How to Feel Loved: For Anyone Who Struggles to Feel Loved [Podcast Transcript]

Title: How to Feel Loved: For Anyone Who Struggles to Feel Loved 

Podcast Date: February 11, 2022

Listen Here: 

Description

Many who struggle with body image and comparison also struggle to feel loved. How do I know? Because I struggle and I've had this conversation countless times with clients and friends. How do we truly feel and know we are loved by God? How do we know and feel like we are loved by our husbands or boyfriends or parents or anyone? Sometimes, it's just hard to feel love. We may know we are loved, but we may not feel it.

What Do You Do When You Don't Feel Loved?

Today we tackle what's going on and how to get over some of the obstacles that may be keeping you from feeling love. From the narratives and "court cases" we create in our heads to the myth that self love will help us feel more loved, today we're going to explore this topic from several angles. The timing of today's episode is on purpose. This is a weekend when many feel sad and wonder if they're really loved or how they can feel like they are. If you're struggling with those questions today, I hope you'll know this episode is for you.

Outline

00:00 Introduction: The Quest To Feel Loved

06:36 Self Love, Comparison, and Narcissism

11:20 The False Narratives In Our Heads

16:38 To Feel Loved, We Must Give Love

21:51 When Our Expectations Don’t Meet Reality

26:42 Struggling to Believe That God Loves You

29:18 What Unconditional Love Really Means

32:25 Oh, How God Loves Us!

Introduction: The Quest To Feel Loved

[00:00:00]:

Hey, friends. Thanks for tuning in to the Compare to Who? Show. 

Today, before we get started, we've got such a good show today, I think, because this message has been heavy on my heart. And there were about 5 other episodes that I could have plugged in here today that were finished. And instead, I'm rushing around at the last minute because I really felt like this was a message I needed to deliver to you this weekend, Valentine's Day weekend. Now even if it's not Valentine's Day weekend by the time you get around to this message, that's okay. I still think you're gonna get a ton out of it.

[00:01:37]:

Welcome to Compare to Who, the podcast to help you make peace with your body so you can savor God's rest and feel his love. If you're tired of fighting body image the world's way, Compare To Who is the show for you.

[00:02:16]:

You've likely heard lots of talk about loving your body, but my goal is different. Striving to fall in love with stretch marks and cellulite is a little silly to me. Instead, I want to encourage you and remind you with the truth of scripture that you are seen, you are known, and you are loved no matter what your size or shape. Here, the pressure is off. If you're looking for real talk, biblical encouragement, and regular reminders that God loves you and you're not alone, you've come to the right place. I hope you enjoy today's show, and, hey, tell a friend about it. Okay, friends. It's Valentine's Day weekend, and we're supposed to be culturally in one of 2 camps.

[00:02:59]:

We're supposed to be savoring the love we have with someone and celebrating it, or we're supposed to be wishing that we had that kind of love with someone. And I know there's a strong contingent of “better off alone” people out there, but Valentine's Day weekend can break even the strongest convictions that singleness is best. But love isn't what the United States’ commercialized version of Valentine's Day is all about. Let's just be honest about that. There's a push that if you loved, you would make reservations. You'd buy flowers. You'd buy candy, cards, jewelry, all the things. Yet I wonder how many of us have ever felt loved, truly loved just by getting gifts alone? And maybe you do, but that's not me.

[00:03:55]:

See, the truth is it's hard for me to feel loved sometimes. This is something I've struggled with for a very long time. And even if all the Valentine's Day boxes are checked, it's hard for me to believe sometimes that my husband loves me, and it's even harder for me to believe that God really loves me. In fact, when Eric and I first got married, we had so many conversations about how I struggled to feel like he really loved me. I just accused him of lying, quite frankly. I just couldn't believe him. And so then I read Gary Chapman's Love Languages book, and I thought, oh, this is the answer. It's all right here.

