Why Men Need Platonic Touch
The Importance of Touch

In preparing to write about the lack of gentle touch in men’s lives, I right away thought, “I feel confident I can do platonic touch, but I don’t necessarily trust other men to do it. Some guy will do something creepy. They always do.” Quickly on the heels of that thought, I wondered, “Wait a minute, why do I distrust men in particular?” The little voice in my head didn’t say, “I don’t necessarily trust people to not be creepy”, it said, “I don’t trust men”.

In American culture, we believe that men can never be entirely trusted in the realm of the physical. We collectively suspect that, given the opportunity, men will revert to the sexual at a moment’s notice. That men don’t know how to physically connect otherwise. That men can’t control themselves. That men are dogs.

There is no corresponding narrative about women.

Touch Isolation

Accordingly, it has become every man’s job to prove they can be trusted, in each and every interaction, day by day and case by case. In part, because so many men have behaved poorly. And so, we prove our trustworthiness by foregoing physical touch completely in any context in which even the slightest doubt about our intentions might arise. Which, sadly, is pretty much every context we encounter.

We crave touch. We are cut off from it. The result is touch isolation.

And where does this leave men? Physically and emotionally isolated. Cut off from the deeply human physical contact that is proven to reduce stress, encourage self-esteem and create community. Instead, we walk in the vast crowds of our cities alone in a desert of disconnection. Starving for physical connection.

We crave touch. We are cut off from it. The result is touch isolation.

Men need gentle platonic touch in their lives just as much as women do. Photo by Thống Bụi.

The Comfort of Contact

How often do men actually get the opportunity to express affection through lasting platonic touch? How often does it happen between men? Or between men and women? Not a handshake or a hug, but lasting physical contact between two people that is comforting and personal, but not sexual. Between persons who are not lovers and never will be. Think holding hands. Or leaning on each other. Sitting together. That sort of thing. Just the comfort of contact. And if you are a man, imagine five minutes of contact with another man. How quickly does that idea raise the ugly specter of homophobia? And why?

While women are much freer to engage in physical contact with each other, men remain suspect when they touch others. There is only one space in our culture where long-term platonic physical contact is condoned for men, and that is between fathers and their very young children.

The Transformative Effect of Fatherhood

I found this kind of physical connection when my son was born. As a stay at home dad, I spent years with my son. Day after day, he sat in the crook of my arm, his little arm across my shoulder, his hand on the back of my neck. As he surveyed the world from on high, I came to know a level of contentment and calm that had previously been missing in my life.

The physical connection between us was so transformative that it changed my view of who I am and what my role is in the world. Yet it took having a child to bring this calming experience to me because so few other opportunities are possible to teach men the value and power of gentle loving touch.

Fatherhood has the potential to transform the way men think about touch. Photo by Joice Kelly

A Lack of Physical Connection

As a young child and as a teenager, contact between myself and others simply didn’t happen unless it came in the form of roughhousing or unwelcome bullying. My mother backed off from contact with me very early on, in part, I think, due to her upbringing. I can only guess that in her parent’s house physical touch was something for toddlers, but not for children past a certain age. Add to that, the fact that my father was absent due to my parent’s divorce and years of work overseas, and it meant I grew up without being held or touched.

This left me with huge insecurities about human contact. I was well into my twenties before I could put my arm around a girl I was dating without first getting drunk. To this day, I remain uncertain about where and how to approach contact with people, even those I consider close friends. It’s not that I can’t do it, it’s just that it remains awkward, odd. As if we all feel like we’re doing something slightly…off?

Contact with male friends is always brief; a handshake, or a pat on the back. Hugs with men or women are a ballet of the awkward, a comedic choreography in which we turn our groins this way or that. Shoulders in, butts out, seeking to broadcast to anyone within line of sight that we are most certainly not having a sexual moment. We’re working so hard to be seen as sexually neutral that we take no joy in these moments of physical connection.

