Do You Feel Loved?

0:00Hey 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 hiddenbrain, or just follow the link in today's show notes. Okay, here's today's show.

0:30This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.

0:40In 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.

0:54Each 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.

1:23On the silver casket are the words, Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves. The Prince of Morocco opts for this casket. He too loses out.

1:35Finally, the noble Bassanio takes a turn. He picks the lead casket, which bears the sobering warning, Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath. It turns out to be the right choice. Having picked correctly, Bassanio gets to marry Portia.

1:57In 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.

2:33Just like the tests in The Merchant of Venice, our tests of love can easily be seen as manipulation.

2:43If finding love is about connection and intimacy, tests create distance and suspicion.

2:52What 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?

3:19What we truly want from our intimate relationships and how to get it? This week on Hidden Brain. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Lily. On this show, it's fascinating to discuss the unseen forces shaping the human brain. Consider conditions like Alzheimer's disease, where changes in the brain may develop up to 20 years before noticing symptoms.

3:53Talk to your doctor to understand your potential risk factors for dementia due to Alzheimer's disease and ask for a cognitive assessment. Visit brainhealthmatters.com for more information and resources.

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5:15We all want to be 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.

5:47Sonia Lubomirsky, welcome to Hidden Brain. Such a pleasure to be here.

5:52Sonia, 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,

6:26oh, 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. But I really feel like at the heart of a lot of problems in relationships or even breakups, it's a lack of feeling love. No matter what the other person does, you still don't feel loved by them.

7:01I understand, Sonia, that you've recently separated. And not long ago, you went on a date with a man who tried to win your affections. I understand he spoke a lot about his car. It was really funny. So he had just bought this really brand new high end, like the highest end Tesla. And so the whole ride to the restaurant we were going to, he was showing off the car.

7:32And it was actually really cool. Like he's showing off all these features of the Tesla. It was like all the self-driving stuff and like really cool features that I had not seen before. And I enjoyed it. And at the end of the drive, I said, you know, I'll just call him Patrick, not his real name. I said, Patrick, you've persuaded me. I'm going to date your Tesla. Like I'm impressed. And he actually, he's a funny guy. And he actually said, well, you know, in a few years, you probably can.

7:58But he was trying to impress me the whole time with how great his car was.

8:06And did you think he noticed that he was doing so? Do you think he was doing so consciously, deliberately? Had he given some thought to this? You know, maybe after thinking about it, he might have been aware of it. But he's a smart guy. I feel like he should have been aware of it. But I feel like it's so human. And it's such part of our human nature to want to impress others, right? It's evolutionarily adaptive for us to impress a new potential date or a new business partner or a new friend. And so when we talk to each other, especially towards the beginning of relationships, we want the other person to think that we're kind and interesting and intelligent and funny.

8:40And we might succeed in impressing the other person. But what it doesn't do is it doesn't really forge a connection, right? So you don't really leave that interaction feeling like, ah, I really am connected with that person. I understand that another date turned into a full-fledged relationship, but this one had something of a fatal flaw. Tell me what happened. I had a relationship with someone who really did love me, who I knew loved me, but I actually broke it off.

9:18And it's going to sound almost crazy about what the main reason was that I broke it off. And the main reason was he just didn't text me, like, often enough or kind of speedily enough. You know, he took so long to respond to my messages. And, you know, I often think that the texting is like the currency of modern relationships, right? That's what a lot of us are doing in relationships is texting. And I realized later, it's just the lack of texting, that lack of responsiveness did not make me feel loved.

9:48And that was at the heart of it.

9:53What did you hear when he did not text you quickly enough, Sonia? What went through your head? It's like, I don't care enough. Yeah, like the worst interpretation is like something like, I don't care enough about your feelings. Like, I know you're waiting. And it's like this thing, this idea that you're like, if you really loved me, you would care, you would know how important it is to respond right away. And you still are not doing it. And so that's what's going on in my head.

10:24Did you have a breakup conversation where you actually told him the reason you were breaking up with him? Yes. And we actually have had that texting conversation repeatedly before the breakup. And, you know, and he would apologize and he would sort of do better for a little while. And he would explain all the ways that he did show love to me, just not through texting. And just in the end, it just wasn't enough. One last story, Sonia.

