Why Your High-Control Religious Upbringing Left You Feeling Starved for Love
I definitely entered my teen and young adult years feeling “starved for love,” but I didn’t come to understand this about myself until I was well into my 30s.
As someone who prided myself on being fiercely independent, even as a teenager, the idea that I “needed” anything (or anyone) caused me to bristle.
But what I’ve come to realize is that not wanting to need someone is also a sign of being “love starved” because when we needed love the most, it wasn’t available to us.
So we learned how to not need it.
Here’s the sad reality—many folks who were raised in high control religions enter adulthood feeling starved for love because these groups often support an authoritarian parenting style.
While authoritarianism may produce obedient little children, it also produces adults who failed to get their needs for attunement and connection met during childhood.
That’s one reason we have so many adults who were raised in high control religions now feeling chronically starved for love.
What We’ll Be Covering:
What is an “Authoritarian Religious Upbringing?”
An authoritarian religious upbringing is when someone was raised in a religious home that supported authoritarian parenting practices.
As mentioned above, most high control religions support or even actively help parents cultivate an authoritarian approach to parenting.
Defining an Authoritarian Parenting Style
Authoritarian parenting is about power and control and is characterized by a high demand for obedience without much in the way of warmth or nurturing.
Parents who adopt this style often rely on strict rules and expectations, and there’s little room for dialogue or negotiation.
It’s a “because I said so” mentality that prioritizes discipline over understanding.
The central belief here is that children should be seen and not heard, which can lead to a relational disconnect between parents and their children.
In contrast, there are two other primary parenting styles that differ significantly from the authoritarian approach: permissive and authoritative.
Permissive parenting is almost the antithesis of authoritarian, offering warmth and nurturing but lacking in the structure and discipline department.
Here, children might feel loved, but they may not develop the necessary skills for independence and self-regulation.
A third approach—authoritative parenting—manages to strike a balance between the two extremes of permissive and authoritarian parenting.
This approach involves setting clear rules and expectations but also encourages open dialogue.
It’s about guiding rather than controlling, and it offers children a supportive environment where they feel valued and heard.
Common Characteristics of an Authoritarian Religious Upbringing
Some common characteristics of living in an authoritarian home, especially one influenced by high control religions, will often include some of the characteristics listed below.
Not every family will have all of these, and they may show up in different degrees. But if you were raised in a high-control religion, at least a few of these will probably feel very familiar.
Taken together, these dynamics tend to make a child focus on staying “good” and avoiding trouble, rather than learning how to understand and express what they feel or need.
And that’s where emotional neglect often enters the picture.
Authoritarian Parenting & Emotional Neglect
Authoritarian parenting commonly involves physical discipline, which can be inherently harmful.
However, an equally detrimental consequence of authoritarian parenting is emotional neglect, which is where the experience of being “starved for love” originates.
What is “Emotional Neglect?”
At its core, emotional neglect involves a consistent failure to attend to the emotional needs of a child.
According to Dr. Jonice Webb who coined the term childhood emotional neglect (CEN), it’s not about what happened to you, but rather what didn’t happen for you.
She describes it as the “silent killer” of a child’s spirit because it erodes a child’s ability to self-validate, recognize their own worth, and understand or manage their emotions.
When parents are physically present but emotionally distant, they inadvertently send a message to their child that their feelings are irrelevant or burdensome, which can lead to a lifetime of seeking validation and love in unfulfilling ways.
Hence the experience of feeling “love starved” as you enter adulthood.
Why Authoritarian Parenting is Emotionally Neglectful
Authoritarian parenting and childhood emotional neglect (CEN) tend to go hand in hand, and this is often where that “starved for love” feeling originates.
Below are a few of the ways authoritarian parenting actively contributes to a child’s experience of emotional neglect.
Lack of Emotional Attunement
One aspect of authoritarian parenting that sets the stage for emotional neglect is the lack of a parent’s emotional attunement to their child.
In these homes, parents often focus on obedience and discipline and miss what a child is actually communicating through their behavior.
Instead of receiving curiosity, comfort, or help putting words to big feelings, children are more likely to be corrected, dismissed, or punished for having them.
Over time, this can leave children alone with what they feel, without much guidance on how to understand it, express it, or move through it in a healthy way.
High Expectations with Little Support
Authoritarian parents tend to set very high expectations for their children.
In high-control religion, that often centers on strict obedience to authority, though it can also show up around school or sports, or simply the need to develop a strong moral “character.”
However, this often comes without much emotional support or guidance, which can make kids feel like they’re constantly falling short.
