AIBU to ask if you hug your friends now?

[lockdownagain2020]

I'm going out tonight to a restaurant with a friend I haven't seen in a while, this is actually the first time I'm going out with friends since the 1st lockdown back in March. When I see her, I don't know if I should hug? Don't want it to be awkward. What do you guys do with your friends with the Covid situation?

No, I don't do it anymore.

No but then that could be because I have no friends.

How can you hug when you have to maintain social distance? Like everyone else I can't even hug my mum or dad.

No

@Delatron I've wondered that as well , a quick hug in the garden with your face turned the other way , I would have thought it would be fine. Like you I was paranoid to start with and then relaxed very much over the summer, early Autumn . I'm getting a lot more wary again now though .

@PicaK

We tend to stand about 2m apart, throw our arms open wide and say "Huuugggg!!!!" and sort of waggle our arms up and down. Half way between a real hug and a virtual one. So yes I hug my friends.

Yes we do this too

My friend’s dad died a few weeks ago. I went to the funeral and people hugged. Today I saw her and we had a hug and so did the kids. Some things are more important than covid.

no, the only person ive hugged outside of household is my mum. Everyone else we just elbow bump or konichiwa/namaste bow.
I actually prefer it. I missed hugs at first, but i dont think i want to go back to them. I love the social distancing

As we are in tier three I don't even see them. If I could I would just socially distance. I don't understad why you would find not hugging a friend awkward under the circumstances.

I hadn't seen my friend since February. I saw her last week. We had a brief but welcome hug with heads turned other way
Normally we would have hugged for longer and kissed cheeks

To be honest . I'm quite shocked by people who have not seen their friends at all. Not even outside , at a distance: or who wouldn't hug a friend whose partner had died . I presume that these people have a health condition or live in one of the areas where cases have remained high throughout so you didn't get that window of comparative safety that others did . Otherwise I think there has to be some balance .

I haven’t hugged friends but I have hugged 4 bereaved people since March as it felt like the most natural thing to do, one of them happened to be a friend of mine. We were all masked and outdoors with our heads turned away from each other. 3 of them were particularly horrifically tragic deaths and they needed a bloody hug!!

A lot of our friends aren't local, and the only way to see them would have meant them coming to stay or us going to stay with them. No hotels nearby.

We have socialised distantly with friends in the village, but they aren't close enough that I would want to hug them.

DH is pretty unsociable and isn't really bothered about seeing people anyway.

No, I haven’t been

Don't see my friends. Partly because of our kids isolating at different times . It's never ending

I do, but then most of us already had covid in the past 6 months....

At work yes. We are in such close quarters anyway that refraining from hugs seems pointless. And I bumped into a friend in a park recently who had just lost her dad, to do anything other than hug her and cry with her would have seemed hideous. Other than that no.

@unmarkedbythat

At work yes. We are in such close quarters anyway that refraining from hugs seems pointless. And I bumped into a friend in a park recently who had just lost her dad, to do anything other than hug her and cry with her would have seemed hideous. Other than that no.

Where the heck do you work in such close quarters that hugging makes no difference??

That's surely not covid-secure!!

@tappitytaptap

My friend’s dad died a few weeks ago. I went to the funeral and people hugged. Today I saw her and we had a hug and so did the kids. Some things are more important than covid.

This. I will happily hug anyone who wants to hug. The cure is worse than the disease.

of course not !

I have accidentally because I forgot !

I have hugged a couple of them. But mainly no.

My friends partner died during lock down ... we did not hug

😳😳

I don't hug my friends anymore and was very hug-happy before Covid. Tell a lie, have hugged a couple of times when drunk, which just goes to show...!

I don't hug my friends but in a way that Is ok because it means the last adult I hugged was my dad on the last time I saw him before he died.