11:00You have four kids, the oldest of whom is in her 20s. You've seen the same patterns we've been discussing when it comes to your relationships with your kids. Can you say more? So I realized one day that I just wasn't feeling as loved as I wanted to by my adult daughter. She doesn't sort of share that much with me. And I just realized that I just wasn't feeling as loved as I wanted to be. And I think it's a fairly common situation.

11:35I'm wondering how this perception came about when you felt like you were not being loved by your oldest daughter. What was she doing specifically that made you feel this way? Or what was she not doing that made you feel this way? What she was not doing is she wasn't sharing very much about herself. She wasn't showing sort of as much affection, physical affection as much as I like, because I'm a very, very physical person. So I was sort of focused on what she was not doing enough. Or thinking, like, what should I be doing to try to get her to be more responsive to me?

12:09Like, kind of what was wrong with me that I wasn't feeling this love coming from her?

12:18In some ways, it's a variation of what happened with the guy who wasn't texting back quickly enough. It was sort of a lack of responsiveness in some ways that you were perceiving as a lack of love. Yeah, that's exactly right. It's so interesting, you know, because we often don't feel loved for a variety of reasons. And sometimes the person really, really does love us. And they might even show love in different ways. But it somehow isn't registering with us for a variety of reasons. Maybe because that's not, quote, our love language.

12:48Or maybe because we don't sort of even see it. Or we don't think of it as being very, very authentic. Or we don't think it doesn't apply to us. So it's a very interesting problem. Whether it's our children, our friends, or our partners, what we want most from relationships is to feel cared for and appreciated. To feel loved. But achieving this is much harder than it looks.

13:21When we come back, how we go about trying to feel loved in all the wrong ways. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.

13:41Support for Hidden Brain comes from Lilly. On this show, it's fascinating to discuss the unseen forces shaping the human brain. Consider conditions like Alzheimer's disease, where changes in the brain may develop up to 20 years before noticing symptoms. Talk to your doctor to understand your potential risk factors for dementia due to Alzheimer's disease and ask for a cognitive assessment. Visit brainhealthmatters.com for more information and resources.

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14:46I'm Shankar Vedanta. We all want to be loved. We want to feel cared for and appreciated by our friends and by our partners. We want our parents and our kids to tell us how much we mean to them. But many of us walk around with what you might call a love deficit. Psychologist Sonia Lubomirsky says we don't realize there's a difference between being loved and feeling loved. Sonia, let's start there. I think most of us assume that being loved and feeling loved are the same thing.

15:18Aren't they? I think often they are. But I think the interesting case for me as a psychologist are the times when we are loved, but we don't feel loved. And it could be that we're not even seeing whatever the other person is doing to make us feel loved. We're not perceiving it. We're not somehow taking it in. We're not internalizing it. That love isn't being felt. How common do you think it is, this discrepancy between being loved and feeling loved? Do you think it happens a lot?

15:48I think it happens a lot. You know, Harry Reese, my co-author, and I did a survey where we asked people, are there relationships in your life that you sometimes don't feel as loved as you would like to be, you know, or as frequently as you'd like to be? And something I think like 70% said that, yes, there's at least one relationship in which I don't feel as loved as I want to be. I actually think that number is an understatement. You know, I actually think it's a lot higher than that. But 70% is a lot, you know. And so maybe it's your colleague, it's your romantic partner, your mom, your child, you know, your friend.

16:23I think it's very common. People also told you in the survey, this was a large survey with almost 2,000 individuals, that they didn't feel loved by their communities. You know, so it wasn't just the intimate relationships in people's lives. It was the larger social settings that they found themselves in. Absolutely. And, you know, there's sort of this lack of feeling, you can also call it a lack of feeling of belonging, which I think is very much related to feeling love.

16:55Loneliness is very much related. You can argue that being lonely really is basically not feeling loved by your community friends. You know, some people argue this is an epidemic. But this really raises an important point, which is that most people, when they think of love, they think of romantic love or passionate love. They think of love between romantic partners. But, you know, there's love in the workplace. And by the way, I think the word love is not used often enough at work, you know. I think we should bring it back to the workplace. Love among friends, neighbors.

17:26My friends and I often say, I love you to each other. And people are confused, like, I'll be on the phone and I'll say, I love you so much. And I hang up the phone and my kids are like, who are you talking to? And I'm like, that's my friend. Because I love my friends very much. So we define love very broadly.

