Intimacy Deprivation

A friend of mine told me the other night that he suffered from a condition called skin hunger.  I was reminded of him telling me that years previously and it resonated with me then but it’s just something that I haven’t had in my conscious mind for a long time.  Skin hunger is a term used to describe basically a lack of human contact.  Other than the same short article reposted on several sites, http://everything2.com/user/arianne/writeups/Skin+hunger there really wasn’t much information on the condition.  I need to find out the effects of adults going without touch.  I’m convinced that I suffer from the effects of skin hunger and I suspect a great deal of what’s wrong with our society is because of an epidemic of skin hunger on a very large scale. 

I’ll summarize the article for you.  Essentially it says that babies, the elderly, and monkeys suffer without human contact and that they thrive, are better adjusted, less aggressive, and overall just do well with touch.  It also says that adults probably, more than likely, maybe in some vague, abstract, undocumented, unscientifically researched way do also.  It says that technology, the media, and disconnected lifestyles have led us down a path where we no longer touch.  It doesn’t discuss the results of adults going without touch and it only offers massage therapy as a solution. 

I’m here to say that going without touch for extended periods of time is detrimental to our physical, spiritual, and social identities.  I suspect it’s a vicious cycle.  We don’t get touch which in turn means we feel isolated, which means we recoil in solitude where we don’t get touch.  Going without touch hinders your interpersonal skills, leaves you feeling isolated and lonely, it just isn’t natural to go without human contact.  This society tells us that human contact is bad, sinful, wrong.  We discourage children from touching because we think it means they are going to be sexual.  I think we need to explore the effects of going without touch in greater depth and I think it needs to be called something else other than skin hunger.  Intimacy deprivation is what it is, going without connection, being deprived of that which makes us flourish. 

I’m single, have been for four months now.  Other than an accidental bump into someone at Wal-mart and a few hugs from friends, I’ve gone without any human contact whatsoever.  I crave to be held, touched, caressed, and to snuggle.  I know for a fact that my heart feels better when I can just lay my head on a man’s chest, I feel lighter, less burdened.  I used to babysit for a little boy and we hugged, kissed, and touched all day.  At nap time, he would say, “Scottie, you rock me to sleep,” and I would hold him in my arms and gently rock him until he couldn’t fight the sandman any more.  I remember what I felt like for that year and I have tried to get that sensation back.  I’ve tried to figure out what it was about that time in my life that made me so much more enthusiastic about life and serene and I’m convinced it was because I was getting so much touch.  I’ve often said that I flourish in relationships, that I just function more optimally in with a boyfriend.  It makes sense.  If your heart rate, your vital organs need touch, and you have someone with whom you can share a bed, even if it’s not every night, it just makes perfect sense that people are supposed to be partnered, that it’s genetically wired into us to have that connection. 

I know in the past when I’ve lamented about feeling lonely and depressed and longing and aching for intimacy with a partner, people come out of the woodworks to tell me that I should find happiness being alone, that I need to work on myself.  They basically suggest that I’m some sort of whiny, insufferable wretch who is complaining for the sake of complaining and that I just need to suck it up and put on a happy face.  But just as babies fail to thrive without touch, as do the elderly, I know in my heart that human beings of every age suffer from lack of human touch.  I think of the number of Black woman who are alone and who say, “All I need is Jesus,” and they go without human touch for years.  I think about how trapped they are in behaviors that are detrimental and how it’s accepted as normal.  They feel the longing for human contact and they go out and have sex with someone and then deny it because it goes against their religious beliefs when clearly God created us to need touch for our human survival.  I think about how Black men are socialized to not touch, feel, to seek anything other than sex.  They are getting their touch needs filled by being promiscuous because they have never been taught to snuggle or hold hands or hug.  We don’t teach our children to touch in a healthy way so they go out and have sex.  Baby strollers and playpens and all the stuff of an advanced age has created a nation of aggressive, unbalance, unhealthy people and we are cutting ourselves off from one another even more. 

I’m sitting here, alone, with no prospects of touching or being touched any time soon and I have to say it feels like a death sentence.  I don’t even live close enough to someone whom I can say, “Hey, come spend the night with me and let’s just touch.”  I’m going to work on that in 2012.  I’m going to throw AfroerotiK cuddle parties, I’m going to develop friendship with people I can touch and be intimate with.  I’m going to make intimacy and touch a priority in my life.