Nadine Redlich

Our bodies are designed to respond to touch, and not just to sense the environment around us.

We actually have a network of dedicated nerve fibers in our skin that detect and emotionally respond to the touch of another person — affirming our relationships, our social connections and even our sense of self.

So, what happens when we don’t receive that?

This was one of the first questions that neuroscientist Helena Wasling PhD considered when social distancing restrictions were introduced to curb the spread of COVID-19. Based at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, she has studied these nerves — known as C tactile or CT afferents — and their importance to our emotions for over a decade.

“What struck me very early on, in the first week of being told that we were restricted from touch,  was that people no longer knew how to behave,” she says.

Even if you don’t consider yourself to be a tactile person, touch is — or was — embedded in the social structure of our lives. From meeting a new colleague and evaluating their handshake to giving a friend a long hug when we haven’t seen them in a while, it is one of the fundamental ways we have all learned to relate to one another. “To take it away is a very big intervention,” says Wasling.

New York based psychologist Guy Winch PhD agrees; “Touch is something we associate with emotional closeness, and we associate the absence of it with emotional distance. We may not fully appreciate it, but in pre-pandemic life there were literally dozens of small moments of touch throughout the day.”

This is significant not just in the landscape of our minds, but that of our bodies. Being emotionally and socially responsive to touch is so biologically fundamental to us that CT afferents are present over almost every inch of our skin, absent only from the palms of our hands and the soles of our feet.

These nerves are, Wasling explains in her TEDxGöteborg talk, particularly attuned to three things: a light touch, gently moving, and around 32 degrees Celsius (89F). Which just happens to be human skin temperature. So they are programmed to be most responsive to a gentle caress from another person.

Rather than simply telling our brains that this touch has happened — this is the role of other receptors in the skin that help the primary somatosensory cortex to processes physical sensations — CT afferents instead send signals to the insular cortex. “This is a deeper part of the cortex that deals more with your emotional equilibrium,” explains Wasling. “So you will get kind of a vague sensation. In the best of cases, it will be: ‘That was nice. I’m accepted. I feel safer now. Someone is counting on me.’ CT afferents also have pathways to parts of the brain that deal with who you are socially.”

For people who have now been living without that connection for a long time, it can be incredibly difficult, says Winch. “I have friends and patients that I work with who have not been touched in a year. At all. Not a handshake. And they are really suffering for it. There’s something that feels very distancing and cold about not having any kind of option for an embrace, and that can leave long lasting scars.”

Hugs, the form of touch we probably all miss the most, are particularly important and emotionally nourishing, says Winch. “When someone’s crying and we hold them, we’re doing it to comfort, but what it allows them to do is cry more. People usually will hold it together until somebody puts an arm around them, and then they’ll break down because that hug represents security and safety, and because of the closeness we feel when we know and trust that person.”

Moreover, the benefits of touch that we are missing out on are not just emotional and social but also physical; it can reduce pain and stress, as well as giving us a general feeling of wellbeing. These are the areas, says Wasling, where we may be able to support ourselves when we need to go for prolonged periods without social touch.

Here are some of the ways that we can ease the difficulty of living without this closeness — both for ourselves, and the people in our lives:

Take a shower or have a warm bath.

Although it doesn’t elicit quite the same physiological response as interpersonal touch, Wasling says the slow movement of the water on your skin is likely to generate a CT afferent response. Having a warm bath also relaxes your muscles, which can help to alleviate tension.

Cuddle a pet, or ask to walk someone else’s.

“Just being close to a furry animal has been shown to lower your stress, reduce your heart rate and your blood pressure,” says Wasling. You also have a social relationship with your pet — they rely on you and need you to show up for them.

There’s been a noted increase in people adopting pets during the pandemic, and at least one study has identified the potential therapeutic benefits of human-animal relationships when we are denied our normal level of human social interaction.

If you are able to see anyone in person, be wholly present — even if you can’t touch.

When we remove touch from our social interactions, we should consider what else we can emphasize instead. “Maybe we could be better at looking each other in the eyes, if we do have physical meetings,” suggests Wasling. “We can make sure that we see each other, because touching a person is a way of saying that ‘I see you, I acknowledge your existence.’”

Don’t be afraid to have deeper, more meaningful conversations where you really listen — especially if you know someone might be isolated or lonely. While these interactions don’t activate the same touch-based neural pathways, they still stimulate our social sense of belonging and intimacy, says Winch.

Don’t just “check in” on people who are alone — connect with them meaningfully.

It feels like everyone from our employers to the Twittersphere to US vice president Kamala Harris is reminding us to check in on our single friends. But are we going the right way about it?