17:48I understand that one of the areas that had the largest gaps between being loved and feeling loved was a romantic relationship. So there are lots of people in romantic relationships. These are people who ostensibly are loved because they're in a romantic relationship who feel like they're not. That's exactly right. It is very common to not feel loved. At least, I mean, it may be even during a period of time during a romantic relationship. It may be in a particular domain of that relationship. Maybe certain activities you do together that you sort of don't feel loved by your partner.

18:20Maybe when they don't do chores in the house, you don't feel loved by them. Or they don't respond to your texts, you don't feel loved by them. So I do think it's extremely common. You asked respondents to describe moments when they did not feel loved. Can you give me some of the examples that they shared with you, Sonia? Often it's not being invited. Actually, that was a very common one, not being invited to something, sort of not being included to maybe a social event. Not remembering something important to you.

18:51You know, I think feeling loved comes, is very highly related to sort of feeling understood. And so when people feel like, I'm not really seen, I'm not understood that this person never asked me about, you know, this passion of mine. Forgetting a birthday. You know, often it's those kinds of events that really, like, drive it home. Like, I don't feel loved. And also when people were suffering or sick, I mean, you really want people to check in on you when you're suffering or sick.

19:26And some people reported that wasn't happening. Exactly. So, like, the kind of like the time that you really, really needed, that's when you sort of learn who your true friends are, is when, during periods of sort of illness or adversity, like, who are the people who are coming in and helping you and bringing you food or driving you to the airport or to the doctor's office. Yeah. So those are kind of events that really sort of, as I said, kind of illuminate or telling. But not feeling loved can come at any kind of moments during the day. So it doesn't have to be only during sort of important events of our lives.

20:07You found that the ways people go about trying to feel more loved are often misguided and sometimes counterproductive. One thing we do is try and manage or manipulate the other person into saying or doing what we want them to do. I want to play you a clip from the movie The Breakup. Jennifer Aniston plays a woman named Brooke. And Brooke is involved with Gary, played by Vince Vaughn. Now, in this scene, Brooke talks to Gary as he plays a car-themed video game. I'm going to go do the dishes.

20:37Cool.

20:39It would be nice if you help me.

20:43No problem. We'll get them a little bit later. I'm just going to hit the streets here for a little bit. Gary, come on. I don't want to do them later. Let's just do them now. Take 15 minutes. Oh, honey, I am so exhausted. I just honestly want to relax for a little bit. If I could just sit here and we will, you know, we can clean the dishes tomorrow. Gary, you know, I don't like waking up to a dirty kitchen. Who cares? I care, all right? I care. I busted my ass all day cleaning this house and then cooking that meal. And I worked today. It would be nice if you said thank you and helped me with the dishes.

21:13Fine. I'll help you do the damn dishes. Oh, come on. You know what? No. See, that's not what I want. You just said that you want me to help you do the dishes. I want you to want to do the dishes. Why would I want to do dishes? Why? See, that's my whole point. Sonia, what do you hear when you listen to that exchange? First of all, I've so been in that situation. Mostly it's Brooke, but I think I'm baby on both sides.

21:37This is so similar to that show, Couples Therapy, except it's fiction. So it's like Brooke is not feeling loved because he's not seeing her. He's not seeing how important it is for her to sort of get the dishes done. And so then they can really go about their evening. And then to her, it just seems like this is so easy. It's just 15 minutes of your time. And so it's like she's not feeling loved by his response. And of course, what Brooke is really asking in this case is actually not help with the dishes. She's actually asking for something else altogether.

22:10She's asking really to be seen and heard. She needs him to kind of, yes, make her feel loved. As she memorably says, she doesn't want him to do the dishes. She wants him to want to do the dishes.

22:24I've totally been in that situation where I've complained. And like my husband used to say, and he's like, look, I'm helping you do the dishes, like literally with the dishes, like I'm doing it. Like I don't need to be happy doing it was his response. And I'm like, no, but I want you to be happy doing it, which is really the same kind of thing. Another way that we go about trying to make others love us is by making ourselves as physically attractive as possible. We think that looking good will win us the love that we seek.