[00:04:37]:

I was quite certain that perhaps the reason why I didn't feel like he loved me was because he wasn't speaking my language. I grabbed onto that concept, like, as soon as I read the book. I took the test. I figured out my language, and we tried to incorporate intentionality to speak each other's languages. And you know what happened? Frustration. Frustration is what happened. I thought maybe I took the test wrong because though he was trying to do more quality time, I still questioned if he loved me. We added some words of affirmation because maybe I was 2 languages, like, I was bilingual, and it still wasn't enough.

[00:05:14]:

I analyzed my parents' love languages, like, maybe I needed more physical touch. Maybe I needed gifts. Maybe I needed acts of service. Was it possible that I could just be all the love languages? Is that what my problem was? But it was never enough. I felt stuck. I felt like it was too hard to believe that he actually loved me. Truth is, it wasn't until I sat in the counselor's office, probably 5 or 6 years in the marriage, and heard the counselor say the words, it's obvious just how much he loves you. But I was finally able to start believing that maybe it was true.

[00:05:50]:

Now, intellectually, I knew that he loved me. I knew that God loved me too. Neither God nor my husband had given me any reason to doubt their love, but I did anyway. I had enough self doubt, questions about my worthiness, and noise in my head asking me the question, “am I really lovable?” that they didn't have to do anything at all that caused me to doubt. So what I thought would be interesting today was just to talk through what some of the obstacles are to us feeling like we are truly loved. And how we can shift our thinking or our outlook so that these obstacles can be overcome. And the place I thought I'd start as I was preparing for this episode was with Google. I decided to check out what culture teaches on the subject.

Self Love, Comparison, and Narcissism 

[00:06:36]:

If someone who doesn't know Jesus is having a hard time feeling loved, what are they told to do? What I found was really interesting. Almost every list of what to do began with self love. Loving yourself so you can feel more loved by others. This has become a pretty common thought in our culture. Maybe it's something you've heard. Maybe it's something you've even believed. So one resource said it like this. They said it's hard to believe someone could love us when we don't love ourselves.

[00:07:12]:

Truth is, friends, there's even, like, a Christian song that kind of says that sentiment, and it makes me cringe a little bit. But, like, I get it, like, to some level. I get it. It's hard to believe someone could love us when we don't love ourselves. Like, okay. I can see how you would come up with that statement, but it's entirely bogus. Because if this is true, then it will always be impossible for us to accept God's love. It will always be impossible for us to accept the gospel message that a God who knows just how truly awful I am deep down could love me anyway and send his only son to die for me and cover my sins. Like, no. No.

[00:07:57]:

I can never love myself enough to make that message make sense. In fact, the only way to make it make sense is to get to know God more. And some may say, well, I can believe that God loves me. It's just the other part where I get stuck. You know? I challenge that too, friend. There's a scripture that talks about something similar, 1 John 4:20. It's a famous verse about there being no fear in love. I'll read it here.

[00:08:27]:

There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment. If anyone says I love God yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God, whom he has not seen. Now I'm doing a little reversal here. It's a little twist on what we're talking about. But if you can't love your brother whom you've seen, you can't love god whom you haven't seen. And so I wonder if the opposite, the reverse isn't also true. If you don't believe the person that you share a bed with or work with or go to school with truly could or should love you, how can you believe a god whom you haven't seen can love you? Just food for thought here.

[00:09:17]:

The feeling of wondering if anyone really loves me is often linked to our inability to believe that God really loves us. So this was culture's first suggestion for the Googler who doesn't feel loved, have more self love. The other problem with that though is self love always leaves us feeling empty and hollow.

[00:10:02]:

Self love literally only works if you keep your eyes on yourself. As soon as you start to look at others and see how they are living or what they're doing or what they're not doing, comparison sets in. As does doubt as to whether or not you are as good as you actually have convinced yourself that you think you are. So the only way self love stays is if you can keep all your focus on you. And what often happens in these cases, so think about narcissism, narcissists as perhaps the one end of the spectrum here. The more focused you are on yourself, the harder you become to love. And it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy of sorts. You feel like you're hard to love, you work on loving yourself.

