Why do Children love to Touch and Adults Fear it?
Often language cannot adequately convey meaning. Let’s take the word “love” as an example. You can love your wife, your kids, your job, your cup of coffee in the morning, your new hunting rifle, God, or your country.
Obviously loving your daughter is quite a different feeling from loving your football team. Love for your family is a completely different concept from loving a particular brand of beer. We use the same word “love”, but its meaning changes depending on the context. Love by itself has little meaning.
Now let’s look at “touch”. Your laptop computer might have a touchpad. This kind of touch is mechanical with no emotional component. You can touch someone’s body. That could be anything from friendly to sensual to sexual to painful to lethal depending on the kind of touch.
A massage therapist can touch you in a clinical way. Truly skilled and gifted therapists can touch you in a way that feels heavenly. Certain events in our life can touch us deeply.
One word, many meanings. Professional touch, casual touch, sensual touch, emotional touch, mechanical touch, sexual touch, inappropriate touch…. Without knowing the context, “touch” does not mean anything. Our intentions give “touch” its meaning. When we touch objects, our intentions are clear. Where it gets confusing is when we touch humans.
When you touch your cat or your puppy, they do not mentally process what you are doing. They could not care less if you are a man or a woman. They don’t have any mental process that keeps them from enjoying it, and neither do babies or young children. They possess the natural ability to just enjoy a loving touch. Most animals and young children are very comfortable touching each other.
There was a study done with new born babies. One group of babies was held and touched all the time, and the second group was deprived of all touch. The results were dramatic. The touch deprived babies were rapidly losing their vital symptoms and the study had to be ended quickly for fear of any babies dying.
We all know that young children and infants love to be touched and held and stroked. But at some point during their life, suddenly touching is not acceptable anymore, it becomes embarrassing and inappropriate. When does this happen and why? It is ‘educated’ out of them, and the adults stamp their behavior on their children.
In the realm of adults we have to contend with issues like religious beliefs, cultural taboos, insecurity and fear, and mental projections. Hugs between men can be just a friendly form of greeting. But it can also make someone feel uncomfortable if he associates hugs between men with homosexuality.
If a man hugs a woman, it could be an enjoyable connection or it could be seen as an unwanted come-on. Unlike children, when adults hug, the world of the mind comes into play. Cultures have their own particular rules regarding touch. For example Arab men kiss other men on the cheeks as a greeting, but to try this on an American man would be a very embarrassing situation. In one country hugging is normal, in another it is totally inappropriate.
Physical touch among adults is truly a “touchy” subject. Most people love to be touched but are prevented from experiencing it due to cultural taboos, mind games, ill-intentioned people, shyness, or in some countries by the law. Massage therapy can be the perfect way to bypass all those cultural, moral or religious limitations and enjoy touch for what it can be – a deeply relaxing, healing and wonderfully pleasant experience.
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