Do you feel love deprived? How often do you get affection?

And when I ask this I don’t mean a romantic or sexual love, I mean people who just loving you for who you are and wanting to be around you because they love you as a person and don’t expect to gain anything from it. Regular affection?

I guess the reason I’m asking this is because last week was my older cousins (49M) birthday and I had gone over his place to hang out when unexpectedly his niece (15F) walked in with a cake she had made for him (he keeps his door unlocked) while singing happy birthday. She put the cake on the table next to us and gave him a big hug and just said something small like “happy birthday uncle____! I love you!!” And maaann if you could see this guy’s face. He was so happy and had the biggest dumb smile on his face lol. he actually started crying a little.

Also this might make a difference but they aren’t even super close or anything. They don’t really talk that much and this was completely unexpected. And she was still one of the few people who actually remembered so we both thought it was really sweet :). Apparently she had been baking all day cause she kept messing it up lol

After she left he started crying again and when I asked him if he was alright he just said something like “yeah I’m good… I just hadn’t felt that cared for in a long time”