22:54Talk about this strategy and whether it's effective. Right. And I'd like to broaden it, not just physical attractiveness, but sort of other characteristics where we think like, if only I were more physically attractive, then I'd be more loved. If only I were more successful, I would feel more loved. These are called extrinsic goals, right? Which is like beauty, fame, power, money, popularity, right? If only I had those things, I would feel more loved or I would get more love. And then we try to show that off, right? Sort of broadcast those positive qualities.

23:25And, you know, and it doesn't work. It might work to impress a person, but it doesn't work to actually make us feel more loved. And if you're kind of broadcasting this, you know, if you're just, it's all about physical attractiveness for you or about your accomplishments, it doesn't really show the person your kind of true self, you know, if you will. It's just showing them the sort of outside little positive, shiny part that isn't really you. And this is the guy who's telling you all about his Tesla car.

23:56Exactly. And actually, I had another date where the guy just went on and on. And he's a story. He's actually a storyteller by his profession. So he's a great storyteller. And he went on and on telling all these funny stories. And after 45 minutes, and it impressed me. It did impress me. I thought, oh, he's funny. He's smart. He's charming. He's witty. I did think that was true, but I really didn't feel a connection with him. And after 45 minutes, I stopped him. And I said, do you realize that for the last 45 minutes, you have not asked me a single question?

24:26I remember one of our previous guests on Hidden Brain talked about how, you know, we know about IQ and some of us know about EQ, which is, you know, emotional intelligence. But there's also what they call ZQ, which is the person who has zero questions. And so where are you on the ZQ scale? Are you somebody who has zero questions or a lot?

24:59Well, I think question asking is one of the most sort of underestimated social skill. In fact, I tell my kids, you know, like if you want to make friends, ask people questions about themselves, especially questions that, about things that they, you know, that their friends care about. Yeah. And so, and in fact, Nick Eppley, who's a professor at the University of Chicago, has done these studies that show that people think that, like, if they ask personal questions, is that they are going to be perceived as kind of intrusive or too probing, too personal. But actually, on average, we crave to be asked,

25:32like, we want to be asked about our lives, our inner lives, you know, what we really think about something, what our childhood was like. So not only do we try and present ourselves as very beautiful or try and, you know, talk up our accomplishments or our skills or our talents, we also go to some lengths to hide parts of ourselves that are unappealing or might be unlovable.

26:05Talk about this strategy. We often hide our blemishes in order to feel more loved. But does that work? Right. Because we think that that person wouldn't love me anymore if they kind of knew about this weakness of mine, this fault of mine, or this bad deed that I made. And, you know, we're not always wrong, right? I mean, sometimes people really do dislike others for certain traits or behaviors. But we do it, we sort of overdo it. We do it too much. One of the keys to feeling loved is being known to the other.

26:37And if you're hiding, you know, your vulnerabilities, your contradictions, your sort of messy insides from the other person, you won't feel loved because you'll always wonder if they really knew me, then they wouldn't love me. And it turns out that we often, when we disclose or show some of those contradictions or blemishes at the right pace, right? We don't sort of dump them all at once. When the person already knows us a little bit, we often actually better liked. You know, there's this famous case when JFK,

27:08after the Bay of Pigs, admitted to making a mistake and his approval ratings shot up. So sometimes admitting failures can actually increase people's liking of us. And of course, in interpersonal settings, Sonia, you know, I want you to like me, not just for my accomplishments and my talents, but I need the love in the places where I'm actually vulnerable. And if I'm not actually sharing the places where I'm vulnerable or where I have blemishes, then as you say, all I experience is that you're admiring me for my talents and my qualities,

27:40not for what, you know, what makes me, me. So you feel admired. You feel, yeah, like you're impressed. You're impressed out the other person, but you don't actually feel loved. When you think about the definition of unconditional love, I mean, that's right. That's basically what unconditional love is, is that we're loved despite our blemishes and some of our flaws.

28:03Talk about the idea that a lot of what we're doing when we are engaged in relationships really falls under the realm of performance rather than connection. Because when you talk about all the different strategies that you're describing here, talking up our money, our cars, our wealth, our talents, our abilities, how well we tell stories, you know, how well we can tell jokes, all of this is performance. Yeah, it's performance. And, you know, it's very human. You know, we all do it. And maybe that's part of the kind of social lubricant that is part of a conversation.

