For some reason in this society, intimacy means sex. When someone says “Are you intimate with (person’s name),” it is usually a ‘polite’ way of asking whether you are sleeping with each other. Here’s my problem with that.
I identify as a demi-sexual. Which basically means I do not experience any sexual desires for anyone until a deep emotional and mental connection has been made. It’s of course a little more complicated than just that because of biology and such, and it’s a person to person basis. And for a while, I felt as though I was broken, because I didn’t really think about having sex with people, at least not consciously (dreams don’t count because I have always had strange and vivid dreams where I am often not me).
But that doesn’t mean that I don’t need intimacy. My personality needs physical intimacy. That’s the way I know people love me. It’s my love language. The way my brain processes love is through touch. Someone could say they love me over and over and over again, platonically or romantically or family, but there will always be a part of me that believes they don’t mean it, since it’s easy to lie with words.
But, the body doesn’t lie. You cannot help the bodily reaction you have to someone. If you don’t like a person, there is no way you want to touch them, especially not in a affectionate way. And that shows. But if someone goes for a hug immediately with me, I know they actually like me. Because the body doesn’t lie.
Because of this, I’m an incredibly physically affectionate person. In high school, I made a friend that was just as physically affectionate as I was, and we had both lockers next to each other, and the same philosophy class. The amount of people who thought we were dating was a ridiculous amount. Granted, we went to prom together and that didn’t help the rumors, but whatever. No one was ever mean, but everyone assumed that we were dating.
Even now in college, I have a friend who I jokingly say, we are ‘platonically dating’ but a couple people have thought of her as my girlfriend. We both laughed about it, and I go to an arts school, so it wasn’t a huge deal. I mean, sure, we are both bisexual, but she and I are purely friends.
I even see this is shows all the time. Especially during improv shows. We have an improv troupe, and they put on performances. One of the popular games they play is they have 4 lines about a boring, mundane activity, and they do the scene once from far away and once really close. They ‘really close’ scenes always seem to be sexualized.
Our culture hyper sexualizes everything. There is literally a green M&M that is portrayed as a sexy female. In movies and video games and music videos and tv show, women are constantly being sexualized and seen as nothing but objects. People even get angry when mother’s breastfeed in public because breasts are so hyper-sexualized in our culture. I could go on and on.
There has been a move recently that is trying to combat the oversexulization and that’s an amazing thing. But we have a long road ahead of us. The sexualization of intimacy and frankly, female bodies is so deeply rooted in our society that it will probably take a while before we can make change.
I just hope for a shift in thinking when it comes to how people interact. Just because I’m being physically intimate with someone, does not mean that I want to have sex with them. I often hug, cuddle my friends, kiss them on the cheek and hold hands, etc. But that is simply because that is how I show my form of love.
Like the Greeks say, love comes in many forms (there are 4 in Ancient Greek: romantic love, brotherly (friendship) love, familial love, and sacrificial love which usually has a religious connotation). Except for the last form of love (sacrificial), I am physically affectionate in the all of the forms.
The hyper-sexulization of physical affection and intimacy is really damaging to our culture. I understand that not everyone’s love language is physical touch. But, if we take the stigma away from how we express love and what it means, I truly believe that it would be easier to love one another.
Maybe that's the optimist in me, but that is what I believe.
