Nobody Had Hugged Me in Quite a While
I didn’t realise what I was missing until somebody started again
The Missing Thing
One of the things nobody tells you about living alone for a long time is that eventually nobody hugs you.
This sounds obvious. It wasn’t.
I was perfectly happy living alone. I liked the independence, the freedom, the fact that nobody questioned how many books I owned or whether an entire Sunday spent reading qualified as a productive use of time.
But, somewhere along the way, I stopped being hugged. Not dramatically nor in a way that generated concern. Just quietly and gradually … until one day somebody started hugging me again.
The Childhood Contract
I grew up with two older brothers.
This sounds charming now but at the time it often felt more like a contact sport. Their principal hobby appeared to involve teasing me mercilessly. Nothing was safe. Not my opinions, not my plans, not my hairstyles, and certainly not my dignity.
And yet, for all the teasing, there was also affection, hugs, kisses, the sort of casual physical affection that exists in families and becomes part of the background noise of childhood.
Looking back, I realise the affection always outweighed the teasing, although I would never have admitted this to either of them.
Some principles must be maintained.
The Great Vanishing Act
The funny thing about affection is that it changes shape as you get older.
As a child, it simply exists. Parents hug you, family members hug you, somebody is always putting an arm around your shoulder or kissing the top of your head or generally treating you with a level of physical closeness that seems entirely normal.
Then adulthood arrives. People move away, lives become busy, families spread out and somehow the supply chain becomes a little less reliable.
Living Alone
I spent many years living alone and I loved it. This is important.
I enjoy my own company enormously. I am perfectly capable of entertaining myself, having conversations with myself, and occasionally winning arguments against myself.
There is a reason I am an introvert.
Being alone never frightened me because I liked the independence, the freedom, the ability to read for six hours without explanation but there was something missing.
Not dramatically missing, just quietly missing.
The Thing You Don’t Notice
Nobody wakes up one morning and thinks “I don’t receive enough hugs”, at least I didn’t.
Life continues, work happens, friends exist and the days are full. The absence is difficult to see because it arrives gradually and you adapt.
Humans are remarkably good at adaptation. We adapt to almost everything, even things we shouldn’t have to.
The English Man
Then there was the English man. One of the many things I discovered very early on was that he is extraordinarily affectionate and not performatively affectionate. He is not the grand, demonstrative sort, but the quiet sort.
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It is the hand on your back as he walks past, the unexpected hug, the arm around your shoulders, the holding of your hand as you walk down the street. It is the casual touch that simply says “You are here and I am glad about that.”
The Hug Economy
The thing nobody tells you about affection is that it accumulates.
One hug is lovely but several hugs a day begin to alter the emotional climate of an entire life. You stop bracing quite so much, you feel calmer, more settled and slightly safer in the world as though somebody has quietly turned down the volume on everything else.
I realise this sounds suspiciously sentimental.
Unfortunately, it is also true.
The Cuddle Situation
There is something deeply underrated about curling up with somebody you love.
Not for a reason, not because anything dramatic has happened and not because comfort is required but just … because.
The English man is particularly good at this. He can transform a completely ordinary evening into something infinitely better simply by appearing and deciding that a cuddle is now happening.
No committee is consulted. The decision is final.
The Science
I am aware that science has things to say about affection.
There is endless research into hormones, bonding, stress reduction and all manner of things.
I am sure the science is fascinating, but my contribution to the debate is considerably simpler. Hugs make people feel better.
There. I’ve saved everybody several years of research.
The Surprise
What surprised me most was not how much I enjoyed it but realising how much I had missed it. It was not because I had been unhappy before because I hadn’t and it wasn’t because my life was incomplete because it wasn’t.
It was simply because affection provides something that independence cannot. You can be perfectly capable of standing on your own and still enjoy having somebody hold your hand.
The two things are not contradictory.
The English Man Again
The English man understands this instinctively which is perhaps that is why he does it so naturally. He never announces it or makes a point of it, the affection simply exists as part of the everyday structure of life, like tea or books or him quietly solving a practical problem before I have finished developing a theory about it.
Growing Older
The older I get, the less interested I become in pretending otherwise. There seems to be a strange social expectation that adults should somehow outgrow the need for affection, as though maturity involves becoming emotionally self-sufficient.
This feels completely backwards. If anything, I think we need affection more, not less. Life is complicated, the world is noisy, people are tired and a hug remains remarkably effective.
Which Is, Ultimately
Why I have become such an enthusiastic supporter of affection in all its forms.
The hugs, the cuddles, the hand on the shoulder, the arm around the waist as somebody passes through the kitchen, the small physical reminders that we are loved.
I spent years happily independent and living alone and I would happily do it again if life required it, but having rediscovered what affection feels like, I now understand what I was missing.
You are never too old for a hug, never too old for a cuddle and never too old to feel your entire mood improve because somebody you love has decided, for no obvious reason whatsoever, that you look like you could use one.
Which, as systems go, strikes me as remarkably efficient.
If you are arriving at my stories for the first time and wondering why this French woman is writing these stories, firstly thank you, and please see here for how all of this came about — https://medium.com/modern-women/on-the-english-man-france-england-and-how-this-got-slightly-out-of-hand-16bd5a288613