Men often experience a lack of gentle touch from others from a young age. Photo by Tadeusz Lakota

The Sexualising of Touch

Not only do we men distrust others in this muddled realm of physical touch, but years of shaming and judgement have left us distrusting ourselves. Did I enjoy that too much? Am I having taboo thoughts? This distrust leaves us uncertain about touching another human being unless we have established very clear rules of engagement. Often we give up and simply reduce those rules to being in a relationship. We allow ourselves long-lasting comforting touch with our girlfriends or boyfriends. The vast universe of platonic human touch is suddenly reduced to the exclusive domain of one person and is blended into the sexual. That’s a lot of need to put on one person, however loving and generous they might be.

Which leads to the question, how do we teach our sons to understand how touch works? How to parse out the sexual from the platonic? Is the pleasure of human contact inherently sexual to some degree? I doubt it’s a question the average Italian man would ever ask himself. But here in America, generations of puritanical sexual shaming have made it a central question. By putting the fear of the sexual first in all our interactions, we have thrown out the baby with the bathwater, avoiding all contact rather than risk even the hint of unwanted sexual touch.

The sexualising of touch means that physical contact can be uncomfortable for men. Photo by Isaac Ordaz

Giving up Human Contact

Many parents step back from physical contact with boys when their sons approach puberty. The contact these boys seek is often deemed confusing or even sexually suspect. And, most unbelievable of all, all opportunity for potential physical touch is abruptly handed over to young girls, who are suddenly expected to act as gatekeepers to touch, and who are no more prepared to take on this responsibility than boys are to hand it over.

And so boys are cast adrift with two unspoken lessons:

  1. All touch is sexually suspect
  2. Find a girlfriend or give up human contact

A particularly damning message to boys who are gay.

American culture leaves boys few options. While aggression on the basketball court or bullying in the locker room often results in sporadic moments of human contact, gentleness likely does not. And young men, whose need for touch is channeled into physically rough interactions with other boys or fumbling sexual contact with girls, lose conscious awareness of the gentle, platonic contact of their own childhoods. Sometimes it’s not until their children are born that they rediscover gentle platonic touch; the holding and caring contact that is free from the drumbeat of sex, sex, sex that pervades our culture, even as we simultaneously condemn it.

The message is that gentle touch is not part of being a man in our society. Photo by Anthony Tori

Craving Real Connection

Is it any wonder that sexual relationships in our culture are so loaded with anger and fear? Boys are dumped on a desert island of physical isolation, and the only way they can find any comfort is to enter the blended space of sexual contact to get the connection they need.

This makes sexual relations a vastly more high stakes experience than it already should be. We encourage aggressive physical contact as an appropriate mode of contact for boys and turn a blind eye to bullying, even as we then expect them to work out some gentler mode of sexual contact in their romantic lives.

If men could diffuse their need for physical connection across a much wider set of platonic relationships, it would do wonders for our sense of connection in the world. As it is, we can’t even manage a proper hug because we can’t model what was never modeled for us.

There needs to be more modeling for men of a range of platonic relationships. Photo by Thiago Barletta

The Value of Touch

We have seniors in retirement homes who are visited by dogs they can hold and pet. This helps to improve their health and emotional state of mind. It is due to the power of contact between living creatures. Why are good-hearted people driving around town, taking dogs to old folks homes? Because no one is touching these elderly people.

We know the value of touch, even as we do everything we can to shield ourselves from it.

They should have grandchildren in their laps every day, or a warm human hand to hold, not Pomeranians who come once a week. And yet, we put a dog in their laps instead of giving them human touch, because we remain a culture that holds human contact highly suspect. We know the value of touch, even as we do everything we can to shield ourselves from it.

