I usually only visit my family a couple times a year. I always notice when I do visit them how much I had been missing being able to hug someone.
I'm glad articles like this are helping to raise awareness of the dimensions of interaction we've suppressed in recent years. As important as boundaries are, we also have to acknowledge our natures as physical, tactile, animal creatures. We're not mere Enlightenment-era conceptions of beings of pure reason. We're embedded and embodied and have millions of years of programming to make us what we are. In the same way that modern societies have learned about the issues of unhealthy repression of things like sexuality, we also have to take care that we don't repress things like touch or aggression, which are in our nature and actually do have legitimate places in our being. We wouldn't be comfortable with alienation and isolation in our pets; we're not so different.
Anecdata: I have a firm "anyone who wants one can get a hug" policy, where I try not to let go until they do. The amount of time kids in particular stay in the hugs as active participants has gone up over the years (times often measured in minutes), and it does wonders for helping them regain a sense of balance.
That said, there's a strong stigma in the US Midwest against touching anybody but close acquaintances. Even the traditional "male bonding" style touching has disappeared. Now then, my slight presence on the autistic scale means I'm a lot more comfortable with both situations, but even I can regret their absence.
In the 1960's Sidney Jourard studied how often friends touched each other during a conversation. It varied wildly from one country to another, and Britain was already at the bottom of the list, at 0. (I have seen this cited several times but I can't find a specific source - possibly the book "The Transparent Self".)
It's hard to see how Britain could have gotten worse since then.
That's an interesting observation though, I left home in 2011, and after a year of living alone, not being in a relationship I realised I had not been physically touched by another human being in that entire year. This realisation came as I shook hands with a new employer.
My next human contact would be three months later, I would be patted on the back for doing /something/ but the feeling was so foreign to me... Despite being an isolated person in general I don't like the idea that I pretty much _must_ be in a relationship for human contact, and I don't want to only touch one person. There is something distinctly lonely in mental boundary between one person and another if you can't actually have a "real" feeling moment.
See if you can find a local tantra interest group. No joke. They would accept you as you are even fully clothed. It's up to each person to decide where the limits are set. And no, it's not a swingers party. In my little town here in Scandinavia there are several groups that meet regularly to just touch each other. Some are naked, some are not.
I'm not very comfortable with large groups of people, but myself plus 1-2 others works fine. Read my other comment, the woman I talk about also does tantra and it's not happy endings. It's about being safe, comfortable and conscious together. All limits are communicated and respected.
That said, from her I learned that my sexuality is nothing I should deny and be ashamed of and instead see it as something powerful that provides me with will to live, lust and energy. Things that are good for me and people around me.
After these sessions, meetings, book readings and other experiences I feel I've grown as a person and man and feel awakened. Maybe I lived a boring life before, I don't know.
I also discovered that there are many men and women who feel exactly like me. Some like living alone but need the experiences from time to time, some are couples who want to learn to feel greater joy together.
Well, when you use the word "tantra" here, it sounds like you're talking about one of the many schools of "awakened / sacred sexuality" or "neo-tantra" -- which are often deeply _informed_ by various tantric practices, while not coming even remotely close to encompassing what tantra is, in a traditional / classic sense.
Because this concept has been relatively reappropriated by these newer-age threads, your suggestion to seek these groups using a keyword like "tantra" can, of course, help to find what you describe.
Regardless, more conscious and consensual physical contact between humans is always a good thing, thanks for the suggestion!
As someone who is a oxytocin junkie, getting old and living a life where no one is touching me, partly because they want to be polite, sounds like a total nightmare. I hope a cat will be enough and that I'm allowed to have a cat. Without touching I slowly become bitter and dead inside. I go to the gym and try to live healthy so I can be independent till I drop.
Years ago I read an article about "skin hunger" and found it described me. The barber I went to to fix my hair spent some extra minutes massaging my scalp. Goosebumps all over my body. Then I started to go to massages. And from there things have escalated. :)
I've now been getting lessons how to massage and also have discovered I enjoy soft touching more than massage unless I'm in pain. I specifically searched for touching massages and met a wonderful older lady that talked about meditation and touching.
It's a fantastic feeling to use all the senses. First just barely touch the hair on the body, then barely touch the skin. Slowly increase the pressure and the amount of touch. And when it's time for oil, the oil is warm and almost hot. The feeling of getting warm oil dropped onto the body is amazing. Every time a sense is starting to get "blunt", you change pressure, amount of surface and temperature.
After those sessions I'm often high as if drugged.
(context: live & work in San Francisco/Silicon Valley area)
Before becoming an engineer, I studied massage, and came very close to choosing it as a profession.
