Psychology says the reason your father never told you he was proud of you isn't that he wasn't - it's that his generation was taught that providing was the language of love, and he said it every day in ways you weren't listening for - Silicon Canals

"For years, that absence sat in my chest like a stone. I built entire narratives around it. I sold a company and thought, maybe now. I failed at another and thought, well, that's why. I carried that silence into therapy, into my men's group, into every room where I was trying to figure out why I kept chasing things that never felt like enough once I got them."

"My dad was outside in the garage, silently rotating the tires on my car. Nobody asked him to do it. I hadn't mentioned anything. He'd just noticed the tread was uneven when I pulled in the driveway. Something in my chest cracked open. Not because it was some grand gesture. But because I suddenly saw it - really saw it - as one instance in a lifetime pattern of care that I'd been dismissing as ordinary. As baseline. As not enough."

A persistent lack of verbal pride from a father caused long-term emotional pain and self-doubt despite decades of steady support. The father's generation treated emotional expression as risky and valued restraint, work, and provision as adaptive responses to scarcity. A small, unprompted act—rotating the car tires—became reframed as evidence of sustained care rather than indifference. Recognizing ordinary, baseline actions as expressions of affection shifted perception of paternal love. Everyday practical care can embody deep affection even when direct verbal affirmation is absent.

Read at Silicon Canals