[00:10:48]:

You succeed. You fall in love with your own reflection, kind of like Narcissus from Greek mythology. That's what happened to him. He fell in love with his own reflection and rejected all other lovers. And then no one can love you because you can't divert your gaze from your own mirror. Like, this is just real talk here, friends. So but for most of us, this isn't the problem, at least not in this obvious sort of way. But put your seat belts on here, because maybe in a subtle way, this is part of the problem.

The False Narratives In Our Heads

[00:11:20]:

We've been so indoctrinated by this lie of culture that we kind of want to get our acts together before we can believe anyone would love us. When we gain a couple pounds, we've let ourselves down. We've broken our own imaginary rule for how we should be in this life, and then we let that perceived failure take us to a place where we believe our husbands would reject us. We think things like, if I'm not happy with me, then there's no way he could be happy with me. And then our head starts spinning. Right? Then we take that little thought, he can't be happy with me because of this extra weight or whatever thing you are hung up on. Insert your issue here. He can't be happy with me because of this.

[00:12:08]:

And then we apply that thought to every one of his actions over the past few weeks, or maybe if you're a better memory, more historical person, like, kinda like I am, past few months, even years. Right? And we do this. We say things in our head, like, oh, I bet that's why we didn't have sex on Friday night because he noticed the issue, the extra pounds or whatever the issue is. Oh, now I know. That's why he didn't tell me I look nice on Sunday morning. He thinks I've gotten fat or too skinny or or whatever it may be. Oh, I bet that's why he was so focused on watching the game this weekend, and he didn't wanna spend time with me because he doesn't like the way I look anymore. So we create our own thesis, and then we go back and scientifically prove our thesis or maybe to keep it in a science analogy, scientifically prove our hypothesis to ourselves without actually ever involving our test subjects.

[00:13:10]:

Let me be even clearer. What if the truth is that your husband didn't wanna be intimate on Friday because he had had a really bad day at work and stress zaps libido? What if he didn't tell you that you look nice on Sunday because he was already worried about having to see his boss again on Monday morning? And what if he was just truly really into that game and totally oblivious to everything else going on around him? What if it's not about you at all? And then, friends, what happens is, we convince ourselves. We get so spun up that we're not loved, and here's the evidence. We put the jury out there, and we make the verdict without ever calling any witnesses. Now the only reason I can talk about this, friend, is because I've done it. So hear nothing but grace from me in all of this.

[00:14:10]:

But I wonder if sometimes we don't feel loved because of this ridiculous trial in our head that we follow and listen to me here, that we believe more than we believe the truth. So let me dig even a little bit deeper on that one. I talked about this in a marriage series we did last February, a series called marriage and your body image. But if your man is always telling you that he loves you or thinks you're hot or beautiful or pretty or attractive, whatever word he uses, and if you're always arguing with him, that's not true. You have to say that. Oh, no. You didn't see this part of me.

[00:14:52]:

You're kind of telling him that your opinion is more important than his opinion. You're kind of calling him a liar at worst or maybe at best just insulting his taste or invalidating his opinion. And the noise in your head is given more credibility and respect than your actual man. Just food for thought there. So one way we can feel more loved is to not love ourselves more, but perhaps to stop these narratives that play in our heads and convince us that we aren't enough to be loved or aren't worthy of love. Now I don't wanna oversimplify this. Like, for some, maybe most of us, digging into the “why” behind this narrative is the first step for stopping it.

[00:15:41]:

But going that deep may require you to seek help from a Christian counselor or therapist. There's a good chance that whatever is really going on with the person you want to love you now goes back to a person who didn't love you well earlier in life. Or let me rephrase that, who didn't always love you well, which pretty much means we're all eligible to have this struggle because none of us had perfect parents, and we know no perfect friends. We have no perfect coworkers. We've long been with broken people. And as broken people, we will always struggle to love perfectly. So let's get back to the main topic though here. How do we feel love? I think just being aware of what you are doing when you trust the narrative in your head or the lies in your head more than the truth of your reality is an important first step.

