Hunting for human touch
I tell a woman today that I’m an intimacy coach. She’s a retired speech pathologist, worked in public schools for many years. She asks about my work and I say a little about touch, that I teach people how to touch each other with more awareness and skill, how to make their love lives safer and juicier.
Wow – wish you were around when I was younger! – you’d be amazed at how often I hear that. There doesn’t seem to be anyone who doesn’t want yummier touch in their lives. I’ve never had anyone say – Oh really? How boring. I already have enough of that. Not once.
Anyway, she asks about touch, if I teach anything about kids. Back in the early days of teaching, she was allowed to touch kids, to hug them, express support and affection. Those days are gone now. I remember my mother, who also taught for many years, saying the same thing. In her early years of teaching, kids would come up and hug her when they entered her classroom. By the end of her career, it was discouraged. Now it’s illegal.
What the hell?
Yes, I do know that there have been and are adults who take advantage of their authority and personal power to take kids into sexual activity. And yes, I do know that girls and women, and to a lesser extent boys, have put up with all manner of bullshit in the form of assumptions about the availability of their bodies.
And still – where is there to receive, and give, the touch that is just about being a human being among other human beings?
When all touch is prohibited because it might have the potential to become sexual – then it creates its own fact.
Which means that the only time you can get any touch at all, expect maybe – maybe – an occasional hug from your mom or dad – and gotta watch out for those dads! – The only time you get any touch at all is when you do get sexual. Then, there is no touch that is not sexual. Big trouble, folks.
You are creating an impossible situation for the human mammal, who is designed to seek and exchange touch in many forms as an expression of living in a body, of living in a family, a community of friends. As an expression of interest, affection, communication, support, connection. All expressions that have nothing to do with sex. Nothing to do, even, with gender. That have to do with being human. And a mammal.
We don’t question this with puppies – ever see them sleep in a heap? Humans are designed the same way.
The unseen impact here is that it means that in our minds, well, theirs, not mine, ‘touch’ and ‘sex’ begin to mean the same thing. They get welded together in the file cabinets in their heads.
This creates two basic options. Either get sex/touch or get neither. Then you get starved for touch – because that is your physiological nature – and you go hunting for it – and you get both – because that’s the only form you know.
Enough rant. You get the idea. It’s fucked up.
A rather depressing post. So – what do you do about it then? Ask for hugs and cuddles. Be clear in what you are asking for or inviting. Yes even on a date. If you are blessed to have a partner who is willing, invite the two of you to explore cuddling. If you are a man and she is a woman and she sometimes avoids your touch, it is most likely because she assumes that all touch leads to sex and if she doesn’t want sex at the moment, she has to avoid touch because she knows that is where it will take you. Or more accurately she knows that if you didn’t want sex to start with you would not be bothering to express affectionate touch. Hopefully this is not true of you, but I can tell you that it is true in many many homes across America.
I guess there was more rant left in me.
Hell, if you don’t know how, there’s even a book on it called the Cuddle Sutra. And there’s Cuddle Parties to get comfortable and learn the rules.
I guess the main thing is – if what you are seeking is touch – then ask for it and don’t go along with sex if you don’t really want it. If your partner can’t respect that, what the hell are you doing with them?
And - please hug your kids.