Fear of Judgement

We American men have a tragic laundry list of reasons why we are not comfortable with touch:

  1. We fear being labeled as sexually inappropriate by women.
  2. We live in a virulently homophobic culture so all contact between men is suspect.
  3. We don’t want to risk any hint of being sexual toward children.
  4. We don’t want to risk our status as macho or authoritative by being physically gentle.
  5. We don’t ever want to deal with rejection when we reach out.
Older people are brought therapy animals to alleviate the lack of touch in their lives. Photo by Ramiro Pianarosa

But at the root of all these flawed rationalizations is the fact that most American men are never taught to do gentle non-sexual touch. We are not typically taught that we can touch and be touched as a platonic expression of joyful human contact. Accordingly, the very inappropriate over-sexualized touch our society fears runs rampant, reinforcing our culture’s self-fulfilling prophecy against men and touch. Meanwhile, this inability to comfortably connect via touch has left men emotionally isolated, contributing to rampant rates of alcoholism, depression, and abuse.

The Prohibition against Platonic Touch

And what if the lack of platonic touch is causing some men to be far too aggressive toward women, who, as the exclusive gatekeepers for gentle touch are carrying a burden they could never hope to fully manage? Women, who are arguably both victims of and, in partnership with men, enforcers of the prohibition against platonic touch in American culture? The impact of our collective touch phobia is felt across our society by every single man, woman, and child.

Brené Brown, in her groundbreaking TED Talk titled The Power of Vulnerability talks at length about the limitations men face when attempting to express vulnerability in our culture. She notes the degree to which men are boxed in by our culture’s expectations about what a man is or is not allowed to do. I would suggest that the limitations placed on men extend to their physical expression through touch. And are just as damaging in that realm.

The Awakening of Touch

But here’s the good news.

There are many reasons why full-time stay at home dads are proving to be such a transformative force in American culture. One powerful reason is the awakening of touch. As full-time dads, we are presented with the absolute necessity to hold our own wonderful children. We are learning about touch in the most powerful and life-affirming way. In ways that previous generations of men simply were not immersed in.

Once you have held your sleeping child night after night or walked for years with their hand in yours, you are a changed person. You gain fluency and confidence in touch that you will never lose. It is a gift to us men from our children that literally has the capacity to transform American culture.

The awakening of touch is possible for men who let go of their fear and reach out. Photo by Anna Vander Stel

How to Reach Out

Accordingly, now, when I am with a friend I do reach out. I do make contact. And I do so with confidence and joy. And I have my own clear path forward.

The patterns in my life may be somewhat set but I intend to do everything I can to remain in contact with my son in hopes that he will have a different view of touch in his life. I hug him and kiss him. We hold hands or I put my arm around him when we watch TV or walk on the street. I will not back off from him because someone somewhere might take issue with our physical connection. I will not back off because somehow there is an unspoken rule that I must cut him loose in the world to fend for himself. I hope we can hold hands even when he is a man. I hope we continue to hold hands until the day I die.

Ultimately, we will unlearn our fear of touch in the context of our personal lives and in our day-to-day interactions. Learning how to express platonic love and affection through touch is a vast and remarkable change that has to be lived. But it is so important that we do it. Because it is central to having a rich and full life.

Touch is life.

Like Mark Greene’s Facebook Page Remaking Manhood for article updates and more!

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1 year ago

There is no more important need than the teaching of boys to respect themselves and others especially the women in their lives or the girls or women they meet.
As someone who has dedicated his life to teaching and learning I have seen the benefits of families and schools working together.
All students from the earliest years need to be taught positively love in sex and sex in love. Such teachings needs appropriate models from the arts generally and not be just biological mechanics.
Much must be done to tame the damage done via modern media.
On the issue of touch I have been struck by the apparent benefits of ‘Indian’ baby massage. (Make sure you choose an authentic and trustworthy teacher and system)
On the ever-present need for boys and men to communicate honestly and openly a start might well be baby sign language. Being human, love and sex should be taught via age-appropriate materials, and activities such as dance – to all ages.
Men and women are brain-wired differently and I would like to recommend the work of Dr Iain McGilchrist whose work is nothing less than an Einstein-like revolution in understanding the brain and all that makes us human from touch through to spiritual appreciation. The best way into his work is via YouTube videos. Start with the RSA McGilchrist animations and then some of the interviews he has given.
I’ve also been impressed by the TV series ‘The Big C’ The show follows, in Minneapolis, Westhill High School teacher Cathy Jamison – a reserved, suburban wife and mother – who is diagnosed with cancer. The realization of this forces her to really begin to live for the first time in her adult life.
Especially powerful is Cathy’s relationship with her son and the immature men in her life!
Healing so often comes from forgiveness. As a ‘Californian guru’ said “Forgiveness is grease for the slide home.” Home of course is your self-understanding and wholeness that helps you to be a better person helping others.