28:35But really, by the way, and I think conversations are really the key to feeling loved. You know, when you think about a relationship is really a series of conversations. So changing those conversations is the key to make them a little bit less performative and more about, like, deeper connection, really having deeper conversations. It's really the deeper conversations that make you make the other person feel loved. When I show genuine interest in you, Shankar, and ask you about, you know, maybe has anything been worrying you, you know, the last few weeks?

29:06What's been on your mind? You know, what's, you know, tell me about a relationship, a family member that you are worried about or that you're really happy about. You know, those are the kinds of questions that make us feel more connected to each other, you know, not just trying to impress each other. I'm wondering what role social media might play in these habits and preferences, Sonia, because now increasingly, you know, people talk to one another across these digital mediums and they're presenting a face to other people.

29:36You're presenting yourself. I'm someone who likes this kind of music. I'm someone who basically goes on these kinds of vacations. I'm someone who wears these kinds of clothes. And I would imagine that in some ways, social media is amplifying our drive to perform. Absolutely, absolutely. People are posting sort of their most positive, positive moments in their lives, right? This is me on my vacation looking really great. They're not posting so much about the, sort of the fullness of their life. Right. But feeling loved requires really kind of a dance.

30:07And I'd like to think of it in terms of two people talking, although it could be more than two people, but it's just easier to think about a dyad where you're really reading the room. You're really reading the other person and sort of, and asking them just the right level of deep question where they feel like they're really seen and heard where I, and I'm showing them I really care. You can't do that on social media. You know, it's just, it doesn't come off, you know. So that's why like, if a friend shares a really funny joke on social media, you know, I might appreciate it, but I really appreciate it is they email me

30:38or they text me with that joke because I feel like they are, you know, they're thinking about me. They think that I would really appreciate that. And that, that forges a connection between us.

30:51Dropping hints and fishing for compliments, trying to look good and appear impressive, striving to present a polished and perfect image. We think such strategies will bring us the love we seek. When they don't, we double down. We try to come across as even more perfect, be ever more impressive, hide the tiniest flaws.

31:13When we come back, how to feel loved for real. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedant. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Schwab. Self-directed investing, trading, full-service wealth management, automated investing, financial planning, thematic investing, retirement planning.

31:43Phew. And to think that's just a small taste of what Schwab offers. Because Schwab knows that when it comes to your finances, choice matters. No matter your goals, investing style, life stage, or experience, Schwab has everything you need all in one place. So you can invest your way. Visit schwab.com to learn more.

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32:43This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedant. Have you experienced moments in your life when you felt unloved? Did you feel that way even when you were around people who ostensibly loved you? What was it specifically that made you feel uncared for? If you have a personal story you'd be willing to share with the Hidden Brain audience, please find a very quiet room and record a voice memo on your phone. Two or three minutes is plenty. Email it to us at feedback

33:13at hiddenbrain.org using the subject line Feeling Loved. Again, that's feedback at hiddenbrain.org.

33:24Psychologists Sonia Lubomirsky and Harry Rees are the authors of how to feel loved. The five mindsets that get you more of what matters most. Sonia, we've been talking about the strategies people deploy when they're trying to feel cared for by others. We try to make ourselves more beautiful or more accomplished or flawless and these approaches are based on the idea that in order to be loved we have to become more lovable. You say that this usually doesn't work. Instead, we are more likely to arrive at a state of feeling loved by creating the right

33:55relational conditions. What do you mean by this?

34:00What I mean by this is that we think that to feel more loved we need to change ourselves sort of make ourselves more lovable and also show how lovable we are and hide our blemishes or maybe we change the other person. Maybe we try to get them to love us more to somehow see our positive qualities more. But actually it's good news the conclusion that Harry and I reached is actually good news which is that you don't have to change yourself. You don't have to change the other person what you have to change is the conversation.

34:32And a relationship again is like a series of conversations and it's a lot less overwhelming to think about it that way. And actually another huge insight that we had writing the book is that if I want to make myself feel loved the first step is try to make the other person feel loved. That's really what comes first. And it's counterintuitive because we think like again we're focusing on ourselves it's very again it's evolutionarily adaptive for us when there's a problem to focus on ourselves figure out what's wrong but here's a situation where really the focus

35:02needs to be on the other person is to get the other person to feel loved by getting to know them better.