Doing massage, you learn not just to touch, but HOW to touch. There's lots of different ways to touch a person, which give in different ways. Even now, it's naturally woven into my personality. I touch as part of my normal face-to-face communication with most people.
Generally speaking, adults are STARVED for touch. As in, they deeply crave to be touched, and to touch others. But for whatever reasons, people around here don't have enough opportunity to give/receive that, even those in a relationship.
Knowing how to give that to people in a way they can receive is a massive gift. It's desperately, desperately needed.
It seems hardly new to me that you generally don't hug or pat strangers, or colleagues you haven't established good terms with (yet). If people engage less in social grooming (-ish/like) behaviours, then this most likely is caused by (1) smaller social circles and/or (2) social interaction being handled through "social media", not in-person.
Behaviours in the "social grooming" category are extremely important for humans, even though we, as a species, developed language specifically to reduce the need for it in maintaining relationships in larger group sizes. This fact is reflected in these behaviours being reserved for relationships of at least some intimacy; proportional to the behaviour in question (e.g. hug -> friend, snuggling -> SO).
Worth pointing out that some have been professionalized for a while now (like getting a haircut).
I don't doubt the benefits enumerated in the article are true but I still think we as a society need to be better at respecting boundaries set by others.
Long ago I had a co-worker who would slap me on the back in an "attaboy" sort of way. Firm and solid, but not physically damaging. I politely asked him to stop and he gave me two more whacks in reply, saying "You big kidder, you're always joking around." and continued his behavior until he left for another job.
It's not difficult to do better than the person from my story. Then I see articles (similar to this one, but this is better than most I've seen) that take this to a strawman extreme and invalidate the very real phenomenon that we're collectively still pretty terrible at respecting the boundaries of others. The worst articles are the ones taking the childish position of "Well, if I can't wish someone a nice day without worrying about sexual harassment then I just won't say anything at all! So there!" which minimizes and ignores the actual issue and takes a certain pride in refusing to improve or grow.
You are getting downvoted and I can't figure out why.
You were absolutely right to ask that he not touch you.
You were absolutely also in your rights to just put up with it rather than deal with the potential consequences of trying harder to stop it.
My story: I worked at a place with a guy who I didn't particularly like, but I didn't really dislike him, either. One St Patrick's Day, I wasn't wearing green, and told people I don't like being pinched and not to pinch me.
One person did it anyhow. Out of reflex, I raised my fist as if to punch him. I didn't actually punch him, but my instinct was to do so after having been bullied as a child.
I went to the general manager and reported the incident. I was told that what he did wasn't wrong at all, and that if I'd punched him, I'd have been fired.
I stood my ground. I looked him square in the eye and told him that it was assault. The manager insisted that it wasn't assault, and I kept stating that it was assault, and that I'd just finished telling him not to do it when he did it. After going around a few times, the manager finally stopped saying it wasn't assault.
That incident never happened again.
However, now the other employee was sure that I didn't like him, and things were tense between us for a year or 2.
The story does have a happy ending, though. Eventually, that employee came out as gay and told everyone. Apparently, he thought I would react badly to that and looked particularly worried about what I'd say or do. I was just like, "Alright." and nothing was different on my side. However, he was much nicer to me after that, and so we both treated each other better from then on out.
That's a long way to say that "people are complex" and "it's okay to deal with the situation how you did". Taking the harder path was indeed harder for me on an on-going basis, even though I didn't end up fired or anything.
I had to google the pinching on st. patricks day thing. That is a strange tradition I am glad I never heard of. You would have been right to punch them.
It's something that would happen in elementary or middle school but by the time I entered high school (late 90s) was definitely seen as not a cool thing. Can't imagine that in a workplace.
> The worst articles are the ones taking the childish position of "Well, if I can't wish someone a nice day without worrying about sexual harassment then I just won't say anything at all! So there!"
Well, then just don't is always my reaction. It is always written as if they were about to punish the world in sort of passive aggressive way. And the world meanwhile don't care.
Our kids can go a long time between seeing their grandparents, and we never forced them to hug them or anything. My dad though, he often forced a hug out of them 10 seconds after us coming in the door, and then got pissed when they started crying. Just waiting half an hour often made our kids less shy and amenable to hugging, but that seems to be hard to understand.
> Long ago I had a co-worker who would slap me on the back in an "attaboy" sort of way. Firm and solid, but not physically damaging. I politely asked him to stop and he gave me two more whacks in reply, saying "You big kidder, you're always joking around." and continued his behavior until he left for another job.
Not to say what you should do, but saying: that is pretty disrespectful and you should have stood your ground, if you can't deal with a simple situation like this you won't learn how to deal with more difficult and subtler ones.
