7 signs you’re a really loving person, according to psychology

We’d all like to think that we’re really loving, giving people.
But it’s not always all that clear what that means.
While we all seem to think we know what it is when we feel it, people have been struggling to define the concept of love for thousands of years. And we’re still not very far along.
However, psychological studies in the last century have made a lot more headway than art and philosophy have managed. Instead of getting bogged down by images and definitions, psychologists have studied how people feel when they feel loved and what people see as loving feelings and actions.
So, in this article, we’re going to take a look at what psychological studies have found out about love lately. We’ll see what they think it means to be a loving person and how this is expressed in your actions towards the people you love.
Let’s look at seven signs you’re a really loving person according to psychology.
1) You’re happy and positive
There have been lots of studies over the years on the effect of being a loving person on mental health. Actually, these studies have focused on both being loved and loving others. In other words, having love in your life.
And the results have shocked no one!
It turns out that there was a distinct link found between lacking feelings of love in your life and depression. People who felt like they were loving and loved were much less likely to suffer from depression and negative affect than people who didn’t feel loved.
I can’t imagine who this might surprise.
I think we all instinctively know that loving and being loved is one of the great joys of life.
While it can also cause us some of our greatest pain and heartache, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who would rather live life completely without love.
Hence the line from the famed poet Tennyson that has become a saying, “’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
2) You want to provide benefits for others
What does it mean to love someone else, whether romantically, platonically, compassionately, or otherwise?
Over the years, there has been a plethora of discussions about what love is and what it means to give and receive it.
Lately, there has been some interest in the notions of active and passive love.
This article explains that love “is passive when the lover is motivated by an expectation that obtaining or continuing to possess the object of his love will be beneficial for him”.
But in reference to active love, it says, “the lover’s primary goal is not to receive benefits but to provide them.”
So, which is real loving?
While you might be inclined to lean toward the much nicer and more altruistic concept of active love, the truth is that most people love in a way that combines both of these elements.
Isn’t there any such thing as loving with no strings attached? Unconditional love?
Perhaps, but we can think more about love style as being on a continuum with fully passive love on one end and fully active love on the other. Most of us will fall somewhere in the middle.
We feel good when we have the object of our love near us, and that certainly brings us benefits. But the farther you are to the active side of things, the more you’re able to love others without wanting or needing anything in return.
3) You’re not extremely introverted
One often used model for personality in psychology is the Big Five model. This model, though still debated and by no means universally accepted, tries to explain people’s personalities through measures of five traits.
These are agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience, neuroticism, and extroversion.
These traits are present to some extent in all people. They’re also not static but can change over time due to our experience and possibly to genetics as well.
Imagine, for example, you went skydiving when you were younger and had a terrifying accident that you barely survived. While you would have been very open to new experiences before, that accident may have changed you permanently and made you more cautious and less curious.
So, how does this relate to love?
One recent study from 2020 measured how these personality traits relate to people’s experiences of felt love. In other words, did some traits have any strong relation to whether they felt they had love in their lives or not?
One main finding was that “higher felt love baseline levels were related to greater psychological well-being as well as to higher Extraversion personality scores.”
This means that people who felt loved were more likely to be happier and to be more extroverted. So, even if you’re a naturally introverted person, being loved may make you at least a little bit less so.
These results are, however, only related to feeling love and not to loving others. However, we can reasonably expect that there is a similar link in that regard since loving and being loved are both widely reported as positive experiences.
4) You’re less neurotic
The same study I just talked about also found that people with lower baseline levels of felt love in their lives were higher in measures of neuroticism.
Now, I know that the word “neurotic” gets tossed around a lot and has a very poor connotation.
While not necessarily as bad as you might think, the meaning of neuroticism in psychology still has a negative meaning and describes a tendency to have more negative emotions. These are things like anxiety, fear, worry, depression, pessimism, guilt, and more.
Well, that study found a link between feeling loved and having less neuroticism and less of these negative feelings.
Once again, this shouldn’t surprise anyone. We all know that feeling loved can be a balm for the soul.
So what about loving others?
Well, another study found that “romantic love is associated with activity in a number of neural systems: reward and motivation, emotions, sexual desire and arousal, and social cognition.”
Clearly, there is an awful lot going on when we love someone. We get more rewards and motivation, and these positives likely lower people’s neuroticism considerably.
5) You’re not controlling
Do you do things that make people feel loved or controlled?
A very interesting study done into whether there is a consensus on what being loved feels like offers a very clear result.
The results of the study showed that “people agreed strongly that scenarios like ‘someone tells them what is best for them,’ ‘someone wants to know where they are at all times,’ ‘someone is possessive about them,’ and ‘someone insists to spend all of their time with them’ did not make them feel loved.”
As you can clearly see, all of these conditions show some element of control. In other words, people don’t feel like they’re being loved when they also feel like they’re being controlled.
So if you’re a controlling person and you engage in these sorts of activities, you’re not going to be seen as loving. Instead, the people your actions are directed at will feel like their lives are being controlled and interfered with.
On the other hand, if you can give your love freely without needing to impose control or conditions on the recipient, they’ll feel like you’re a truly loving person.
6) You’re trusting
If you’re a really loving person, you probably have a high capacity to trust others, especially those you love.
According to this study, trust is one of the four main parts of the quadruple framework of love.
These four pillars are attraction, connection, trust, and respect, and this theory proposes that these factors are found in different amounts in different kinds of love. For example, attraction features strongly in romantic and obsessive love, while not in mother-child bonds.
But trust is found to some extent in all kinds of love. It’s important for caregiving and intimacy, helping us build bonds with the people we care about.
So if you’re very trusting, this can contribute to you being a very loving person.
7) You’re respectful
It’s certainly hard to love someone you don’t respect.
That’s why respect is also an important element and one that is also recognized in the quadruple framework theory of love.
Respect functions in commitment and satisfaction in relationships, as well as helping to build intimacy and attachment.
Without respect, you’d quickly find that your relationships fall apart.
But with a high capacity for it, you’re able to be very loving with others who you care about greatly.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed looking at these seven signs you’re a really loving person according to psychology.
It’s fascinating to see how research backs up many of the things we all knew about love but had trouble expressing. At the same time, it provides us with new insights that can help us build quality, loving relationships in our lives.