To Feel Loved, We Must Give Love

[00:16:38]:

Now I'll be clear. I can't tell you that your husband always only has pure motives and never struggles to love you well. I can't tell you that every time you feel like he's not loving you well, it's because you just made it up and it's all in your head. I wish that was true, but our men are never going to be perfect either. And there may be seasons where he's struggling too. But I will say that the same applies to him. His struggles are often deeper than what you see just between the two of you. His struggles go back to his brokenness from the past.

[00:17:15]:

I've recorded two amazing episodes that are coming up within the next month. One is with my friend, Rosie, who runs a ministry for women whose husbands are addicted to porn, and the others with my friend, Julie Slattery, who helps me talk through what to do when your husband hates your body. So know, friend, that if that's where you're at today, there's help coming on those specific fronts. You are seen. I know it's hard, but it's not about you. For now, let's get back to how you can feel more loved. So first to recap, don't go the self love route. Okay? Just in case I wasn't clear on that.

[00:17:53]:

Instead, I found that the best way for me to feel loved is to start focusing on how I can love others well. And I think I was probably inspired by the movie Fireproof. I don't know how many of y'all saw that. It came out, I don't know, a decade or so ago. But it starred Kirk Cameron. It was written by the Kendrick brothers who put out Christian movies. But in addition to that movie, they put out this marriage improvement kind of book. And the fireproof concept was Kirk Cameron's character was about to get divorced from his wife, and he was having a hard time, like, loving her and feeling like she loved him.

[00:18:30]:

And so he was given a book and given a challenge, really, to do something nice and loving and thoughtful without expecting anything return for his wife for a certain number of days. And after doing these acts of kindness, acts of love, after a certain number of weeks, he started to grow in his love for her. Now I'm oversimplifying it a bit, but the concept works because as you start to care for and love someone and serve someone, you find that you start to feel more love for them. And you also find that you are more open to feeling their love for you. And I told you how I went to Google to see their answer on how to feel more loved. One of the recommendations on the list was actually to volunteer. I mean, at face value, I think that sounds kind of strange. Why would you volunteer if you wanna feel like your husband loves you more? But the strange reality of how we are wired is that when we give, we are more able to receive.

[00:19:31]:

And all the culture and marketing kinda teach us this take, take, take. Just become beautiful, and they'll be the one everyone wants. And then you can sit in your house and just have praise showered upon you. Like, that's a really horrible way to love and feel loved. In fact, all you have to do is look at Hollywood to see that this method falls horribly short. When two beautiful people who are used to being loved and admired get together, and then expect the other person to love and admire them like their fans do, it usually goes bad. That's why I think if you watch carefully, those celebrities who get married to people who aren't famous tend to have better or maybe at least longer lasting marriages. 

When Our Expectations Don’t Meet Reality

[00:21:51]:

But in addition to deciding that no one could love us with this extra weight or no one could love us until we get our lives or appearance together or whatever that hang up thing is for you, we can also decide that love has to look a certain way. Now where in the world would I get an idea that love has to look a certain way? I'm kinda joking here, of course. But culture all around us teaches us what real love should look like. Right? Especially around Valentine's Day, we learned that someone who really loves you should fill in the blank here. I was watching a Hallmark movie over Christmas, and the romantic lead man goes to the love interest's home and finds this Christmas tree ornament that her grandma had made, and it was hiding somewhere in her basement. And he gives her that for Christmas, and it's like this amazing, sentimental gift. It's so thoughtful and touching, and she loves it.

[00:22:51]:

And at the time watching this, and I'm thinking there's no way or not a high likelihood, let me put it like that, that I was gonna get anything amazingly sentimental from my husband for Christmas. But then as I continue to watch it, I kinda thought, you know what? If he went down to the basement, we don't actually have basements in Texas, but we both grew up on the East Coast with basements. But if you went into the basement and found some old ornament that belonged to my grandmother and tried to give me that for Christmas, I'd be like, dude, you shoulda gotten me a gift card. Like, you dug this out of the basement. How would you think this is a good gift? I mean, I'm just being honest. I see so many scenarios like this where because it's done with the right words and the right lights and the right clothing, it seems so very romantic. But real life, I found, does not match television's picture of romance. But I also think that television's picture of romance doesn't match God's.

