Why Nobody Feels Loved Anymore - Sonja Lyubomirsky - #1115
episodePreviously titled “Why You Don’t Feel Loved (even when you are) - Sonja Lyubomirsky - #1115” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 2, 2026
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Why is feeling loved essential for happiness?
You've been studying happiness for 36 years. Is there a commonality between all of the most effective happiness interventions that you've found?
Yes. Well, thank you for aging me, but yes, 36 years. So actually it was 1998, my lab pioneered
What does it mean to truly feel loved?
happiness interventions. So 98, long time ago, 28 years ago, Bill Clinton was in the White House. And so I've been doing research on these interventions, testing whether practices like expressing gratitude or doing acts of kindness or being social makes people happier. So interventions are like clinical trials, but instead of testing a vaccine, we're testing like a happiness strategy.
How do self-esteem and self-love relate to feeling loved?
And then one day it finally hit me that what all these interventions had in common is the ones that worked, the reason they worked is because they made us feel more connected to and loved by others. So when I write a gratitude letter to my mom, it makes me feel more loved by her. When I do an act of kindness for a colleague or a friend, it makes me feel closer to him. So almost all happiness practices, maybe not all, like maybe if you run on the beach or meditate, it's not about connection, but almost all of them are about feeling connected and feeling loved.
Why?
I think the human species wouldn't have survived if we did not feel connected and loved. And it's an extremely strong signal. And so what I concluded is the key to happiness is feeling connected, which sounds like a cliche, right? And when you think about in our ancestral past, if we did not feel connected and loved, we wouldn't survive. We wouldn't find mates.
How does a sharing mindset enhance relationships?
We wouldn't pass on our genes. So it's incredibly important. It's one of the most important tasks of human beings is to sort of maintain connection.
Okay, so to take a bit of an evolutionary lens, if you are not belonging to the tribe, mattering to the tribe, understood by the tribe, and a part of that, a human on its own 20,000 years ago isn't going to last very long. Therefore, it's important for you to get back into connection.
What are the biggest barriers to accepting love?
It doesn't seem to me, though, that unhappiness necessarily drives people back to connection and love. It can often make people behave in ways, have habits and a demeanor that actually makes them kind of hard to love.
Right. So it's not really unhappiness that drives them back to connection. It's not feeling loved or feeling lonely, which actually is very similar to feeling unloved. I think actually a lonely moment and a moment where you don't feel loved are almost identical.
Why is validation important in relationships?
And they're a signal to us humans that something's awry, something's amiss. I need to regain, reconnect that connection. I actually was feeling a little lonely a few weeks ago. And actually, I don't usually feel lonely. I have lots of friends and family who love me. And I left a message for a friend and she just actually just left me a message back yesterday. And she said, oh, I feel so sorry for you. I feel so bad. I wish I were there. And she's like, Sonia, feeling lonely is a signal that you need to kind of put more effort and energy into reconnecting.
Lots of people spend their entire lives trying to be lovable. Is that the wrong goal entirely? Yeah.
Yes.
What are the strongest predictors of relationship success?
Well, there's a part of it that's not a bad thing, which is if you want to be a better person, right, working on yourself, wonderful, right? But I think when you don't feel loved, to conclude that, oh, I don't feel loved, I need to make myself more lovable, like I need to sort of somehow broadcast how wonderful I am, or maybe I need to get richer or more famous or more beautiful so people would love me more, that's the part that's a myth. And it does not actually get you to feel more loved.
Is it a supply of love problem or an acceptance of love problem?
I think it's not necessarily acceptance, but it's not a supply of love problem. So many of us are loved, but we still don't feel loved. So why is that? Maybe somehow we don't trust it, we don't see it. it's not somehow getting in. I think of it as like a cup of love, this cup of love and you're pouring love, you're showing love to me, but maybe it has a leak in the bottom and the love is sort of leaking out.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why is feeling loved essential for happiness?
0:00–0:15
2
What does it mean to truly feel loved?
0:15–0:35
3
How do self-esteem and self-love relate to feeling loved?
0:35–1:28
4
How does a sharing mindset enhance relationships?
1:28–1:53
5
What are the biggest barriers to accepting love?
1:53–2:18
6
Why is validation important in relationships?
2:18–2:59
7
What are the strongest predictors of relationship success?
2:59–4:05
8
How can we effectively express gratitude to improve relationships?
4:05–1:11:46
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Modern Wisdom
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