Greater Good · 9 hours ago

Can You Learn to Feel More Loved?

Researchers studying "felt love" - the receiver's side of love - are finding that the capacity to feel loved may be less fixed than most people assume, shaped as much by perception and belief as by circumstance. In two studies tracking participants multiple times a day over several weeks, those who reported higher felt love also tended to report greater flourishing - and, strikingly, "the more people expressed love to others in their daily lives, the more they themselves tended to feel loved in return." A colleague who remembers a hard appointment, a pet at the door, a parent who asks what a child actually worries about - these quiet gestures, the research suggests, carry more weight than they are usually given. What may matter just as much as the gesture itself is whether the recipient has learned to let it land.