Sometimes it has to be a piece of cake. Others need french fries with majo. In any case: we sense when we are hungry for something that is good for our soul for a short time. And we do not deny this hunger, we satisfy it as well as that for crunchy vegetables. We drink when we are thirsty, when we are tired, we sleep, and when we take care of it, we also notice when our body needs exercise.
Skin hunger
However, we avoid another desire, worse: we usually don't even feel that it exists. Everything that we call hugging, cuddling, heart and caressing is as much a physical need as eating, drinking and sleeping. Our skin is hungry for touch. "Skin hunger" experts call our longing for physical contact with other people – far from sex or eroticism. "Our culture often doesn't want to admit it," says psychologist Martin Grunwald, head of the haptic research laboratory at Leipzig University. "But touch is as important to living things as the air to breathe. People can live without a sense of taste, without hearing, even without eyesight. But they don't stay healthy if they are deprived of physical contact."
Our skin contains millions of touch receptors. From them, nerve tracts send signals to the brain. With gentle, beneficial physical contact, our brain produces oxytocin. This happiness and attachment hormone lowers blood pressure, slows the heartbeat and respiratory rate, and reduces stress hormones. Therefore, after a stroke or a hug, we feel calm, satisfied, confident. In breastfeeding mothers, oxytocin acts as an emotional binding agent to the newborn. And the feeling of connection to your partner after sex is triggered by an oxycotin boost.
A brief, facing touch makes us feel more comfortable. One of the oldest experimental arrangements on the subject gave a waitress a friendly hand on her guests' arms before paying – her tip was always higher than that without touching. "Body contact," says haptic researcher Grunwald, "is a food." Only newborns who are regularly touched lovingly develop optimally. Pleasant skin stimuli make your brain mature and release growth hormones. Even larger children need the physical closeness of their parents in order to feel accepted and to develop into self-confident personalities.
Everyone wants to be hugged
I am sitting in a cafe. Outside the window are two young men with their primary school daughters. The fathers chat, the girls cling to them. When one of the two gets restless, her father puts a calming hand on her neck and scratches her. A deep longing lifts my head. Has my father ever caressed me? I can not remember.
Many children of war children have experienced this: They grew up in peace and prosperity, but they were hardly hugged. Her fathers often passed on what they learned as virtues themselves: being tough and tough. Tenderness was and is considered a weakness for many of them. Your children, we war grandchildren, are often more in need of physical affection than we admit.
But the hunger for touch affects all generations. In a touch study, scientists at the Technical University of Dresden have just determined precise figures for Germany for the first time: Over 72 percent of study participants between the ages of 18 and 56 yearn for more hugs, caresses, kisses, but also accidental touching and shaking hands than they did in the Week actually received.
Social media makes us more lonely
This fits in with the results of the current loneliness study by the Institute of German Business: Around one in ten Germans suffers from insufficient social contact. People aged 35 and over are most affected. Researchers are unsure of the role the internet plays in this. American colleagues, on the other hand, see a clear connection in their studies: the more time we spend on social media channels, the more lonely we feel.
The internet makes it easy to shift the longing for physical contact. We can get closer to unknown people virtually every day – in forums, groups or chats. We can feel safe in a global community. We just can't touch each other. According to a US market research institute, the average smartphone user touches their cell phone around 2600 times a day. The only question is: how often do we touch another person?
Have we become too lazy to touch?
If you consider that in Germany over 40 percent of the population live alone, in big cities even just over 50 percent, you'd rather not know the number. Even in steady relationships, loving body contact decreases over time: young lovers stroke their heads four times as often as older couples. Have we become too lazy to touch? Do we make too little effort to be touched? One reason could be that we combine physical contact with affection – and we shy away from demanding it.
A vernissage in a small gallery. Lots of young people and an old man. I know him briefly, he lives alone in the neighborhood and is often happy about the art and the bustle here. We talk about the pictures, then he gets distracted. Next to us, two young women hug each other. He smiles thoughtfully. "Oh, how nice," he says. "Just hold on like that. I want that too." I hesitate briefly, then I hug him. I get over the moment when I feel strange about it and let the hug last. "Thank you," he says afterwards. "I haven't had that in a long time."
It is often easier for us to touch with words. If we are at a loss or sad, we are looking for something that corresponds to our custom: a person who listens and speaks. "Conversation is mutual distant contact," writer Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach summed it up. But only when our counterpart holds our hand or strokes their back do we really feel warmed, relaxed and calmed down. Unfortunately, our cultural rules of the game don't make that easy. Physical proximity seems risky to us. For fear of being overwhelming, we prefer to forego spontaneous hugs or compassionate stroking – and not only since the "me too" debate, which has at least shown men new limits.
Professional cuddling
It is not without reason that the market for wellness massages is exploding. They are an accepted means of securing touch against payment. It has long been proven that therapeutic massages even help against depression. However, professional hands cannot satisfy every desire. "Cuddling. Snuggling up to someone from a need for warmth and security," says the Duden. However, cuddling is missing in many partnerships, the New York sex therapist Reid Mihalko and the couple advisor Marcia Baczynski discovered in 2004. In order to help couples to touch each other again casually, the two invited them to the therapeutic group cuddle. The "cuddle parties" spread quickly in the USA.
Organized, professional cuddling with strangers is no longer uncommon in Germany. In almost every major city there are cuddle therapists who want to help them perceive themselves again, to trust themselves and to overcome the fear of closeness through regular physical contact. "Feeling and expressing your own limits, dealing with closeness and distance in a playful way", the Hamburg "Kuschelzeit" advertises for its parties. "Loving and warm touches without ulterior motives promote a feeling of security and acceptance." Such events are moderated get-togethers with exercises for gentle approach – to give space for hair rubbing, back massaging, holding or petting each other.
Absurd? Not at all, says expert Grunwald: "You open your own pharmacy if you donate to each other," he says. "With well-meaning physical contact that takes place in the right place at the right time, it almost doesn't matter who touches us. We don't have to know the other person. Only the basic conditions, the protective conditions must be right."
Touches can reconcile
A family reunion. I'm a little afraid of it, there are some unresolved conflicts in the air. We hug each other to greet each other, give each other a hug, give cheek kisses. Small, big gestures, we give ourselves warmth, despite the underlying tensions. We touch each other playfully all afternoon: a pat on the shoulder here, a short stroke on the back. I feel peaceful and in good hands, the harmony is palpable and reconciles us.
The neuroscientist Dr. Rebecca Böhme is critical of professional cuddle offers. "A really fundamental effect can only be seen if touch and closeness are part of our everyday life." Böhme has been researching social interaction for years. "The purpose of oxytocin is that we feel bound to someone. It doesn't work with people I pay to cuddle or meet in an organized manner. Touching people who are close to you will always be more important than cuddling with strangers." She advocates consciously practicing the loving and warm touch of our fellow human beings. "But not just as a point on our wellness list, according to the motto 'Yoga, smoothie, mindfulness training and caressing a friend: done, now I'm happy and fulfilled.'"
To make the first step
For years I have been chatting with the vegetable woman at the weekly market while shopping about the ups and downs of life. After a long illness, I drag myself back to her booth for the first time. When she sees me coming, she hurries out from behind her display and takes my hand. "Oh!" She says, "I was worried about you. How are you?" She listens, asks, and strokes my hand until I'm as light as a feather.
"We have to learn it again," says Böhme, "with small steps: put your hand on someone's arm when thanking you, hug a little longer or more tightly than usual." We don't need to gallop around the world. But we can make others and ourselves a little happier if we start to gently satisfy the hunger for touch.
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