Let’s talk about touch

The other day I was at that inferno of suburban hedonism, the local mall. It was then that I saw them, an older couple, walking through the food court, holding hands like teenagers.

I felt voyeuristic, like I was intruding by my gaze, into a space so personal, it shut out the world. Just that simple, innocuous gesture of holding hands was all it took to announce to the world, that no matter that they were from a generation where physical display of affection was not the norm, they were comfortable enough with each other to hand hold in public. One does not expect older couples to walk around holding hands. It is an aberration.

Non-sexual touch in one’s every day, is the dinosaur of the modern age, where we offer all our touch to our touch screens. Everywhere around me, younger couples sat, engrossed in their devices rather than the live person across them. Their touch, and by extension their attention, was focused on the cold screen of gadgets. In a world where emotions have been replaced by emojis, non-sexual touch is one of the first casualties of war.

As the years pass, we forget how powerful a tool of seduction a simple touch can be. A stroke of the forearm, a gentle lingering caress down the back, an arm around the waist, as simple as it can get has the potential to unleash a tinderbox of sensations if done right.

We take touch for granted in a relationship. By the time we are decades deep into a relationship or marriage, or emerging from the broken shards of a fractured one, we lose the gentle magic of the non-sexual touch as part of our every day. Touch becomes routine, functional or sexual.

Human beings need touch. Like sight, sound, smell and taste, the glory of touch is what completes our experience of the world around us, ablaze with the sensuous joy of tactility. We draw inferences, reassurances, and even love from a simple touch. The pat on the back, the squeeze of a hand, the reassurance of a hug, the solidarity of an arm around the shoulder. We bond through touch. A non-sexual, gentle touch is the simplest way to reach out to a person in a non-verbal way. But alas, most of us spend our lives barely exploring the intricacies of the language of touch, contenting ourselves merely knowing the words.

In 2009, psychologist Matthew Hertenstein studied how we decode emotions through touch. He had volunteers try to communicate various emotions to blindfolded strangers purely through touch. He concluded, we are a ‘touch-phobic society.’

The only time we touch is the sexual. This in turn leads to a further avoidance of touch because of the fear that a touch, any touch would be interpreted as sexual. Touching stimulates special nerve endings called C-Tactile fibres that make one feel calmer. More touching brings on a small rush of oxytocin, a neurotransmitter that will, eventually if the touching leads on to more intense things, produce stronger orgasms in women. Non-sexual touching builds intimacy, without the need to be intimate at that very moment, and helps when there is a discrepancy between partners when it comes to sex drive.

Touch is reciprocal by itself. You cannot touch someone without being touched in return. Research shows that couples who are in healthy long-term relationships tend to reciprocate touch, no matter who initiates it. And the more the non-sexual touching, the more intimate the relationship.

Perhaps we all need to rediscover the lexicon of touch, after all there is an entire library of sensations we can explore if we only start relearning this language we so callously discarded.

(Kiran Manral is the author of seven published books across genres. She is also a recovering Nutella addict)

SPEAK UP

Did you like this? Write to us at sexualitydna@gmail.com