“When we say ‘check in’ that’s like a checkbox. Tick; done,” says Winch. But that really isn’t enough. While the boredom and frustration of lockdowns are similar experiences for everyone, being isolated from the regular physical closeness of friends and family is uniquely difficult for people who are alone; the elderly, those who live by themselves, and those who are in high risk categories and cannot chance even one hug.

“If you just check in, that’s not going to be sufficient. You should be talking for at least 15 – 20 minutes for that to be a meaningful conversation. You have to really connect,” says Winch. If you’re both feeling Zoom fatigue, try each taking a walk while you talk on the phone.

If friends have described feeling ghostly or unreal, do your best to appreciate that the absence of touch has been a significant emotional loss for them during this time. One that you may never fully understand. Try not to say “I know how you feel,” if you are not in the same position.

“You know that when you touch things, they’re real to you,” says Wasling. “One of the reasons why I think touch is so important is that it makes you convinced you have a place in the social world of other people.”

As we look towards a vaccinated future, it is difficult to know right now how the pandemic will change our social attitudes towards touch in the long term. Will we still shake hands? Hug colleagues? A UK study conducted from January to March 2020, mostly before lockdown measures were introduced, found that 54 percent of people already felt they had too little touch in their lives. So we may well want this aspect of our lives to return as soon as possible.

But one facet that worries Winch is how the pandemic has actually reshaped our relationship with touch; “We took the thing that represents something so close, intimate and important, and now it represents something that’s actually dangerous and you should avoid. Even if we don’t fully register it, we are going to feel surges of anxiety at the idea of getting a hug. It’s going to take a while to bring us down from the danger alert of touch.”

Watch Helena Wasling’s TEDxGöteborg Talk here: 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mary Halton is Assistant Ideas Editor at TED, and a science journalist based in the Pacific Northwest.

This piece was adapted for TED-Ed from this Ideas article.

Eugenia Mello

Most relationships in which loneliness has taken up residence can be shifted to a better daily reality, says marriage researcher Carol Bruess. All it takes some patience and effort.

About my soaring, loving marriage of 28 years, people frequently say: “You’re soooo lucky!”

As I’ve written before, I don’t believe that luck is the key to a good marriage; hard work is. And such labor is, fortunately, among the most rewarding kind of work we do, of co-creating a relationship steeped in friendship, mutual adoration, and an unrelenting respect for our partner’s talents and quirks.

When it comes to that work, I have a bit of an advantage. I’m a social scientist who studies and ponders, day in and out, how our micro-choices can yield big outcomes toward strong and vibrant relationships.

But you don’t have to be a relationship expert to know when something isn’t quite right in your partnership or marriage. If your union isn’t one in which humor comes easily; isn’t one in which your partner’s idiosyncrasies are still (at least a little bit) endearing; or isn’t one in which your emotional needs are being met, perhaps you’re in a lonely marriage.

Sounds oxymoronic, right? A lonely marriage?

In fact, lonely marriages are real. And too common. Talk to someone who has experienced one and they’ll tell you it’s worse being lonely in a marriage than it is being lonely by yourself. According to surveys, some 40 percent of people know the pain of being lonely in relationship because they’ve been there at some point. Although no two happy marriages are identical, every lonely marriage has one thing in common: at least one spouse feels abandoned emotionally.

Emotional abandonment can be confusing, vague and hard to pinpoint because the person is, quite often, lying next to you in bed every night or co-raising kids. They might even be the person with whom you’re still having sex. But it’s also the person with whom — when you get honest with yourself — you know something is off. Something is missing.

Being in a lonely marriage doesn’t mean you’re physically excluding your partner from your life, but you’re emotionally excluding them from your thoughts. While you two may talk, you’re not communicating your hopes, fears and dreams. You might not be arguing or yelling or showing any obvious signs of disharmony; quite often, you’re not fighting at all, because you’ve found it’s just easier not to. Being in a lonely marriage also doesn’t mean you’re not being an attentive, loving parent. Many couples who feel disconnected from each other actually respond by throwing the majority of their energies toward their kids.

Let me be clear: Being in a lonely marriage doesn’t mean you don’t love your partner. However, the emotional distance between you has increased to the point that your love is lacking an essential intimacy — a tenderness of words, actions and thoughts. A type of gentleness you know is possible in your two-ness because it was that gentleness which attracted you to each other in the first place (remember?).

And here’s the good news: It’s with that sense of possibility you should remain hopeful, even if you’re reading this with a knowing dread that the emotionally-distant marriage I describe is your current marriage.

