We bond through physical touch. Skin is the largest organ in your body and sends good and bad touch sensations to your brain. When you engage in pleasant touch, like a hug, your brain releases a hormone called oxytocin. This makes you feel good and firms up emotional and social bonds while lowering anxiety and fear.
In fact, it's a human need. Humans are wired to have a deep longing for physical contact. Our need for physical affection with human beings is rooted in our biology, as touch and close connections with others is of huge importance in our overall well-being, mental health, and survival.
In the absence of positive human touch, you can develop a condition called touch deprivation. Touch deprivation can increase stress, depression, and anxiety, and lead to numerous additional negative physiological effects.
Depression, low mood, anxiety and being withdrawn can be signs of skin hunger. In addition, those who are touch deprived may be more likely to have alexithymia, which is a condition that inhibits people from expressing and interpreting their emotions (that's not to suggest that skin hunger causes this condition).
It's really for mental and emotional health. This point is important and first and here's why: Craving affection is normal, and receiving affection is healthy. This fact will help you balance these other feelings, and help you cope with the desire for affection. It's easy for these feelings to overwhelm us, though.
Touch starvation refers to a sense of longing for physical contact. Humans are social creatures, and touch plays an important role in development and communication. For some people, the deprivation of human touch may result in negative mental health effects.
Effects of Touch Starvation
These things can lead to worse quality of sleep and a higher risk of infections. Other medical conditions, including diabetes, asthma, and high blood pressure, may get worse. Long-term touch starvation could even trigger post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The lack of physical touch, emotional connection, and sexual intimacy can lead to feelings of loneliness, depression, and low self-esteem. It can also cause physical symptoms such as headaches, insomnia, and decreased libido.
Vivienne Lewis, a clinical psychologist at the University of Canberra, humans are “hardwired to seek out human touch.” “When we hug someone, that physical contact releases a hormone in the body called oxytocin,” she told the ABC. “Oxytocin makes us feel warm and nice. It makes us feel relaxed, feel positive.
As humans, we crave connection and interaction. And sometimes during certain seasons of our lives, many of us will experience a level of touch deprivation, also known as skin hunger. “Humans are born with an innate need for physical touch.”
When you feel like something is lacking within you, you may crave someone. When you're emotionally all over the place on some level, you may crave someone. Feeding into a memory, the way a person made you feel or a desire that you possibly have been suppressing, that too can cause you to crave someone.
A person may become touch starved when they do not receive enough physical or emotional interaction from others. They may crave hugs, handshakes, or even a simple smile from a stranger. When there is a significant decrease in human interaction, someone might begin to feel isolated or experience symptoms of depression.
Tactile defensiveness is a term used by occupational therapists to describe hypersensitivity to touch. Individuals who experience touch sensitivity often say they are more bothered by things that touch their skin than others.
Haphephobia is an intense, irrational fear of being touched. It is different from hypersensitivity, which is physical pain associated with being touched. People with haphephobia feel extreme distress over the thought of being touched.
Going without wanted physical touch can have adverse health impacts like increased anxiety and trouble sleeping, experts say. No physical intimacy can also lead to touch starvation, which can contribute to loneliness, isolation, and even compromise your immune system.
Anxiety, stress, and depression are also common sexless marriage effects on the husband. When a husband is denied sex at home for a long time, his mental health is likely to deteriorate from stress, overthinking, and inability to release the feel-good hormone from sex.
People who don't get their dose of affectionate touch seem less happy, more lonely, and have a higher likelihood of suffering from depression, mood and anxiety disorders, as well as secondary immune disorder.
Research has shown that it takes 8 to 10 meaningful touches a day to maintain physical and emotional health. Studies show that “touch signals safety and trust, it soothes” (source). Physical touch not only benefits you as an individual, but it also increases the level of intimacy in your marriage as well.
As author and family therapist Virginia Satir once said, “We need four hugs a day for survival. We need eight hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth”.
There might be a repressed childhood experience or trauma from past relationships and/or sexual encounters that have left you emotionally scarred. You might want to take care of that through therapy or profound introspection. Do you really crave romantic/physical contact or do you only think you do.
An intimacy disorder involves problems developing, maintaining, and expressing appropriate kinds and levels of intimacy. Sex addiction is a form of intimacy disorder where an individual compulsively engages in destructive, risky, and self-degrading sexual behaviors that provide no true pleasure or intimacy of any kind.
Men Find Sex Significant
For many, sex is a very important act between two committed people. And just like most women, men find sexual intimacy to be most satisfying within a committed relationship.
To strengthen your relationships you may want to work on four types of intimacy: physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual closeness.
We feel alone, insecure or vulnerable, and being with others feel makes us less so. This urge towards relatedness fulfills not just our need for protection and security but also for purpose and direction in life.