20/04/2026
My parents never said I love you — and it took me years to understand why.
Confucianism, one of the core philosophies across East Asia for over 2,000 years, teaches that your character is revealed through your actions and consistent behaviour.
You don’t announce your feelings.
You demonstrate them.
So my parents said I love you by cutting our fruit. By making us eat before they did. By driving us to piano at 6am — and criticising our messy rooms on the way back.
Some of it was a little unhinged.
But as kids, we don’t read acts of service as love. We read them as just things adults do. And so even when the love was always there, it got overshadowed by the expectations and the criticisms that carried it.
It took me a long time to realise — my parents never withheld love.
They were just fluent in a language I hadn’t learnt yet.
Still learning to speak it myself. 🍎
What’s the most unhinged thing your family did that was actually just them saying I love you?
