Do You Feel Loved?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hey there, before we start today's episode, I wanted to share something I'm really excited about. Hidden Brain is now on YouTube. We just dropped an episode exploring a strategy that can help us to solve problems and save time, but it's a strategy almost all of us overlook. I hope you'll check it out. You can find us at youtube.com slash at hidden brain, or just follow the link in today's show notes. Okay, here's today's show.
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. In Shakespeare's play, The Merchant of Venice, Portia is a beautiful, wealthy woman, and she is looking for the right man to marry. Her father has decreed that a successful suitor must pass a test. Each of Portia's admirers is presented with three caskets made of gold, silver, and lead. Portia's portrait is inside one. Suitors have to pick the right casket. The gold casket is inscribed with the words, Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire. The Prince of Morocco selects it and discovers it's the wrong choice. On the silver casket are the words, Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves. The Prince of Aragon opts for this casket. He too loses out.
Finally, the noble Bassanio takes a turn. He picks the lead casket, which bears the sobering warning, who chooses me must give and hazard all he hath. It turns out to be the right choice. Having picked correctly, Bassanio gets to marry Portia. In Shakespeare's time, tests like these may have seemed odd but charming. But if you set up tests of devotion like this today, it would strike your suitors as puzzling, even preposterous. But that doesn't mean many of us don't devise our own tests of love. We hold off texting someone we met, hoping they will reach out first. We drop hints about what we want for a birthday present to see if our partner notices. We act distant in the hope it will prompt another person to come closer.
Just like the tests in The Merchant of Venice, our tests of love can easily be seen as manipulation. If finding love is about connection and intimacy, tests create distance and suspicion. What is the hunger inside us that drives us to test the devotion of others? What are we really looking for when we hope our partner selects the ideal anniversary gift? What do we really want when we dream of the perfect proposal? New psychological research suggests that many of us do not really understand our own needs. How surprising can it be that we reach for the wrong strategies? what we truly want from our intimate relationships, and how to get it, this week on Hidden Brain. We all want to be loved.
What is the difference between being loved and feeling loved?
It's one of our deepest longings, a need so fundamental that we are willing to twist ourselves in knots to satisfy it. Yet psychologists say that many of the strategies we rely on to obtain love are either ineffective or counterproductive. Instead of bringing us closer to the warmth we seek, we often end up pushing it away. At the University of California, Riverside, psychologist Sonia Lubomirsky studies what we do to feel loved and what we ought to be doing. Sonia Lubomirsky, welcome to Hidden Brain.
Such a pleasure to be here.
Sonia, you're a fan of the TV program Couples Therapy. I haven't watched the show. Can you describe it for me and tell me about some of the patterns you've noticed?
Such a great show, right? So these are real couples in New York. They kind of forget that they're on camera and they have major problems. They're all very diverse.
And I just feel like over the years, so much resentment and so much disappointment has built up. It's very hard for me.
And what I love about the show, it actually makes me feel very smart because you hear them talking and it's like the wife is saying, oh, you never bring me to the gym. You don't do this. You don't do this. Or the husband saying, oh, you haven't done this for me. And then you see like they're fighting, fighting over here on this level. But really underneath it, it seems so obvious that they don't feel loved, that like no matter what the guy does. she still doesn't feel loved. No matter what she does, he doesn't feel loved.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–3:42
2
What is the difference between being loved and feeling loved?
3:42–10:54
3
What are common tests of love we impose on others?
10:54–18:30
4
How can we create a stronger feeling of closeness in relationships?
18:30–54:42
5
How do negative thought spirals affect our perception of love?
54:42–1:32:54