Hugs

I have lived a paradox most of my life. I am, by nature, a "huggy" person. I love hugs. Actually, I love just about all physical contact. During my freshman year of college, I learned the term "love language" to describe this feature - I show and recognize affection best through physical touch (followed by quality time, with low priority toward the other five love languages). I don't just express romantic affection, but friendship this way, too.

This is where my paradox comes in: I hate breaking the touch barrier. Part of it is that I know some people don't like to be touched. I do my best to respect other people's barriers. Unfortunately, there are selfish reasons too. With my insane fear of rejection, I for some reason feel that it is better to be starved of touch than to offer a hug and be shaken off. Because of this, I would hug only family members (primarily my mother, aunts, etc) for years and years of my life. I didn't even have much physical contact with my first girlfriend back in high school (although it was only a week).

As a point of interest, it was also my freshman year of college in which I discovered how important touch was to me. The majority of this was expressed through cuddling, hugging, or holding hands with my second girlfriend, whom I met the first day of freshman orientation. We spent a lot of time together (as young people who think they're in love often do) and I was, in general, much happier than I had been throughout my earlier life. Then we broke up, almost exactly a year from the day we met. I spent another year and some change in relative isolation from physical contact, until I again found myself in a relationship. This one lasted considerably less time, but shortly thereafter I had something of a breakthrough: I don't need a girlfriend to hug people. I could be reaffirmed that people cared about me by hugging friends. And so I did just that. I love it. I don't think I could go back to only having contact with a girlfriend if I tried (and I see no reason to do so).

The worst part of knowing people care mostly through touch is that it's incredibly awkward to explain to anyone (especially a significant other) that you want to be touched. Our culture is so sex-obsessed that people's minds immediate go to eroticism. It bothers me. Sex is certainly a big deal, but realistically cannot occupy that much of our time, and so should not occupy so much of our thoughts.

Anyway, that's my thoughts on hugs.