One thing that always strikes me when I encounter it is the issue of families that don't express emotion well. This is a reccurring issue on Frasier. My family was never, ever like that, so it's always a bit of a stretch of the imagination to understand where that's coming from. For my family, saying nice things has always been the single most frequent and most important demonstration of our love for each other. We say "I love you" constantly, and I've come to regard it as just kind of the way people who care about each other behave. I know a lot of people have an association of men with the inability to express emotion, but that's not how I grew up. My father, who is a man's man by any definition, has always been as demonstrative with love and encouragment as could be. In fact, I think one of the reasons why I want and need to have people give me compliments and say nice things to me so badly is because I've been brought up in such a way that one indicates one's love and respect by saying it.
That sort of thing is immeasurably more valuable to me than just about anything else in my interactions with people. Take, for example, the fact that I don't really dig the whole traditional celebration of birthdays. This is mostly because I dislike the custom of gift-giving associated with it. Besides the fact that I dislike monetary expediture equaling affection, the older I get, the more I come to dislike "stuff"-- physical things are increasingly becoming no more to me than useless clutter. So I don't want to have people feeling like they're obligated to buy me stuff. I would much rather a little note telling me something real and meaningful about something you like about me. To me, that's the most precious thing in the world.
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