Guilt, Shame, and Fear of Violating Taboos Make Limits

I've poked around a lot of corners of life, and I keep landing on the same plain idea: different strokes for different folks. So I'd rather we make room for difference than pretend our own habits are the only sensible ones. The fact that something feels normal to you says nothing about whether another way, perfectly ordinary somewhere else, might work just as well.

A small example. A friend once had me over for supper and I sat down to find no silverware on the table. It took me a beat to understand that in this house everyone ate with their fingers, and that was simply how things were done. My own background is German, and in that culture adults rarely touch each other for affection out in social settings. Put someone like me among people from a European culture where a hug or a kiss on the cheek comes easily, and I'll feel awkward before I know why.

Infants actually die without affection. Without the cuddling, the cooing, the holding, a baby can waste away, and there's a name for it: marasmus. Strange, then, that something so necessary to staying alive is something most of us learn to go without as we grow up. I recall reaching to hug my father when I was an adult and watching him pull back from me. By the time you're grown, open touch seems permitted only in sex or with very small children.

What will science eventually make of this? I suspect we'll learn that physical closeness matters to how people function and flourish far more than we currently admit.

The odd part is how a feeling that can be so warm and easy, when it's offered freely, turns into a source of heavy guilt for some of us. And in other cases we push the affection away because we can sense there's a motive hiding behind it.

I lost count of the number of times a man in my life tried to cop a feel without ever asking. It tended to happen at the start of something he imagined was heading toward sex. It left me cold, especially when I wasn't drawn to him, or when I was already with someone else. Mostly it made me feel used rather than cared for.

I do healing work, and even there the same reading happens. I can tell when a person is at ease with me laying hands on them to heal, and I can just as easily feel when it would unsettle them or cross a line they'd rather I didn't cross.