It can also make it feel like their parent’s love and attention is contingent on meeting those standards.
Minimal Positive Reinforcement
In authoritarian households, praise is often scarce, and criticism is abundant.
Children may strive tirelessly for achievements, only to find their efforts go unnoticed or are never good enough.
And when warmth or affirmation only shows up after performance, a child can start to internalize that love has to be earned.
Over time, this becomes a form of emotional neglect because the child misses the affirming experience of being seen, enjoyed, and valued simply for being who they are.
Emotional Expression Seen as Weakness
In many authoritarian families, emotional expression, especially that of vulnerability or sadness, is viewed as a weakness or not being reliant enough on god.
This perspective forces children to bottle up their emotions, fostering an environment where they learn to associate their natural emotional responses with shame or inadequacy.
Over time, these dynamics can affect self-worth, emotional awareness, and what it feels like to be close to other people.
Characteristics of an Adult Who Experienced Childhood Emotional Neglect
If you grew up in an authoritarian religious home, you may relate to some of the experiences below.
A lot of these “symptoms” make more sense when you remember what kids in these homes are required to do to stay safe and connected.
When approval, warmth, and emotional attunement are limited or conditional, you adapt by getting smaller, staying agreeable, striving harder, or disconnecting from what you feel.
Those adaptations can follow you into adulthood, even long after you have left the religion.
Folks who were raised in authoritarian religious homes will often experience one or more of the following characteristics to varying degrees:
If you see yourself in several of these, it can bring up a mix of recognition and grief.
In the next section, I want to slow down and connect the dots between emotional neglect and that lingering sense of being “starved for love.”
The Progression From Emotionally Neglected Child to Love-Starved Adult
When emotional attunement, comfort, and consistent warmth are missing in childhood, it can create a specific kind of hunger that follows you into adulthood.
You might be in a caring relationship and still feel like something is off, not because your partner is doing something wrong, but because your nervous system learned early on that love is uncertain, conditional, or elusive.
In this section, I want to get more specific about how that early lack of emotional connection can turn into the “love starved” experience later in life.
The Importance of Love in Psychological Development
Love, or more specifically, emotional attunement, plays a pivotal role in your psychological development.
From infancy, the quality of love and emotional engagement we receive lays the groundwork for our self-image, the way we form relationships, and how we experience the world in general.
When your caregivers effectively tune into your emotional needs during childhood, you receive the message that you are worthy—that your feelings matter.
You are understood, and, more critically, that you’re not alone in your emotional experiences.
This nurturing environment fosters a strong foundation of security and trust, which are essential components for healthy psychological development.
This type of environment also teaches you how to recognize, manage, and express emotions in constructive and connecting ways.
Why Love Can Still Feel Hard to Trust
When you grow up without reliable emotional attunement, closeness can start to feel like something you have to manage.
You might find yourself watching for subtle shifts in tone, wondering what someone really means, or trying to stay “easy” so you don’t become too much.
Even when someone is being consistent, it can be hard to relax into it, and care may feel temporary, conditional, or easy to lose.
If love used to come with strings attached, steady care and connection can bring up lingering doubts, like it is “too good to last,” or that you are still waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Because of this, you may find yourself challenging the connection as a way of subconsciously testing it.
Or you may exit the relationship because it feels emotionally safer to be the one doing the leaving.
Moving Toward Secure Love
If love was offered in exchange for obedience, achievement, or spiritual performance, it makes sense that love can feel hard to trust later on, even when someone is showing up with steadiness and care.
A childhood like that does more than affect your beliefs about relationships. It often affects how your body responds to closeness, what you brace for, and what you assume you will have to do to keep connection.
Across this article, we have been tracing how authoritarian religious upbringings so often create emotional neglect, not always through obvious absence, but through an ongoing lack of attunement, warmth, and emotional safety.
And when that becomes the water you swim in early on, “love starved” starts to describe something very specific—the quiet ache of wanting to be known while also feeling wary of what being known might cost you.
The good news is that adulthood can offer a different kind of experience.
In healthy, secure relationships, care tends to be less performative and more consistent, which gives you room to experiment with new choices: saying what you feel before it turns into a shutdown, receiving comfort without immediately minimizing it, staying present through a moment of tenderness instead of rushing past it.
This kind of healing usually shows up through repetition more than breakthroughs.
Over time, you begin to relax into a felt sense of safety as you experience consistent, reliable emotional nourishment.
Some Possible Next Steps:
If this article resonated with you and you’re wondering where to go from here, you might consider the following options:
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