Verbal communication can be much more insidious and harmful, getting rid of physical touch will not mitigate harassment on the workplace, just cripple good old human behaviour and move the bad parts somewhere else.
As a native from Brazil I cannot imagine feeling comfortable at a workplace where normal behaviour must be monitored.
>if you can't deal with a simple situation like this you won't learn how to deal with more difficult and subtler ones
So it's my fault and I deserved it?
It was my first "adult" job and lots of people put up with a lot more in order to keep their job. Have you only ever worked in positions of privilege? Can you not see the power dynamics in play here?
Maybe assigning a "fault" is a bad way to model this. GP was trying to give advice that you can take or leave, but in their estimation you could have had a better outcome by following the advice. Do you deserve it if you might have been able to stop it but didn't try? I'd say such a "deserving" isn't a useful concept in this instance. I try to just think about making a judgement on what action will turn out best, and not prevent myself doing so because of what it might "mean".
Is that comment addressed to me? I don't think I've blamed anyone for anything, and furthermore I don't see how you could think so. Why would I want to?
In the hopes of getting back on topic, I think that the more isolating society gets, the more unpleasant that people are comfortable with being to one another, and that produces a negative feedback loop. We've all seen it in online discussion, but I think there's definitely a meatspace analogue.
They've banned harassment (while falling into the common trap of requiring "consent" without defining the term in a way that doesn't rely on time-travel).
> Physical contact and simulated physical contact (e.g., textual descriptions like "hug" or "backrub") without consent or after a request to stop.
I'm just going to start doing shoulder shakes instead of handshakes and see how people react. It's a warmer greeting than a hand shake and less likely to give me the flu.
That doesn't actually seem that different than the "put a hand on the arm while talking" technique that a lot of people use to try to inspire confidence from others.
Personally, when someone touches me like that, I realize I'm being manipulated and instantly like them less.
But a lot of people respond strongly and warmly to touch, even from strangers.
I also dislike it when strangers use my name before I've given it to them, and really, really dislike it when a stranger decides to use a short form of my name instead of the full version that I gave them. It stems from the same distrust of people trying to gain my confidence without merit.
I did not downvote you, and disagree with those who did.
Is that to say you don't like handshakes either ? I am genuinely curious as I currently do a slight bow and look down to preempt a handshake from occurring which is just exacerbating the crisis of touch issue.
The shoulder shake was in lieu of a hand shake and it hopefully is reciprocated. People tend to be judged, often unfairly, by the quality of their handshake. And there are definitely people who use a firm and prolonged handshake as an opportunity to express dominance.
Handshakes are for respect. People I've just met only get that respect if they're my new boss or something. If they force me into a handshake as a way of gaining my trust, then they've actually lost my respect instead of gained it.
It's something I made up. I just fully extend my arm towards another person's shoulder and give it a brief rub/pat/shake with my open hand. The other comment where you rub shoulders and perform a tango dance move is definitely not what I had in mind.
Isn't hugging a very American thing, though? I'm French and I'm pretty sure there's not even a word for that.
I don't remember hugging anyone apart from my niece when she was like 5. And now only two years later we don't do that.
Two adults hugging is weird, to be honest. IMHO you're not supposed to touch people unless you're deeply intimate.
EDIT. Others mention how French people kissing each others on the cheek is weird to foreigners, including American people. This is probably true indeed and worth mentioning.
> IMHO you're not supposed to touch people unless you're deeply intimate.
Casual hugging is more common in America than France, cheek kissing the other way around; each violates the other culture’s expectations by being overly familiar and weird to the uninitiated.
The article is about humanity's loss of touch as a form of socialization. The French lost it earlier than British (the topic of the article) and Americans.
On the other hand, Italians and French have more lax attitudes toward kissing acquaintances, particularly women, than we find appropriate here in the USA. Those little cheek kisses... even those are weird to us, unless we're intimate.
Not just American, Greeks are very big on hugging as well in my experience. I live in an area with a lot of greek immigrants (2nd or third generation now) and the amount of hugging feels unnatural to me because I grew up in the British tradition, a hug from my father means someone has died, a hug from my mother means we won't see each other for several months. Between me living further away from them and the family aging I think we actually hug each other more now than when I lived with them.
The lack of hugging is something we're consciously not passing on to the next generation.
And yet you guys go around kissing each other all the time.
I enjoy hugging both male and female friends, but I find French-style social kissing painfully awkward. So much potential for clashing faces, or accidentally planting one on their lips.
I’m not saying either one of us is right or wrong, just offering an alternative perspective.
So what about bisous? At least in South France it seems quite common to kiss colleagues (even some you’ve just met the first time) and strangers at parties
FTA:
> When did you last touch someone outside your family or intimate relationship? I don’t mean a brush of the fingers when you took your parcel from the delivery guy. I mean: when did you pat the arm or back of a stranger, colleague or friend?
