New Book by MRI-Supported Researcher: How to Feel Loved

The Mental Research Institute is pleased to share news of the upcoming launch of a new book by Sonja Lyubomirsky and Harry Reis. MRI has supported Harry Reis’s work through two grants, including a general research grant on which he served as lead investigator and a separate doctoral dissertation grant on which he served as investigator.

In How to Feel Loved, the authors examine an important distinction in close relationships: individuals may be loved by others without subjectively experiencing feeling loved. Drawing on research in psychology, well-being, and relationship science, the book synthesizes empirical findings to clarify how feelings of being loved are formed, maintained, and sometimes disrupted across interpersonal contexts.

Rather than emphasizing individual efforts to become more desirable or to enact prescribed “loving” behaviors, the authors focus on mutual vulnerability and responsiveness as central mechanisms underlying felt love. This framework is applied across a range of relationship types, including romantic relationships, friendships, family relationships, and other close social ties.

The book also challenges the assumption that adherence to normative relationship behaviors necessarily leads to emotional connection. The authors argue that a focus on performance or self-monitoring can undermine closeness and contribute to experiences of disconnection, loneliness, and diminished well-being. Drawing on decades of research, Lyubomirsky, a leading scholar of happiness, and Reis, a leading scholar of interpersonal relationships, demonstrate that feeling loved is a distinct psychological experience, separable from both loving behavior and objective indicators of being loved.

The book’s guiding metaphor is that feeling loved is under your control. To feel more loved, rather than trying to change the other person, or trying to make yourself more loveable, change the conversation.

MRI is proud to have supported this work and to share it with the MRI community.

Additional information about the book is available at howtofeelloved.com.