Taking Affection Back

In a piece on Medium, Mark Greene argues that affection has been taken away from males—and that’s hurting us all.4 I believe him. As boys, we’re trained that affection is either a means of progressing to sex or a signal of homosexuality—which was, when and where I grew up, a bad thing. Because of these associations—unwelcome sexual motive or homoeroticism—our touch is not trusted, so most males are robbed of affection. It’s lost from our arsenal of expressions to signal friendship, fondness, or love.

Touch is truly fundamental to human communication, bonding, and health … [T]ouch activates the brain’s orbitofrontal cortex, which is linked to feelings of reward and compassion … [T]ouch signals safety and trust, it soothes.5

—Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology, UC Berkeley

As I get older, I’ve made a conscious effort to take affection back, especially as it relates to my boys. It bonds us, and I’m fairly certain it will add confidence to their lives and years to mine.

Kissing

One of my closest friends, Lee, comes from an Italian family. I hung out with him and his dad one day. The thing I remember most is when his father showed up. He walked into the apartment, and he and Lee Jr. kissed … on the lips, as if they were shaking hands. I had never seen two grown men kiss before. Twenty years later, my other touchstone for Italian culture, The Sopranos, confirmed this is common practice. I remember, after the initial shock, thinking it was nice.

I kiss my boys, a lot. The act itself is nice, but the real reward is the respect my boys have for the moment. They can be watching TV, fighting, complaining (they complain a shit-ton), but when I signal the kiss (I lean in and pucker), they stop everything, angle their chin upward, and kiss me on the lips … and then go back to what they were doing. It’s as if they know this has meaning—the other stuff can wait a few seconds.

Hold Hands

I never enjoyed holding hands until I had kids. The things we do for our kids—the soccer practices, the worry, the carpools, the bad movies, setting up remote controls, working to give them a better life than yours. In isolation, each of these things is okay—tolerable, but nothing anybody who doesn’t have kids would ever do. Have you seen The Emoji Movie? However, the sum of these parts forms and checks an instinctive box. It gives you the sense you’re serving a larger purpose—the whole evolution thing.

Few things encapsulate this reward and distill it into a single action more than holding your child’s hand. Every kid’s hand fits perfectly into his or her parent’s. It’s one of those moments when you feel that if you were to drop dead, it would be bad, but far less tragic than if you had not marked the universe with purpose and success. You’re a parent, and your kid is holding your hand.

My oldest is holding my hand less, as he’s ten and feeling his independence. At least he doesn’t freak out and scream, “Stop it!” like the fourteen-year-old girl I overheard on the soccer field tonight, whose mom had committed the crime against humanity of grabbing her teenage daughter’s hand. My guess is, later the daughter felt bad.

My youngest, seven, still instinctively grabs my hand whenever we’re walking outside, and it’s magical. He’s a barbarian at home, terrorizing us all. But out in the wild he’s a bit intimidated and wants the security of touch from someone he knows will protect him. He goes for his mom’s hand first. I’m runner-up … and that’s okay.

I started registering the individuality of my parents at six or seven. Parents are like consumer brands in that, as kids, we remember only two or three key things about them, missing the nuance you only appreciate as you get older and realize people are complicated. My mom was smart, loved me, and was no-nonsense. My dad was intense and quiet around us as a family, but uber-charming and outgoing around strangers.

Hard to speculate what your kids will remember about you when they’re older. I’ve inherited some of the anger and intensity of my father, which makes our home less light than it could be. But I’m committed to ensuring that some of my kids’ associations with me are “always kissing us, always extending his hand.”

If men who look like Burt Reynolds can kiss other men, so can I. I’m taking affection back.