I recently got an insight into my life and the writing I’ve done by reading an article by Christina Caron “What It Means to Be ‘Touch-Starved’” that I’m sure is still available in the archives of The New York Times. The article let me understand for the first time a facet of my nature that’s been in at the core of both my personal nature as well as deep facets of the stories of each of the novels I’ve written.
Researchers in the field have found those of us, like me, who want consensual touch isn’t a yearning for sex. It’s a relief of loneliness, anxiety and feeling of being emotionally depleted. Being touched calms us by slowing activity in the part of the brain that’s the amygdala (which is the same part of the brain that’s out of control in patients with PTSD). That also releases the hormone oxytocin within us. That further reduces stress in a man, and can subsequently lead to a sense of well-being, and that itself can subsequently lead to sexual arousal.
Caron’s article goes on to describe how some people hug a dog or a cat to their chest when they need the emotional support of being touched. Exercise can provide that as a way of stimulating a person’s skin, and that’s doubly so if a person wears a weighted vest while jogging or just walking for exercise. Some people feel they sleep better under a weighted blanket, particularly if they’re sleeping alone, and one wonders if that’s reminiscent of being wrapped in a baby-vest while carried by a parent who’s out and about doing chores.
I hadn’t understood why it was automatic for me to have the characters in my novels either lean one man’s back against another man’s chest on a couch as the other man read to him or as they watched tv, or why they always slept together either spooning each other or with one man’s chest draped over the side of the other man’s flank while the second man’s arm was draped over the first man’s back.
They say lots of authors live out the lives they wished they had had in their stories and novels.
