chatbots are trained on models that include a lot of the research that we're talking about. And most chatbots by now are pretty darn good at validating, at understanding, at showing curiosity, showing curiosity, showing curiosity, um, at adopting a multiplicity mindset, even at adopting an openhearted uh, mindset.

So, a chatbot can do that. Um, and if you're hurting, if you're if you're missing it, that is a powerful experience and it certainly explains why a lot of people feel that way when they're talking to their chatbot. On the other hand, at some point, people are going you you have to realize that it's an algorithm talking to you. It's not another person who has decided that they're really interested in you. It's a a chatbot that has been programmed to show interest in you. So on some level it starts to become um an an empty experience.

Um now there probably are some listeners to this podcast who are going to rebel against this idea because they're going to say they love talking to their chatbot. Um and I would argue there are a lot of people who love McDonald's burgers, too. Um although I would also add for the same reason that we're so moved and we feel great grand emotions and we love say going to movies right we're kind of fooled that the movies are actually real when they're not real. We are for the same reasons we are we find it very powerful and compelling right and we when when the chatbot it shows curiosity in us when it's not real curiosity but it certainly feels real and they certainly our AI companions certainly are the best listeners that we'll ever have in our lives right they remember everything there that they're um so uh that I wanted to add that I also wanted to add in terms of um uh you know you had asked about what you know what we hadn't touched on is you know when you think about relationship ship failures and like breakups and and problems in relationships.

You know, I'm not again I'm not a therapist, so this is really more my kind of my opinion based on lots of research. Um I think it's often about not feeling loved. is often about the other person is doing all these things and there I'm still not feeling loved or like when when you when you do have a problem relationship like I had a relationship where the person was not texting me often enough or fast enough right and and I realized like the problem wasn't the texting it was that it wasn't making me feel loved when they weren't texting fast enough right so it's often a lot of these kind of relationship problems are a symptom of not feeling loved and you know the show um couples therapy U which is a great show, right, where there's like real couples in New York and they and they kind of forget the cameras there and and it strikes me watching that show how often they're fighting and fighting about this and this and you don't do this enough and you did this to me and often the underlying, you know, issue is like, no, yeah, I'm not feeling loved enough by you.

So, so that just sort of struck me, you know, as we were writing the book. Is that a thing you would recommend saying in a conversation with your partner? partner? partner? Yeah, perhaps that would be pretty powerful to say that. Um, you know, you know, our book comes out around Valentine's Day and you know, almost all Valentine's Day cards say I love you, right? They all say I love you, right? And so we wanted to change that to kind of the opposite which is not the opposite but like the re I don't know how what the word is that you make me feel loved.

So that's the positive side of it, right? that you know that's really that that's really beautiful like you make me feel loved and it's about you and not about me right um but in a in a conversation in I don't know Harry in a deep conversation with a partner when you're having problems to say I'm not feeling loved enough by you I mean maybe that would be a very powerful thing to say uh yeah and I would phrase it differently I would say I would feel more loved if you so you know put it don't put it into I don't feel loved because that's very likely to get a defensive response, but I would feel more loved if you answered my text messages within 10 minutes.

Uh, oh, I sure, I can do that. You know, it's much easier to respond uh to that kind of uh more more helpful framing. Yes. Or you can put it through the five mindsets. I would feel more loved if you were, you know, more open about what's happening for you. or I would feel more loved if you, you know, asked me real questions about my day or showed any interest or happiness for me when I'm happy, etc., etc. Yes, absolutely. Yes, absolutely. Yes, absolutely. Okay, final question.

Can one or both of you just plug the out of the new book and the website and everything else? else? else? I think this book, How to Feel Loved, is the best work I've ever done in my career. And I I know that sounds like hyperbole, but it's true. I think Harry has said the same thing. Um, and I re, you know, I I I really think it's it's going to resonate with a lot of people. Our website is called how tofilllove dot.com. how tofeel love.com.

Um, and we have a quiz that I think people will really um uh find useful. Um, which is just five questions. Um, and it's going to tell you what your sort of best kind of highest ranked mindset is and what your the mindset is that needs the most improvement. uh and we'll you'll get feedback on that and then we'll um give you some tips on how to how to sort of embrace uh those mindsets even more and and I would add that um I'm I also think this is the best thing that I've done in my career and one of the things I like about it is that it makes all of the research we've done real.

um this is taking the research and presenting it to the world in a way that really feels re real and it just validates all the things that we've done uh for so many years and you know there's this idea of giving psychology away uh ma making it something that helps people deal with the the most important challenges they face in their in their lives. So, I'm really excited about the book making a difference in people's lives. And also want to add that um it's really again, I may have said this before that the book really has a an empowering message that that feeling loved is actually under your control.

That it's not about like, oh, I have to change myself to be more lovable. It's not about I need to change the other person to somehow love me more. It's about changing the conversation. Changing how I I act in in what I show in in a conversation in the next set of conversations, which is really really something that's feasible, workable, tractable, you know, under everyone's control. So, I hope that people will will take that as a as an empowering message. message. message. Thank you both. Pleasure to talk to you.

Congratulations on the new book. And good luck with your book, Dan. Yeah. About love, too. Yeah. Thank you. It was a pleasure to talk to you.