On Cuddling

[rowyn]

kelloggs2066 put up another in his collection of cute fox pictures, and gave it the caption of "It's Nice to Have Friends".

For those of you who don't feel like clicking that link, it's a picture of four foxes cuddled into a pile.

People have a lot of different reasons for being interested in furries. This one is mine.

Snapshot:

I'm perhaps fourteen, watching a syndicated sitcom, "Alice", about a waitress in a diner. Even now, I can't tell you much about this show or why I watched it: becuase it was there, I suppose. I watched a lot of TV when I was younger.

On this particular episode, the cook is involved in a romance with a brash, gregarious woman who wears loud clothes, and loves life, and hugs everyone. The character is transitory; by the end of the episode, she will be gone.

But I watched her and I thought, That. That's what I want to be like when I grow up. The sort of person who introduces herself with a hug, and who doesn't care how strange other people think she is.

---

The first person I dated, when I was seventeen, I felt no attraction to. I dated him because I wanted someone to cuddle, someone to hold and be held by, and it seemed like the only way you got this was by having a Relationship with a member of the opposite sex. I stopped dating him after a very short time because he wanted a Relationship: love, and romance, and making-out, and all I wanted was to snuggle.

There's a rule somewhere -- an unspoken Rule and not shared by everyone -- that romance/making out/love/cuddling/sex are all the same thing. If you want to do one of those things with a given other person, then you must want the whole rest of the package, or at least be seriously considering it. I hate that rule. I've never believed in it and I've never been able to follow it. I understand that it works for some other people, and that's fine. I've got no problems with people who don't like to be touched or hugged, or who set different boundaries over what's appropriate.

What frustrates me is that it's hard to find out who belongs to which camp. The assumption is that everyone follows the Rule, and some times even asking, "Hey, do you mind if I hug you?" is considered a violation of the Rule by its followers. ("You weirdo! I'm not gay!")

Furry, as a subculture, tends to go too far in the opposite direction. The Rule in furry is almost, "Everyone likes to be touched and it's always okay", which isn't true, either.

But what I like about the fandom is that it made the topic something I could talk about. It was all right to ask. And all right to cuddle with people who were friends but would never be lovers. Cuddling could be just about cuddling, and not about anything else. For me, anyway. I doubt that was or is everyone else's experience.

I always associated this very much with the appeal of being furry -- the tactile pleasure of touching fur. Most people are much more physically affectionate with pets than they are with other humans. When I meet a strange cat or dog, I greet it by offering my hand and, if the animal and owner appear to approve, petting it. (With owners, I ask in words.) Imagine if we greeted other people on a daily basis with, "Oh! What a good person you are!" *petpetpet, scritch behind ears* "Would you like to sit in my lap?"

And if you didn't want to be petted, you could growl and hiss and the other person would back off. Would that be so bad? :)

Oh, granted, even I might find that somewhat wearying. Much as I like to cuddle my friends, I've gone through phases where I've been burnt out on it and withdrawn. And I don't feel the same way about all people, or even all my friends. Some people are just more cuddly than others.

But I do find myself wishing this was a conversation I could have with more people. Something safe to talk about, without so much awkwardness and risk of misunderstanding.

Even as I write this, I find myself wondering how well I'll be understood.

Comments

[rowyn]

Yes. It's a lot easier to talk about this on my livejournal than it would be, say, in person with my co-workers. I've offered hugs to some of my co-workers in the past, when it seemed appropriate, and it's surprising how well-received that can be. But there's a part of me that puts cuddling friends into the "not normal" category and my co-workers into the "normal" category. So I don't feel at ease discussing unusual topics with them.

(You know, these are the folks who email me nude pictures of buff men. Why am I worried about offending them? Yet I am.)

Let's talk about this when we get together - I think a lot of factors come into play

Sure! I do think there are a whole lot of factors at work. I think the degree to which sexual interest is involved plays a significant role, too. That women are more comfortable hugging their female friends than men are with male friends (or even friends of the opposite sex hugging each other) might be a result. Women may just not be as worried about provoking an undesired response -- it's not considered as likely a possibility.

And what Ocean's Edge said below, about her husband's hugs being usually a prelude to sex -- that really resonates. I think that if your mind becomes programmed to associate "touch" with something else, then you stop responding to the "touch" itself and start responding to that something else. Typical conditioned behavior. I remember hearing about a sex therapist treating a couple, and one of their problems was that the wife didn't want her husband even to touch her, because she always felt too tired to have sex, and always thought that was what he really wanted. So she didn't even want to get started on anything that could remotely lead to sex. (The therapist's response was to have them spend a couple of weeks with the husband giving the wife daily backrubs and other attention, while they were specifically instructed not to have sex during those weeks. The "forbidden" was kind of neat, because it alleviated the guilt the wife previously felt in denying her husband sex.)

Er. Long tangent, there.

Anyway, ultimately, I'm not so much concerned with why people feel the way they do, as with what they feel. Mostly, I just want a better way to figure out which people feel the same way I do and therefore it's OK to hug them. ;) On the reverse side -- sometimes that's something you can only find out by doing. It's like playing a game: sometimes you don't know if you'll like it or not until you've played it for a while. And sometimes a given game is more with certain players than with others.