BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Personality and Social Psychology
Feeling Loved versus Being Loving: Perceived Partner Behavior Predicts Relationship Satisfaction
Provisionally accepted
- Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia
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What matters more for relationship satisfaction, feeling loved or being loving? Johnson's Emotionally Focused Therapy (2019) emphasizes attachment, while Greenberg and Goldman's (2008) multi-motivational model highlights attraction and regard alongside attachment. The present study addressed a more fundamental question: Does feeling loved predict relationship satisfaction more strongly than feeling loving? Using an extreme groups design comparing clinically distressed (CSI < 51.5; n = 213) with highly satisfied individuals (CSI > 78; n = 198), we assessed five self-report measures: attraction (IAS), perceived partner attachment behavior (BARE-Partner), perceived own attachment behavior (BARE-Self), perceived partner regard (BLRI:OS), and perceived own regard (BLRI:MO). Results revealed that perceptions of partner behavior consistently predicted satisfaction more strongly than perceptions of own behavior. Effect sizes for partner-perception measures (attachment-partner d = 2.64; regard-partner d = 2.45) exceeded their self-perception counterparts (attachment-self d = 2.32; regard-self d = 1.96). Logistic regression confirmed that only partner-perception measures uniquely predicted group membership: attraction (OR = 27.58, p = .003) and perceived partner attachment (OR = 4.46, p < .001), while self-perception measures were non-significant. Notably, the groups differed in which domains were most salient: distressed individuals showed primary deficits in attraction (47%) and feeling valued (35%), whereas satisfied individuals showed primary strengths in attachment security (61%) and attraction (37%). These findings suggest that the subjective experience of feeling loved by one's partner is more consequential for relationship satisfaction than the perception of being a loving partner, and that different domains may characterize relationship
Keywords: Attachment, attraction, emotion focused therapy, Emotionally focused therapy, Regard
Received: 22 Dec 2025; Accepted: 03 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Halamová. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Júlia Halamová
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