You’ve got the job. You’ve streamlined your routine. You’ve built a life that looks good on paper, and yet on a Tuesday night something doesn’t feel right, and you find a hollowness quietly creeping in. If that sounds familiar, there is a scientific explanation for that, and it's probably not what you would expect.
The most consistent difference between people who are truly happy and those who aren’t, according to psychologists Sonja Lyubomirsky and Harry Reis, is one thing: whether they feel loved. Not how much money they make or how productive they might be or how many followers they have. It’s whether there is at least one person in their life who knows the real them and loves them regardless.