Literally all of the time. Shaking someone's hand as a thank you and patting their shoulder has become one of those weird social hacks that I learned have a great impact in bonding both parties and feeling a sense of camaraderie.
Of course, you don't just randomly start touching people, and I'm far more careful in inter-gender exchanges, but it really is an important part of our sensory needs and experience.
I don't like anyone other than my SO to touch my neck or back, but even then, if someone shakes my hand and pats me on the shoulder or back, it's hard not to have some sort of oxytocin response, at least for me.
This is probably highly specific, but that seems to be my experience. If you're cool with a hug, you generally don't mind a pat on the back.
Edit: also, if they ever appear uncomfortable with any sort of touch, I do my best to remember to always respect that, but they tend to be the people who send a lot of other non-verbal cues that it's not their thing and usually it's not hard to avoid even bumping into that issue.
I remembered an interview with Jean Vanier from the L'Arch community in France. He lamented that we no longer hug because touch has become so sexualized in modern culture. He mentioned that people in the L'Arch community do hug with brotherly love. I don't know what that feel like because I haven't hugged or touched someone in a long time.
I don't really believe the government is capable of the foresight necessary for massive long-term (multi-generation) conspiracies, but stuff like this makes me feel like they might be doing one.
The goal of government and corporations is to grow larger. Ultimately they want to create a generation that looks to them for everything: financial assistance, security, housing, love, friendship, belonging, etc.
With that in mind, a decrease in physical affection is huge, making us scared of one another is step one. Divide the population into manageable individuals, break apart the family structure, erode self-reliance, squash independence, isolate us from one another and convince us that what we need can only be found through them, not eachother.
It was only a few years ago that there was breathless commentary about the sexual degeneracy of male and female high school students hugging each other too casually. I wouldn’t read too much into it.
I know that in France, hugs are definitely awkward - handshakes or cheek kisses are expected. In the US hugs are commonplace (along with fist-bumps and high-fives).
I only spent months in the UK but I know it wasn't like either above.
I used to feel so nervous hugging someone I wasn't on a hugging basis with. And then one time I did and I'll never forget how at ease they felt afterwise.
I don't know what to make of this. Honestly, where I'm from (Canada), depending on the circle, it feels like hugs are nearly a social norm, even between people who've just been acquainted.
TL;DR: have friends who hug, go to warm cultures and metta meditation
A friend of mine years ago went to an alternative school for a year. He transformed as a person and made it a principle to hug his friends. While I was skeptical at first, I quite quickly had the same principle. If I am within my circle of friends I always say beforehand that I am going to hug them if I don't know them well enough. When they refuse, fine, when they don't, I hug them. It is different when I am in other social circles, then I judge it more on a per social circle basis. If I meet someone by myself and had a good time, there is always a hug. If you want to get some 'practice' in, I suggest going on vacation to Italy and make some Italian friends. Hugging is normal if you let it be normal.
What also might help is metta meditation. I remember that before metta meditation I did not hug my parents. But then I read the book Search Inside Yourself written by a Google employee. I took the instructions for metta there a bit too much on the intense side, since I was really putting myself in the shoes of my parents and I envisioned how their whole life must've been like and kept asking myself what made them happy. After that I noticed that I wanted to tell them that I love them every time I saw them, but that's a bit too cheesy to my taste, so I decided to hug them instead. Interestingly, even after a few weeks my dad still felt a bit uncomfortable with it, so I dropped the practice with him. But I still hug my mom. For me personally, it has been a mini transformation because I never used to hug her, and now I hug her every time I see her.
Reading this, I'm quite surprised on how I transformed from a completely non-touchy person to a hugger. As a result, I am not experiencing a hugging crisis. I get my 2 hugs per day in :)
Reminds me of that scene in Demolition Man, where they have "sex" by wearing mind-reading helmets that share thoughts. Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67DN3uvwXkE
Now, take this one step further...is there a population we have systematically brainwashed into not touching at all because doing so is a sign of violence? What effect do we think that has?
I'm glad articles like this are helping to raise awareness of the dimensions of interaction we've suppressed in recent years. As important as boundaries are, we also have to acknowledge our natures as physical, tactile, animal creatures. We're not mere Enlightenment-era conceptions of beings of pure reason. We're embedded and embodied and have millions of years of programming to make us what we are. In the same way that modern societies have learned about the issues of unhealthy repression of things like sexuality, we also have to take care that we don't repress things like touch or aggression, which are in our nature and actually do have legitimate places in our being. We wouldn't be comfortable with alienation and isolation in our pets; we're not so different.