@thepeopleversuswork
I can take or leave hugging (of people I am not intimate with). I’m happy to do it if it’s expected but rarely initiate it.
What drove me slightly nuts during lockdown was these people saying they craved hugs so much they thought it was impacting their mental health etc: struck me as slightly over the top and entitled.
I have an old friend who is very touchy-feely who kept banging on to me about how she was prepared to break lockdown rules to hug people she didn’t know that well.
Get a grip FFS
I think I understand where they were coming from. [Massive TW incoming]
My DNA sharers don't do hugs or any affection whatsoever. It's something that 'Common people with no self control' do. My entire experience of physical contact as a child was having injuries treated by medical staff, having blood tests/injections, a cat that slept on my chest every night, sitting on the floor with the other animals through the day - and being hit.
I deliberately escalated every situation where I was being shouted and screamed at or told how disgusting I was so I'd feel something. The hot sting of a slap across the face, the warm throb of the punches to the side of the head (to ensure there was no visible bruising, obviously), pushing on the bruises on my arms and legs, all felt better than not existing. Which is what it felt like the rest of the time - days would go by where I wouldn't even be looked at because I was so disgusting/stupid/ugly I wasn't even worth seeing. I was OK when I was a baby, apparently, because although I didn't sleep, I didn't cry either. I think that was because I learned if I did, nobody came other than the cat.
I enjoyed getting ill or hurt badly enough from taking risks at school that somebody would check my knees, put a plaster on or I'd go to hospital and the nurses and doctors would be gentle and kind when sending me off for x-rays and examining me. As I also had inflammatory arthritis from the age of 5, the one comfort I had apart from my little black cat was pain. Pain was my friend, keeping me warm, meant I could wrap swollen joints up in bandages, it made me feel real.
When I reached 16 and somebody older than me wanted to touch me, I was gone. OK, the odd slap, push, not being allowed to go out without him, being locked in the flat and generally shit sex and unpleasant kissing wasn't nice - but most of the time, he wanted closeness without overt violence and I liked the warmth of having somebody who wanted physical contact with me.
I had a short period properly single (I was never normally single for long because I wasn't that choosy about who it was, the fact that they wanted me was enough), I realised after about a month. I might as well have been in a bubble or encased in a thick fog where I was invisible, like a ghost. And that reminded me of being 13 and realising (after being told that I should never have been born and it would have been better had I died at birth because I'd been beaten up at school, which must have been my fault because I made people hate me) that, actually, nobody would notice if I wasn't here anymore and I could do something about that.
For all the shitness, that abusive first boyfriend had actually saved me from that ideation, those plans, the eating disorder, everything. I self harmed over that period of being alone and untouched. Because I needed to feel. Weighted blankets are helpful to many people because of the warmth and pressure - there's a well known case where Temple Grandin invented a hugging contraption because she saw that cattle calm in a crush. She now says that she prefers hugging people to the machine.
DP hugs me frequently. Were it not for him, there would have been nothing for the best part of a year, with the exception of, yet again, needing painful medical treatment.
So I understand completely why people crave the warmth, the pressure, the safety of a hug. I don't see it as entitlement. I see it as a biological need for many species and self awareness of somebody's needs for that contact is healthier for them than either having to seek out alternatives - or dismissing it as entitlement.