Skin Hunger

Almost no one has a word for it, and yet almost everyone feels it now and then: the way your skin longs to be touched. Not for sex, necessarily, but to be held, to have an arm around you that stays a little longer than politeness asks for.

Skin hunger is exactly what the word says. It is a shortage of touch, the same way your stomach growls when you have gone too long without food. We are built for it. A baby who is touched too little grows more slowly, and that need does not vanish the moment you become an adult. If you live alone, or you have just lost someone, or life is moving so fast that no one really holds you anymore, that hunger stacks up quietly.

By Victor, gigolo in Amsterdam.

Why does touch do so much? Because your skin talks straight to your nervous system. A calm, warm touch lowers your stress hormone and switches on something that makes you feel safe. Your heartbeat slows. You start to breathe more deeply on your own. People who are touched enough sleep better and feel less alone, even when nothing else in their life has changed.

And there is no obligation attached. That is exactly what makes it such a relief for so many women: being held without anything being expected of you, without it having to lead anywhere. For a moment, nothing to carry. For a moment, not the strong one. For someone who has carried everything on her own for a long time, half an hour of lying quietly against another person can loosen more than she thought was possible. This is the ground that skin-hunger sessions grow out of.

Below I gather what I write about it: what skin hunger does to you when it lasts too long, and how you recognize it in yourself. And most of all, what is possible when you simply want to be held again, calmly, with nothing expected of you. If that is what you are looking for, you can always send me a message.