Touch is one of the most important ways to express love, responsible for creating the deepest connections in relationships. Yet most people lack being able to receive and give great loving, compassionate, healing, and pleasurable touch.
I was touch-deprived most of my life, as I grew up in a conservative family and culture that didn’t feel comfortable showing love through touch – you would hardly ever see hugging, hand-holding, kissing, etc. Unless you’re a baby of course, when everyone wanted a piece of the cuteness :). I loved when my mom would stroke my hair and kissed my forehead. And I loved when my dad would put me to sleep by stroking his fingers lightly from my forehead to my eyebrows and eyelids and down to my chin, or tucked me in super tightly and completely so I felt snug and warm and held and safe, while looking like a burrito with a face ☺. But when I was no longer a small child, it wasn’t considered a part of relating, and slowly those gestures faded away.
You didn’t touch, except if you’re meeting a relative again after many years, or touching the feet of elders when greeting them as a sign of respect, or in my case, having my parents put their hand on my shoulder from behind the chair when I was staying up late past midnight doing homework trying to maintain all A’s.
Don’t get me wrong — people showed love and care in other ways. Just like different cultures have different languages and flavors, they also emphasize different love languages. And of course individually we have our own ways of giving and receiving love that we find most meaningful.
While my family’s love languages were mainly quality time, acts of service, and sometimes gifts, my personal love languages were words of affirmation and touch. As a result the love that was there was lost in translation more than we realized.
So when my mom made me my favorite foods whenever I came home, she didn’t care about the generous words I offered in return as much as if I ate the food heartily. And when she told me to put on a jacket when it was cold, I would respond with irritation — I can thermoregulate quite well myself, thank you very much! And when she worried about me if she hadn’t heard from me after a few days, I would be annoyed because to me it meant she thought I can’t take care of myself, rather than because she misses me and wants to connect with me. How would I know if she didn’t say it?
When my dad showed me love by spending time with me talking to me about sports, and gave advice and support whenever I was dealing with something heavy or needed his help, I would be grateful, but I would still feel physically distant, probably because he wasn’t giving me the same touch he was when I was younger.
The fact that they decided to give up their entire social structure and way of life to come to America so my brother and I could have a better life, and supported us through college, and provided me with so many modern material comforts… I tended to overlook all that because I had also lost my friends and extended family support from the move, and I didn’t have a choice in the matter.
To add, in order to provide for us, my dad was working long hours and traveling a lot, which meant he wasn’t around as much, and that meant my mom wasn’t feeling the love from her preference of having quality time together. And for a number of years my mom was constantly in a state of overwhelm and stress trying to take care of the family and the house, and cook every day, while also working as a manager at a tech startup. So despite her supreme efforts at doing acts of service, there wasn’t much of the same coming her way — and as a result her interactions understandably weren’t as warm and loving in words, tone of voice, facial expression, and touch that I would have wanted. This occurred to my childhood self as, “I must have done something wrong,” and “I’m unloveable because she doesn’t like me,” and “No matter what I do, she’s never happy with me.”
I share these examples as ways to show how there was actually lots of care and love in their own medium of expressions, but they had been warped into an outgrowth of fear, scarcity, and overwhelm.
My childhood self tended to overlook expressions of love that didn’t match my preference. This is true for most of us, but especially if we have a past that is traumatic, or riddled with experiences that led to us defining ourselves as potentially unloveable, or not enough, or a failure.
When I was young and in school in India, some teachers physically beat me with hands, rulers, and other objects — grabbing me by the collar, slapping me across the face, shaking me, hitting my hands with wooden rulers, and more. They verbally abused and emotionally humiliated me in front of the whole classroom, shouting at me just inches from my face and right in my ear, teasing and laughing at me when I was crying, and threatening me in various ways that are frightening to a little kid — implying that they’ll tell my parents about the terrible way I’ve behaved and they’ll surely be embarrassed and feel shame for me, or how dare I not follow certain protocol in some way.
Most of it was because when I thought I had done the homework the right way but failed to meet the expectations of the teachers. Or I was passibg notes and just being a kid laughing with my friends after hours of sitting with silence and being lectured to without a break, or because I needed to use the bathroom but I needed to wait until the proper break.
All of this was not really because of any real reason, but rather because they required very strict authoritarian adherence to their rules, and they needed to make examples of those who didn’t obey, to keep everyone else in line from defying or questioning their authority.
So bringing it back to my family, when I expected and really needed positive verbal affirmations of love or gratitude, or loving gestures of touch from my parents, and they were not given either when I wanted, in the way I wanted, or both, then I would mistakenly make that mean that they don’t love me, and that I am unlovable or have done something wrong. Don’t we all do this in some way?
