Skin Hunger:

The Need for Human Touch

I’ve always thought that the most delightful form of volunteering would be to hold newborn babies who need to be touched. Skin-to-skin touch is crucial to infant development—and by helping to provide it, I’d get the gift of a warm little body in my arms. I’d get to experience the softest, the most fragrant, the most exquisite human skin there is. If only some hospital near me had such a program!

Babies who get regular touch (usually through skin-to-skin contact with their parents) develop more secure attachments, are better balanced emotionally, and even show greater physical growth than infants who lack it. Nursing a baby not only gives it nourishment but it also provides the baby with hours of physical contact with the mother. Touch provides comfort and security—and not only for babies. Children and adults need it too.

Skin-to-skin contact, like hugging or holding hands, stimulates the release of oxytocin, often referred to as the "love hormone." This chemical promotes feelings of trust, bonding, and emotional connection.  

Touch also serves as a non-verbal means of communication, helping to establish and reinforce social bonds. In adults, touch strengthens relationships by signaling affection, trust, and solidarity. We hug when we say hello and also when we say goodbye.

In addition, regular physical touch can reduce blood pressure, improve immune function, and promote overall well-being. It reduces feelings of loneliness, depression, and anxiety. In a marriage, a little touching can radically improve people’s well-being.

When people are deprived of this basic need, they experience “skin hunger”—also and more ominously known as “touch starvation.” An article this year in Forbes asserts that “being touch-starved can lead to mood swings, feelings of irritability, sadness or depression. . . Human beings seem to have an innate need for touch, which begins from infancy and continues throughout one’s life.”

Touch starvation is related to but different from sexual deprivation. Most sexual contact provides plenty of touch opportunities, but many skin-to-skin activities do not involve sex. Human beings simply need physical contact with each other. Girls going to school hand in hand; boys roughhousing after an athletic victory; women getting their hair styled—all involve physical closeness with other human beings.

Skin hunger primarily affects single adults, and some mind it more than others. A Reddit thread offers some solutions.  If we are touch starved, we might consider hiring a professional cuddler (they exist!), acquiring a pet, or engaging in martial arts, which sometimes involve pressing oneself against another body. Also recommended: hot showers, warm drinks, weighted blankets, hugging yourself.

One single friend of mine gets a massage every week from the same masseuse she’s used for decades. It provides exactly what she wants, and she leaves each week aglow. Another single friend claims not to mind the absence of touch in her life, though she does have a cat. There is great variability here.

A third needs a lot of touching, especially in bed. She was in a new relationship, and finally they were able to manage a whole night together. My friend was in ecstasy imagining that night. She told him, “I want to wake up twenty times in the night and feel your body against mine and go back to sleep happy.” But to her chagrin, she slept throughout the night—only to wake up at six all alone in the bed. Her new guy was asleep in the next room. “What are you doing in here?” she demanded. He said, “You kept reaching for me, holding me. I couldn’t sleep.” She knew right then that he wasn’t the man she would marry.

Another friend discovered that her new boyfriend had smooth and hairless skin. When she stroked him, his satiny skin seemed to caress her right back. She just couldn’t stop touching him, and he kept touching her: when they were in the car or at the movies or just walking along a city street. She slept pressed against him. He slept pressed against her. They joked that they needed each other’s molecules.

They still do. They’ve now been together thirty years.

Photo from Unsplash in Collaboration with Curated Lifestyle