Most people who grew up with childhood emotional neglect don't usually arrive in adulthood thinking: I didn't get enough emotional attunement as a child, and now I struggle with intimacy. But often they do arrive thinking: I don't know why relationships are so hard for me. I don't know why I keep ending up with people who aren't really there. I don't know why closeness feels threatening, or why I push people away when they get too close, or why I feel so alone even when I'm w

Everything was fine on paper. Your parents were there. The bills got paid. You were fed, housed, kept safe. Nobody hit you. There was no obvious crisis, no dramatic rupture, no single moment you can point to and say: that's where it went wrong. From the outside, and often from the inside too, it looked like a normal family. And yet something was off. Something that is difficult to name precisely because it was never about what happened. It was about what didn't. This post is

Something happened in childhood. Or more precisely, something didn't happen — and that absence has shaped you in ways that may not have been fully clear for much of your life. Many people might struggle to even find a story to tell. There is no single incident. No obvious wounds. Childhood wasn't necessarily bad, and it's hard to point to anything specific that was wrong. Indeed, you know other people experienced much worse. Which is actually the point, It is not so much w