[00:23:47]:

And then perhaps because we try to be more like the couples on TV, we limit our ability to experience real intimacy and feel real love. If we define love the world's way, if love means he wears the right shirt and buys the right flowers and says the right things and he doesn't do or say those things, we feel let down. Real love is action, but it's not the action we're shown over and over again in TV and movies. Back to the book of John, this time John 15:13, greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. Again, the ultimate picture of love here is Jesus who laid down his life for ours. 

But there are ways that we are loved by our spouses or can love our spouses every single day that include these sorts of mini deaths. What about laying down your opinion of how the dishwasher should be loaded? Could true love be laying down this life that you love so much to give your spouse some grace and space to be different than you? Just throwing that question out there. Maybe a better way to say it is this, could laying down your life for someone look like putting that person first? And in that, practicing the ability to die to yourself and your own desires and loving them sacrificially.

[00:25:19]:

Friends, that's not what Hallmark movies are about. Right? That's not what most of culture's entertainment teaches as love. You don't sacrifice for love. Love makes everything better. That's what we're told. And if you have to sacrifice, you should probably look for someone else to love. But that's not what real love is. And, again, I'm not talking about putting up with abuse here, so please be clear on that.

[00:25:45]:

But I wonder if sacrificially loving our spouse could mean for us to lay down those feelings that we don't feel like we're good enough or worthy of their love. And instead of sitting there, just sitting in that feeling of, “I don't think you love me”, kind of “eeyore-ing” it, what if we just moved forward and tried to love them well? 

As we start to wrap up here, let's talk about the reality that sometimes we don't feel like God loves us. In fact, I just had an online conversation in the Compare To Who insiders group on Facebook about this topic. I asked the members there and, oh, by the way, you can join that group. I'm trying to make it a safe place to discuss what you hear on the show. But Facebook works really hard to make sure you don't see the post, so you can engage. But if you're on Facebook, join that group, because I'd love for that to be a place where we can have these kind of conversations privately.

Struggling to Believe That God Loves You

[00:26:42]:

But on that page I shared that I was gonna be talking about this topic and that I was working on this show. And a friend that I know through this ministry lost her husband suddenly a year or so ago. I don't think he was even 50 years old yet. I think he had a heart attack while he was running. And she responded. And she mentioned in that post that she felt maybe like God was being mean to her, that God must not love her because he did this to her. I know that might not be your story exactly, but I think we've all had our moments where we feel this to some degree or another. Maybe for you, it's feeling like if God really loved you, he would have given you a different body type, a different body size or shape or ethnicity.

[00:27:24]:

Or if God really loved you, he'd have sent you a spouse by now. Or if God really loved you, he'd help you get that job, or he'd help you get that body, or he'd help you get that house or or whatever it may be. There's an amazing quote from John Piper, which says this, and listen carefully. “The ease with which the human race presumes to tell God how he should love is breathtaking. There's only one way to know how God loves me. Listen to what he tells me and believe him.” Woah. That made me pause.

[00:28:04]:

That we presume to tell God how he should love us. Wow. Anyone else feel a little stunned right now? But let's go back to Piper's lessons too as we close-up today. There's only one way to know how God loves me. Listen to what he tells me and believe him. And maybe beyond that, I'd like to add is listening to what he tells me and doing what he tells me so that I can see his love in action and all the while believe him. As I've written in my books about comparison and even body image to some extent, you can figure out what you love by what you feel like you couldn't live without. In many ways, this also exposes our idols.

[00:28:42]:

What is there in your life that you feel like if I don't have this, I'll just be ruined or my life will not be a success, or my life will not be what I wanted it to be? When you answer those questions, you start to reveal any idolatry in your heart. But to another extent, my friend, it also reveals what we truly love. And sometimes I wonder if we don't have a hard time feeling loved by God and by others in our lives because we have other secret things we love more. I think about the commands in Matthew to love Jesus first and then to love others as we love ourselves. 

