“Did you eat?” and “Text me when you get there” are just love that never learned to sound cool.

Not everyone was given the vocabulary for affection. Some people grew up in houses where nobody said the direct thing, so care comes out as logistics: whether you have eaten, whether you arrived, whether you are warm enough. The content is identical. Only the phrasing never got updated.

Translate rather than dismiss. When someone asks the practical question, hear what it stands in for and answer it properly. And if you are the one who talks like that, you are allowed to say the plain version occasionally, because it usually lands harder than you expect.