Skin hunger

What is skin hunger?

Skin hunger is the strong need for physical contact, for touch through the skin. The Dutch dictionary ANW calls it a need “to be stroked or touched”, one that shows up most in babies and the elderly and holds in a more general or sexual sense as well. A hunger for skin, then, not necessarily for sex.

What your skin is actually asking for

There is a separate nerve channel for it. That is the fact the word rests on.

Löken and colleagues showed in 2009 in Nature Neuroscience that the hairy skin carries slow, unmyelinated fibers that respond to a very specific stimulus. They call them C-tactile afferents. Those fibers fired hardest during strokes of 1 to 10 centimeters per second, and that was exactly the speed the subjects called most pleasant. The fast fibers you use to feel what something is did not do that.

What follows from this is plainer than it sounds. Your skin has one system that works out whether something is sharp or warm or wet, and a second that works out whether someone is being kind to you. The second runs at one pace: slow. A hurried pat on your shoulder falls outside its range.

The researchers call those fibers a privileged route for pleasant touch, probably meant to register body contact between people. That explains why a quick hug at the door solves so little, and why a hand that stays put for a minute does something.

How common it is

More common than you would think, and without a pandemic too.

Anouk Keizer’s research group in Utrecht measured it in Scientific Reports at three moments. During lockdown the longing for touch ran high, which was expected. What stood out is what happened afterward. A week after the measures were lifted, 80 percent of the participants still wanted more touch than they were getting; in the late-2022 survey, when almost nothing was in force anymore, that was 78.2 percent. During the pandemic it was 86.1 percent.

So the severity dropped, the spread did not. The share of people with a high score fell from 56.5 to 26.7 and later 16.4 percent. The share who felt it at all barely moved.

The same authors point to a German survey from before COVID, in which 72.7 percent of an ordinary sample longed for touch to some degree. So it is not a leftover of a strange period. Lockdown made it visible, it did not cause it.

Where the word comes from

From the nursery, and only later from the rest of the house.

The ANW cites a newspaper example from February 1984 in which someone describes how, during his work as a clown, he ran into skin hunger among “the disfigured, the disturbed, the elderly, the not-so-pretty, the lonely”. After that the word turns up mostly in pieces about baby slings and newborns. The ANW’s own semantic note still gives the cause in that order: the sense of touch needs stimulation, and in older people that sense keeps working at full strength while physical contact falls away.

That is why the word often feels a bit odd for adults. It is borrowed from babies. While the research shows there is little babyish about it.

Why it hits one person harder than another

Because your attachment style helps decide how hard the lack lands.

Von Mohr, Kirsch and Fotopoulou put a questionnaire to 1,746 people during the first lockdown in Royal Society Open Science. After excluding participants with a psychiatric diagnosis, 1,490 were left. Missing intimate touch went together with more anxiety and more loneliness, and intimate touch was exactly what people missed most.

Then it gets interesting. The more anxiously someone was attached, the more touch they wanted. For avoidantly attached people it ran the other way. Two people in the same empty house can have a completely different week, and that says nothing about how much they care about anyone.

What people get wrong about skin hunger

“It’s a polite way of saying you want sex.” The fibers that make the difference sit in the hairy skin and respond to slow strokes. That is a different circuit from arousal.

“It’s a diagnosis.” No. It is a word from ordinary Dutch, and it appears in no manual as a disorder.

“That came from COVID.” The German survey from before the pandemic already reached 72.7 percent, and the Utrecht surveys afterward 80 and 78.2 percent.

“Everyone feels it the same.” With anxious attachment the longing rises, with avoidant attachment it drops.

“A hug is a hug.” Those fibers respond strongest at 1 to 10 centimeters per second. Pace matters, measurably.

What you can do with this

• Name it. It helps that there is a word for it that need not have anything to do with sex.
• Count on slow. A hand that stays put does more than three quick pats.
• Draw no conclusion about your relationship if your partner notices it less. That difference is tied to attachment.
• Don’t wait for it to turn on its own. The numbers after lockdown show it does not just fade.
• Take it seriously if it eats at you. See your GP when low mood or anxiety is in play; this page explains a term and is not medical advice.

More reading on skin hunger

Within this glossary, touch deprivation is about the shortfall itself, while this page is about the longing. Attachment style explains why that longing differs so much from person to person, and libido describes how wanting sex runs its own course that only partly overlaps with this.

On this site the fuller story is in my article on skin hunger, and professional cuddling describes how touch without sex works in practice.

What I see myself

The women who write to me about this almost never start with the word. They start with a detour: that they feel odd, that it is nothing really, that they don’t actually miss anything. And then comes a line like “no one has held me for two years.”

What strikes me in those conversations is how often it is about the dose and not the act. Not kissing, not sex, just an arm that stays put until the tension drains out. That takes time, and time is exactly what most people don’t dare ask for in their own lives. If you want that touch without sex having to be part of it, that is exactly what touch for skin hunger is for.

Sources

• huidhonger. Algemeen Nederlands Woordenboek, Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal. Gives the definition “strong need for physical contact, for touch through the skin, as shows up most in babies and the elderly; also in a more general or sexual sense: strong need for skin contact, to be stroked or touched”, the grammatical data (a de-word, no plural), the semantic note about the sense of touch and older people, and the newspaper example from 28 February 1984.
• Coding of pleasant touch by unmyelinated afferents in humans. Line S. Löken, Johan Wessberg, India Morrison, Francis McGlone & Håkan Olausson, Nature Neuroscience 12, 547–548, 2009 (DOI 10.1038/nn.2312). Gives the finding that C-tactile fibers respond strongest to stroke speeds of 1 to 10 cm/s, that subjects called exactly those speeds most pleasant, that myelinated fibers do not show that pattern, and the conclusion that C-tactile fibers form a privileged peripheral route for pleasant touch.
• Longing for touch post-COVID-19: current observations and future directions. Birgit Hasenack, Larissa L. Meijer, Anna van Harmelen, Krista E. Overvliet & Anouk Keizer, Scientific Reports 13, 2023 (DOI 10.1038/s41598-023-49113-1). Gives the prevalence figures of 86.1 percent during the pandemic against 80 and 78.2 percent afterward, the drop in high scores from 56.5 to 26.7 and 16.4 percent, and the reference to the German survey from before the pandemic in which 72.7 percent longed for touch to some degree.
• Social touch deprivation during COVID-19: effects on psychological wellbeing and craving interpersonal touch. Mariana von Mohr, Louise P. Kirsch & Aikaterini Fotopoulou, Royal Society Open Science 8, 210287, 2021 (DOI 10.1098/rsos.210287). Gives the sample of 1,746 participants and the final 1,490 after exclusion, the link between missing intimate touch and more anxiety and loneliness, and the finding that anxiously attached people wanted more touch while avoidantly attached people showed the reverse pattern. The publisher page blocks automated access; this is the text as PubMed Central publishes it.

Related terms

• Touch deprivation. The shortfall itself, with what research measures about it.
• Attachment style. Why the same lack lands hard on one person and barely on another.
• Libido. Wanting sex, a separate track that this often gets confused with.
• Aftercare. Touch with a clear purpose, after something intense.