Why hopeful? Because most relationships in which loneliness has taken up residence can be shifted. They can be ushered back to a we-ness, replete with positive energy and renewed intimacy.

With a little work and a few tweaks in your behavior, you can come back to a better daily reality, one that looks more like this: a relationship in which you know your partner’s current worries; in which you can laugh together at life’s daily absurdities and annoyances; in which you want to create and anticipate with joy an evening when the kids are elsewhere and the two of you do whatever it is just the two of you find joy in doing.

Yes, you can get back to that.

As you make the decision to reclaim connection with your partner, resolve first and foremost to be patient. Not unlike the work of getting back in physical shape after an injury or illness — you wouldn’t just head out and run a 10K immediately after a three-year hiatus from exercising — re-building your relationship muscles after allowing them to atrophy will take a some time and definitely require a little effort. But little is the key word. Muscle memory is a powerful thing, and that goes for intimacy muscles too.

Here are three tips as you begin to flex those relationship-connection muscles:

Ask questions

If you are feeling lonely, your partner is probably also feeling lonely—and hopeless and helpless, not sure where to begin. So, begin with you. Take the initiative by simply asking your partner at least one question a day about something not related to managing your lives. Questions like “Did you pay the electricity bill?” and “Can you grab the kids tomorrow after school?” do not count. Ask your partner what they’re currently worried about, excited about, stressed about, looking forward to. Then really listen to their answers.

Start small, and don’t be surprised if your partner is suspicious at first. Re-establishing emotional connection is a shift in energy — a shift in wanting to know what the other person is thinking and feeling again, and sharing your own thoughts and feelings. Make it a goal to engage your partner in more of these curiosity-conversations each day. Most likely, they will begin to reciprocate, asking you similar questions. It might not happen right away, but trust that it will over time. Humans are pretty predictable; we tend to give back what we are given.

Get into their world

More specifically, get into the world of their thoughts. Yes, this will naturally happen by asking questions. But also important is making a quiet, internal effort to take your partner’s perspective—an exercise that you can’t skip as you work to re-build an emotional bond.

What does this entail? Pick just 60 seconds every day, close your eyes, and take just one minute to imagine what your partner’s world is currently like—from their vantage point. What might they be feeling/experiencing/needing right now? What is their current reality? What might their challenges be? Where are they finding joy? What might they be worried about, yearning for, or what might be weighing them down? Come into this minute of perspective-taking with a generosity of heart and mind.

You don’t even have to talk to your spouse about what you see in your mind’s eye — at least not immediately, and sometimes not ever. Because by simply engaging in this brief activity you will have more empathy and patience as you go about navigating daily life with your partner. Most important: this increased empathy can be the root of renewed emotional connection.

Create rituals of connection

Start small here. Choose to create tiny moments of intentional shared experiences together. If your partner is the one who usually makes dinner, join them in the kitchen and ask how you can help tonight. Maybe pull up their favorite artist on Spotify and set the tone for more joyful — even if they’re tiny — feelings between the two of you. These gestures of connection are the powerful stuff of thriving marriages, each one contributing to a larger reality of being a we again.

If you’re worried about doing any of the above and/or you’ve been in the lonely season of your marriage for a while, it might be wise — and necessary — for you to get support in this process. There are excellent, licensed marriage and family therapists working in most communities. Ask a friend or colleague for referrals, or do a simple google search. Another option for people in the US: Enter your zip code here to get a list of practitioners near you. Seeing a marriage and family therapist is covered by many health insurance plans.

If your spouse or partner is reluctant about seeing a therapist, encourage them to think of therapy as education, not as someone fixing broken humans or judging you on the way you communicate. Quite the contrary. Great therapy is a warm, safe, and welcoming opportunity to simply learn positive new ways of being together, building on what you already have created as a couple. If you have children, tap into your partner’s desire to raise healthy, happy young people, and remind your partner that the single most important thing you can do for your children is to have a healthy relationship yourselves. Yes, your children are watching.

And, yes, you can reclaim intimacy again. But it’s going to take some work. Just keep reminding yourself: It’s the most valuable work you can do.

Watch her TEDxMinneapolis Salon Talk here: 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carol Bruess (rhymes with “peace”) is professor emeritus at the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota; resident scholar at St. Norbert College, Wisconsin; and forever passionate about studying and improving relationships. She is fluent in emoji, loves parentheticals (it’s what all the cool kids are doing), and is happy-dancing her way through empty-nesting (although don’t tell her kids; they think she’s all weepy). Check out her five books and sewing/design shenanigans over at www.carolbruess.com

This post was originally published on TED Ideas. It’s part of the “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse through all the posts here.