35:15So let's unpack some of these things but let's start with the basic idea. You argue that by demonstrating interest in others that is one way in some ways of eliciting interest from others so there is a norm of reciprocity that is at work here. Exactly and the reciprocity norm or reciprocity principle is really one of the strongest principles of human social behavior. It's very very powerful this is why if I want you to do me a favor you know

35:45I do you a favor right? It's very very hard for us not to reciprocate not to return the favor and so we're talking here in the context of conversation that when I show genuine curiosity to you Shankar and I really listen to your answers and I'm asking you questions that show that I'm listening that take what you said maybe to a new level it's going to be very compelling for you to return that favor and to sort of direct that attention back to me and ask me questions about my life

36:16my inner life and listen to me and so it's kind of it's a dance or sort of a dynamic that goes back and forth Now of course a lot of people are going to say you know Sonia and Harry are telling me that at precisely the point that I feel unloved at precisely the point that I feel like this other person is dropping the ball they are telling me I need to pay attention to that person instead of demanding that that person pay attention

36:47to me you and Harry came up with a metaphor to explain your idea that you call the relationship seesaw first explain the term seesaw you have an interesting spelling for the term and how this metaphor works yes and I but I want to also I'm going to do that but I also want to validate that yes it is it seems so counterintuitive kind of at the lowest point where you really want to feel loved to sort of advise people to show interest in the other person but that's exactly what is needed

37:18and to really ask the person why is it that they are responding the way they are you know it's showing curiosity in them and by the way I do also want to add a caveat which is that once in a while it's not going to work it's going to fail the other person is not going to respond they're not going to reciprocate that is going to happen once in a while and maybe that means that you need to walk away or you need to pause or you try something different or you accept the fact that that's how it's going to be and so I don't want I'm not a Pollyanna and I don't

37:48think that's going to work 100% of the time but I think it's very very powerful what we're talking about so the seesaw we spell see like the like underwater and the reason we spell it this way is this idea that there's a seesaw underwater and we're sort of partially submerged and sort of say you and I are sitting on opposite end of the seesaw so most of us

38:12are showing and that's what's going on in most of the world like we're showing just like a little tip of ourselves to one another just kind of maybe the shiny parts maybe the positive qualities right most of us like it's kind of the iceberg right it's under the water we're not really showing to each other and then the idea is that again we're sitting on the seesaw and then when I show genuine curiosity and interest in you and I ask you a question what has been on your mind lately

38:43and I show warmth and acceptance you feel a sense of warmth and trust and safety and it's as though I'm pressing down on the seesaw and it lifts you up a little bit so you're able to show a little bit more of yourself to me right you're able to reveal a little bit more of your inner self a little more of your full self maybe some vulnerabilities and then as you do that as you talk about maybe your childhood and how difficult it was I listen really well to you I'm

39:14really listening I'm asking questions and that makes you even more you know feeling even more safe and trusting and even more comfortable you know sort of lifting more of yourself out of the water and then that reciprocation happens right and then you ideally then reciprocate and then show interest and curiosity in myself and lift me out of the water so it's kind of a process of I lift you and then you lift me in this lifting and being lifted and I

39:46love the metaphor of the seesaw because initially when you are lifting effectively the other person out of the water you're actually doing more to submerge yourself you're putting more of yourself under the water so that the other person can be lifted out but of course if you think about the natural movement of a seesaw yes it goes up on one side but then it goes up on the other side and that's what happens it goes back and forth when you show genuine interest and warmth and listening towards the other person it helps them be comfortable and helps them open up it helps

40:16us to know each other better and then they reciprocate in your book you describe a very talented listener named Marco tell me what Marco does and how it really shows the power of listening in helping the other person raise themselves out of the ocean so Marco was the best listener I've ever met in my life and I don't know how he became such a great listener if it's just like genetic I do think we can learn to be better listeners but he also had a great memory too

40:47so most of us listen to respond right so we're kind of like while we're listening ostensibly we're really rehearsing what we're going to say next right right and we're kind of waiting for the mic to be given back to us when you think about it so this guy Marco was not doing this like he was listening to learn you know listening to learn is like listening like there's going to be a quiz tomorrow right and you would remember everything and you would say oh Sonia remember that time you were telling me about

41:17your you know your mom and this happened and you were wearing a red that red dress and you were sitting over there it's so incredibly compelling right because you feel like wow he