Not saying ‘I love you’
I’ve got a lovely granddaughter and she’s always telling her parents she loves them.
Similarly, my daughter often ends her phone calls to me with the words ‘Love you, Mum.’ Of course I like this very much, but it also constantly reminds me that my own parents never told me that they loved me – and very rarely cuddled me. I can’t help blaming a lot of problems I have now on this lack of affection. We were a happy family and went on lovely holidays together when I was small and they always came to school concerts and dramas. But I’m tormented by this lack of affection in my childhood.
Sandra, by email
Answer:
There was a moment in my life when I felt the same as you. But I now realise that hardly anyone of our generation experienced overt affection from their parents – unless we were Italian, perhaps.
But we British kept a stiff upper lip, until recently. And it was only with the Americanisation of everything that it became the norm to say ‘I love you’ to our parents or even our friends.
The first time a woman friend said ‘I love you’ to me, I practically curled up and died of embarrassment. Even now I’m not sure I’d welcome it – though even I might just manage to choke it out on a best friend’s deathbed.
Influenced by an American self-help book, I did once tell my father I loved himinaletter–andgotbacka tormented admission he thought the reason he and I got on so well was because of ‘shared genes’.
Probably true, now I look back, but a bit of a slap in the face at the time!
Don’t worry. Your parents loved you very much. It’s what they do or did – not what they didn’t say – that matters.