What Unconditional Love Really Means 

[00:29:18]:

It's hard to think about others as much as I think about myself. It's just too natural, too easy to think about my own wants, my own needs, my own desires. And to take this full circle, the more I'm thinking about me, me, me, the harder it becomes for me to love you, you, you, and the more disconnected I feel from you, I wanna blame you. I want to think about all those things you didn't do.

[00:29:47]:

I wanna focus on why you don't love me or why you don't love me well. But really, what I'm thinking about is me, me, me. So as we close today, my friend, my challenge for you this Valentine's Day weekend or whenever you get a chance to listen to this episode is to consider how well you are loving others in your heart. I don't mean serving others or doing things for others. Most of us are always busy doing that. But what's your heart in all of that? Are you serving out of obligation or out of love? Are you giving out of obligation or out of love? Are you loving without the expectation of something in return or is your love conditional? Are you secretly hoping that if you do this thing, then the response will be what you desire? Friends, I think when we struggle with approval, we do that a lot. Right? If I do this thing, if I look this way, if I do and act what you want me to do and how you want me to act, then you will love me. It's the same sort of thing.

[00:30:52]:

And none of this is easy, my friend. But I do think the better we learn to love others, the better we become at feeling loved ourselves. And so to conclude my story, I think it's easier for me to believe my husband loves me today because I don't spend minutes or longer a day thinking about how and why he doesn't love me. I don't get caught in the trap of meditating on his missteps or over analyzing what he didn't do or didn't say. Now it has taken 17 years of practice. Okay? But it's so much easier to be married and enjoy marriage and feel loved when you aren't caught up constantly questioning how the other person feels about you. And if you're not married, I can take that one step further to dating because I know I did the same thing in my dating relationships. I was constantly analyzing and questioning.

[00:31:50]:

And dating is a time where you should be asking questions to make sure this is the person you want to continue dating or maybe spend the rest of your life with. But consistently doubting or overthinking about things that they didn't do or didn't say can just drive you to crazy town. So as we close today, I wanna read the lyrics to you from one of my favorite songs. Okay. I love this song, but I love this song because I think the lyrics are just really, I don't know, spot on. It's written by John Mark MacMillan. It's sung by David Crowder. It's been around for years.

Oh, How God Loves Us!

[00:32:25]:

But I'm hooked from the first line. And that first line, you're gonna know what song it is maybe instantly is, God is jealous for me. God cares enough about me to be jealous. I don't know. Does that not startle you? That startles me. He loves me so much that he cares how I respond to him. He doesn't wanna share me. He doesn't wanna share me with my idols or my other vain pursuits.

[00:32:56]:

He loves me too much to share me. Anyway, I'm gonna read the lyrics for you, here they are, and I hope they minister to you today. 

He is jealous for me. Love's like a hurricane. I am a tree, bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy. When all of a sudden, I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory. And I realize just how beautiful you are and how great your affections are for me. And, oh, how He loves us.

[00:33:29]:

Oh, how He loves us. How He loves us all. And he is jealous for me. Love's like a hurricane. I am a tree bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy. When all of a sudden I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory, and I realized just how beautiful you are and how great your affections are for me. Oh, how he loves us. Oh, how he loves us.

[00:33:52]:

Oh, how he loves us all. And we are his portion, and he is our prize, drawn to redemption by the grace in his eyes. If his grace is an ocean, we're all sinking. And heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss, and my heart turns violently inside of my chest. I don't have time to maintain these regrets when I think about the way that he loves us. 

Friends, I really hope that that blessed you, and I pray that you have a blessed and beautiful weekend or whatever day you're listening to this. And most of all, I pray that today you can truly know and feel just how loved you are by God. Even if you feel like you're all alone today and you're not sure that anyone loves you, know that he truly, truly does.

[00:34:53]:

Thanks for listening. I hope something in today's show has helped you stop comparing and start living.