
No hugging: are we living through a crisis of touch? - jseliger
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/mar/07/crisis-touch-hugging-mental-health-strokes-cuddles
======
DanAndersen
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.

------
falcolas
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.

~~~
abfan1127
I do the "hug until they let go" thing with my kids. You can see how it
changes and calms them.

------
sp332
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.

~~~
dijit
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.

~~~
Flow
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.

~~~
palimpsests
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!

------
Flow
A complete opposite of the linked article is this article I have saved because
I found it well-written and sort of amusing: [https://medium.com/s/story/how-
to-be-polite-9bf1e69e888c](https://medium.com/s/story/how-to-be-
polite-9bf1e69e888c)

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.

------
redsymbol
(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.

------
blattimwind
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).

------
minikites
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.

~~~
wccrawford
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.

~~~
dec0dedab0de
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.

~~~
JBlue42
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.

------
chatman
FreeBSD community has banned "virtual hugs" in their community guidelines!

~~~
kiddico
To save someone a bit of googling here's a link:

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/21/freebsd_code_of_con...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/21/freebsd_code_of_conduct_controversy/)

------
louprado
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.

[update] -- I guess I won't given the down votes.

~~~
blattimwind
What's a shoulder shake?

~~~
louprado
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.

------
grondilu
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.

~~~
J-dawg
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.

~~~
grondilu
Well, yeah. There is indeed the kiss on the cheek, called "la bise", which is
a fairly common greeting, even between adult males.

I've always found it awkward myself, but that may just be me.

------
natecavanaugh
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.

------
tlholaday
<facetious> Unicorn opportunity? "Uber for touch"? </facetious>

~~~
squozzer
Japan got there first -
[https://japantoday.com/category/features/lifestyle/japans-
fi...](https://japantoday.com/category/features/lifestyle/japans-first-cuddle-
cafe-lets-you-sleep-with-a-stranger-for-y6000-an-hour)

------
hi41
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.

------
ericmcer
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.

~~~
closeparen
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.

------
r00fus
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.

------
gowld
"The Hug" by Fred Small
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNXpTE5__LM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNXpTE5__LM)

and then the new version for use in different contexts and newer political
raelity:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVVMTTLU8Ko](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVVMTTLU8Ko)

Partial Lyrics (courtesy of YC) : [https://genius.com/Fred-small-the-hug-song-
lyrics](https://genius.com/Fred-small-the-hug-song-lyrics)

------
dopeboy
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.

------
neves
The author surely does not live in Brazil :-)

------
thomnific
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.

------
birdmanjeremy
You guys don't hug your friends? Weirdos...

~~~
gknoy
I go months at a time without seeing my friends.

~~~
WalterSear
Sounds like a hug would be quite socially appropriate in that case. :)

------
mettamage
My 2 cents on hugging.

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 :)

------
jbob2000
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](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67DN3uvwXkE)

------
DiNovi
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

------
angersock
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?

