I was sitting on my couch last week, watching my grandson sprawl across his mother’s lap while she absentmindedly stroked his hair.
“Love you, bud,” she said, not even looking up from her phone. He didn’t respond, just kept playing his game. It was so casual, so unremarkable.
And I had to look away for a second.
Because in my house growing up, those three words were as rare as an apology. My father cried once that I can remember, at his mother’s funeral. My mother dealt with emotions by staying busy, always moving, always doing. They survived the Depression and World War II, and love was something you showed through sacrifice and hard work, not something you said out loud.
I didn’t realize until much later, decades later if I’m being honest, how much that silence shaped me.
After thirty years of teaching high school English and counseling students, I’ve watched this pattern play out more times than I can count.
The kids who flinched at praise. The ones who worked themselves into exhaustion trying to earn what they thought had to be deserved. The adults who sat in my classroom for parent-teacher conferences, uncomfortable with any conversation that veered toward feelings.
Here’s what I’ve noticed about those of us who grew up in homes where “I love you” was never spoken.
1. They struggle to identify and express their own emotions
When I started therapy at 69, yes 69 which tells you how long I waited, the therapist asked me what I was feeling. I sat there, mouth open, completely blank.
“I don’t know,” I finally said. “Tired?”
She smiled gently. “That’s a physical state. What emotion are you experiencing?”
I genuinely couldn’t answer. After decades of teaching teenagers to analyze the emotional depths of Shakespeare and Steinbeck, I couldn’t identify my own feelings.
When you grow up in a home where emotions aren’t named or acknowledged, you learn to shove them down so deep they become unrecognizable. You function. You get things done. But ask you to articulate what’s actually going on inside? That’s foreign territory.
I see this in people all the time now that I know what to look for. They’ll say “fine” when they mean devastated. They’ll describe a frustrating situation in completely neutral terms. They’ve spent so long translating their inner world into acceptable, emotion-free language that they’ve lost the original vocabulary.
2. They equate love with achievement and productivity
In my childhood home, affection came with achievement. Good grades earned a nod of approval. A clean room meant you were responsible. Love wasn’t something freely given. It was something you worked for, constantly.
So naturally, I became the kind of teacher who graded papers until midnight, came in early, stayed late, won awards, took on leadership roles. I ran on fumes for thirty years, thinking exhaustion was proof of my worth.
Here’s the thing about growing up without those three words: you start believing love is something you have to earn. Every single day. Through accomplishment, through usefulness, through never stopping.
I’ve known so many people like this. The ones who can’t sit still. Who measure their value by their to-do list. Who panic at the thought of retirement because if they’re not producing, who are they?
It took my body months to recover after I retired because I’d spent decades running on pure will. I had to learn, I’m still learning, that my worth isn’t tied to my productivity. That rest isn’t laziness. That I don’t have to prove I deserve to take up space.
3. They keep people at a comfortable distance
There’s this interesting pattern I noticed during my thirty years in teachers’ lounges and classrooms. The people who were most uncomfortable with emotional intimacy were often the most competent, the most reliable, the most independent.
They’d help you move. They’d cover your class. They’d organize the fundraiser. But ask them about their marriage, their fears, their disappointments? The conversation would shift immediately.
When you never heard “I love you” growing up, vulnerability feels dangerous. Opening up feels like handing someone ammunition. So you learn to be friendly without being close. Helpful without being known.
I see this in myself even now. My door is always open for my grandchildren, but letting someone see me truly struggling? That still makes my throat tight. I’ve gotten better, therapy helps, but that instinct to keep the real stuff locked away runs deep.
4. They have difficulty accepting compliments or affection
Watch someone who grew up without verbal affection receive a genuine compliment. They’ll deflect. They’ll minimize. They’ll immediately point out seventeen ways they could have done better.
I remember early in my teaching career, a colleague told me I’d handled a difficult parent meeting with real grace. Instead of saying thank you, I launched into a five-minute explanation of everything I’d done wrong and how lucky I was the parent hadn’t complained to the principal.
She looked at me oddly. “I was just trying to tell you that you did well.”
When affection and praise were rare growing up, they feel suspect as an adult. You don’t trust them. You certainly don’t feel like you deserve them. So you push them away before they can be taken back.
Even now, when my sons tell me they appreciate something I’ve done, my first instinct is to wave it off. “Oh, it was nothing.” As if accepting their love diminishes it somehow.
5. They apologize excessively or not at all
This one shows up in two different ways, and I’ve seen both extremes in my book club, in my dance classes, in my own mirror.
Some people who grew up without hearing “I love you” apologize for everything. For taking up space, for having needs, for existing at inconvenient moments. They’ve learned that maybe if they’re sorry enough, they’ll finally be acceptable.
Others, and I fell into this camp for years, almost never apologize. Because in homes where emotions weren’t acknowledged, admitting you were wrong felt like weakness. It invited judgment. My parents taught me that defending yourself at all costs was survival.
It took me decades to learn that a clean apology, “I was wrong, I’m sorry,” without defensive explanations or justifications, is actually a sign of strength. But that childhood pattern of either over-apologizing or never apologizing runs deep.
6. They struggle with asking for help
Self-reliance was practically a religion in my childhood home. You figured it out. You handled it. Asking for help meant you were failing, or worse, being a burden.
My first year teaching, I struggled with classroom management and was too proud to ask for help. I worked myself into tension headaches and stress-related health issues rather than admit I was in over my head.
I see this pattern everywhere now. People who will work themselves sick before asking for support. Who view needing others as a character flaw. Who equate independence with worth.
What I’ve learned, slowly and painfully, is that asking for help isn’t weakness. It’s trust. It’s vulnerability. It actually deepens relationships rather than exposing some fundamental inadequacy.
But when you grew up believing that worthy people never need anything from anyone? That’s a hard belief to shake.
7. They confuse love with obligation and duty
Here’s something I realized only recently: I spent most of my life thinking love was something you demonstrated through sacrifice and service, not something you felt or expressed.
My mother said yes to every request, volunteered for everything, ran herself ragged. That was love in action, right? Showing up, doing the work, meeting every need.
What I missed was the difference between genuine connection and dutiful obligation. Between showing love because it flows naturally and performing love because you’re supposed to.
I watched this play out in countless parent-teacher conferences. Parents who attended every game, every concert, every meeting but couldn’t tell you what their kid was actually interested in. Obligation masquerading as affection.
Learning that love can be simple, a phone call just to talk, sitting together doing nothing, saying “I love you” for no reason, has been revolutionary. And strange. And still feels slightly foreign.
Final thoughts
I’m not telling you all this to trash my parents or claim some kind of emotional damage. They did their best with what they knew. They survived things I can’t imagine and raised me to be resilient and strong.
But here’s what I wish someone had told me decades ago: just because your parents didn’t say “I love you” doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means you learned certain patterns that made sense in that environment but might not serve you anymore.
I’m seventy now, and I’m still unlearning some of this stuff. Still practicing saying “I love you” to my sons without feeling awkward. Still learning to rest without guilt. Still working on accepting help without seeing it as failure.
If you recognize yourself in any of these behaviors, be patient with yourself. These patterns took years to form. They’ll take time to shift. But they can shift. I’m living proof.
And maybe, just maybe, start saying those three words to the people who matter, even if it feels uncomfortable at first. Especially then.