David
1 year ago

I think you are right on almost everything you said, even the part you disowned… I know I desperately need platonic touch and I suspect many if not all men do even if they don’t recognize it. I ALSO find it very difficult to remain FELLING platonic with platonic touch. However I am FAR better at it than I was when I was a young man. When I was young I don’t know if I was capable of it because I wasn’t taught it and so when it came to women my primary thought was about sex. I also didn’t even know what it was and that I needed it desperately…I believe it can and should be taught to young boys BEFORE they enter puberty – SO SO important. I think that if we did this on a societal level we as a whole would experience a PROFOUND transformation! My prays to us…

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1 year ago

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1 year ago

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kamir bouchareb st
2 years ago

goooooooooooooooooood

Amy Sikes
2 years ago

As much as I wanted to love this article, it came of whiny to me. Men created this problem. As a female, I learned very early that you cannot touch boys, and that lesson has been reinforced through every phase of my life. You cannot just touch a man because they pretty much universally think it means you want to sleep with them. So girls/women learn quickly to steer clear or deal with the creepy consequences. This article seems to paint men as some sort of victims of our culture, but I think the real victims are women, and that is true in every culture. Men DO have a hard time being platonic. Men DO wonder if maybe they should push their luck and see if they can get lucky. And I’m not talking a few creeps. I’m talking most men. So, I just don’t get how men are victims and somehow we need to let them touch us so they can get over their physical isolation.

HNS
2 years ago

I completely empathize with the reality that many people (not just men) suffer from touch starvation. Realizing this and talking about it is an important 1st step. However, the article completely misses the mark in not addressing the subject of consent. No one is entitled to access to another person’s body. The failure to realize this and address it in an article that addresses touch deprivation is completely tone deaf.

It would be a lot more helpful to acknowledge that we are part of a touch starved culture, and then offer ideas on how to remedy this respectfully and consensually.

Lillth
3 years ago

This was an idea opening article for me.Mainly because I am a rape survivor and to me there is no such thing as platonic touch from a man but now I understand it’s because I’m projecting my negative feelings on everyone. There is so much fear when anyone reaches to touch me that I flinch I’d hate to think I ever made someone feel bad because it wasn’t their fault.i just have a lot more work to do on myself before that trust can be rebuilt, not just my trust In them but myself as well.

Baker ST
3 years ago

I was reading this and i realy found what i was looking for your article is really informative and i’ll be grɑteful if ʏou keep writing in the future.

John D
3 years ago

Over the past few months, I’ve had to have physical therapy on my ankle which includes plutonic touch by both men and women in a caring way. I decided to research the topic after realizing it was helping me feel more connected to people and I came across this article.

As a child, I remember we would kiss our aunts and uncles goodbye and I kissed my uncle on the cheek. He stopped me and said “guys don’t do that to other guys.” Obviously at the age of 5, my intentions were innocent but it always resonated and I remember feeling really stupid for not knowing the rules. Times have changed but we really are doing a disservice to boys by shaming them for being affectionate.

Now in my 20s, I do feel like my friends are more affectionate to each other and have been able to hug each other and even cry in front of each other when we go through hardships but it took years to break down the walls. Many men never develop that closeness and I’d have to assume they feel alienated at vulnerable times.

Either way, great article. Thanks!

Elena Kurzberg
3 years ago

It’s the kind of article I’m looking for. Thank you.

blonde
3 years ago

Excellent article! Thanks for sharing

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