I didn’t realize the profound impact of having deprivation around touch in my life. I was never in my body, especially during my years of debilitating back pain, where I did everything to escape my body and the sensations it gave. I was disconnected to my body sensations, my emotions, and my feelings, and I related to people around me from my head, from logic, from rationality, from the concepts I had about them, from who they were to my childhood self in the past, etc. — rather than being present and connected with them in the moment, seeing and feeling them as fellow loving beings in front of me.
It didn’t help that sexuality was dealt with in the same way, with the added components of shame, guilt, and secrecy. And it didn’t help that I had been physically abused by various teachers when I was young, or being bullied by classmates in various ways.
And it didn’t help that when I came to America, as a male I learned to keep my emotions inside, and only shake hands, the occasional bro-hug (one hand clasped and the other reaching on their shoulder), or the fist-bump, or just the head nod of acknowledgement that said “whassup?” from afar.
It’s no wonder I couldn’t approach relationships for most of my life, and felt alone almost constantly, except for the occasional porn-induced masturbation sessions that would allow some self-touch and escape the pain and grief and suffering that was inside me.
I didn’t hold hands with a girl I was interested in until near the end of college. I didn’t kiss a girl until after graduating college. I didn’t have sex until I was 26 years old. And I had never had a real romantic relationship when I was 30 years old.
I didn’t know this at the time, and I had no idea how to express it, but I yearned deeply to be held, to be caressed, to have my hair played with, to be touched lovingly, to be massaged, to be allowed to rest my head on someone’s chest and hear their heart-beat and feel the closeness of our bodies. To be hugged often by those around me in a way that shows me the deep care for me, the love they feel for me, that they accept me and allowed me to be so close to them because they trusted me, and therefore, that they can be trusted to be allowed in as well, physically close and emotionally closer.
Most of my life, what I wanted more than anything else, was deep, intimate, fulfilling, enriching, nourishing, healing connection. Connection to my body, my friends, my family, a romantic partner. Connection to my purpose, my mission, my work, my colleagues. Connection to nature and the living beings inhabiting this planet — humans, animals, birds, fish, trees — all of it.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that, the only way I can truly feel connected with everything outside of me was to first learn to love everything inside me, my full self.
I guess that’s why, in 2016, I quit my 6-figure salary job to dedicate myself fully to a lifetime of deep inner self-work and training to create a life of connection, to help change the norm in my own life and the lives of people around me, to be able to express and receive love more fully and freely — especially through touch.
So here I am, just 2.5 years later on this journey, not only living a life I love, full of deep intimate connection with my friends, family, and my amazing girlfriend, but also helping change hundreds of lives, hundreds of relationships each year through my work as a massage therapist and relationship coach.
There was a point in my early college years when I decided — norms be damned, I was a hugger! Everyone I met was going to get a hug! And one day when I came back from college, I decided to start hugging my parents. And yes, at first it was a bit awkward…but soon my dad and then my brother and then my mom began not only hugging me by default, but I actually remember a moment when I noticed my dad hugging my mom!
It warmed my heart to see that, much like English was sprinkled in with Gujarati and Hindi when we talked to each other, the loving language of touch had inflitrated our family!
Even my then-80 year old grandpa loved hugs now. Over time, it turns out that my entire extended family had started to adopt hugging as the norm, and my dad was known as one of the best huggers in the Davé family.
And the same happened with verbal affirmations — I began to show more and more my gratitude and appreciation for my parents through words, and slowly, I started hearing those words that I always wanted to hear — “I’m so proud of you” and “I love you” and “I miss you”.
And I also began to speak their languages — spending more quality time with them, going for walks together, watching Bollywood movies, occasionally cooking for them, etc. My best move? Gifting them the highest rated (and quite expensive) massage chair in the world. Years later, my dad still uses it every. single. day.
It was a long time coming, and there are still misunderstings and disagreements of course, but our family is much closer as a result of my journey to understand and heal myself and my past.
There is so much love in the world. More love than you can possibly receive, and more love than you can ever give. And yet there are countless people who feel unloved by the people around them and close to them.
No one should feel like they are not loved or loveable. It is with this intention that I’ve created my coaching and massage business. I would love to listen and hear your story, and support you, however feels most resonant.
Let’s set up a 30 minute conversation! MeetMe.so/UmangLifeCoaching
Let’s heal the world one relationship at a time and create more love in the world - starting with the relationship we have with ourselves.
One of my ventures is the ConciousTouch massage and relationship workshop. It centers on creating deeper intimacy and connection with your partner, friends, and family, specifically focusing on massage techniques, but also centering on concepts around creating more intimate, genuine connection in relationships – like attention, noticing, groundedness, presence, intention, intuition, communication/feedback, etc.
I would love to have you come out, and bring friends or your partner – it’ll be a fun workshop that will leave you a better lover and friend, and more equipped to be able to create closer connections with the people in your life!
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