Some dads don’t say it. They check your tire pressure. Learn the language.

Affection has dialects. Some people grew up in houses where feelings were spoken, and some grew up where they were performed as maintenance: oil changed, gutters cleared, your tires checked the night before a long drive. The words are missing but the message is not, and reading only for words means missing most of what is being said to you.

Watch for what a quiet person in your life keeps doing for no particular reason. Then answer in the same dialect at least once this week. Fill their car, fix the broken thing, make the coffee. Fluency goes both ways, and it lands harder than a text would.