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Touch: A Need for More

© Nancy Fagan-Murphy, M.S.

Touch is crucial for infants and remains important throughout people's lives. In fact, medical research on touch has shown that it improves many situations, for both adults and children, by lessening anxiety, calming fears, decreasing pain, lowering blood pressure, reducing stress, soothing the sick and alleviating loneliness.

Because touch offers such benefits, it would be a shame to let life pass you by without the affection you deserve. Even if you have a partner who doesn't touch you enough, you can still touch him or her and get the same rewards. Touch allows people to simultaneously receive and transmit feelings, so it's not important who initiates affection.

Sometimes the only thing that a person needs to do is learn how to demonstrate touch. Once they do, nature takes over. This is because people's bodies trigger the production of endorphins (a pleasure response) each time they engage in specific behaviors that center on bodily functions that are necessary for survival (eating, nursing, coitus, and so on); coincidentally, many of the same areas involved in the act of sex.

Remember, you are in charge of getting your needs met, not your partner. If you need to be touched-do the touching. You will both be happier for it.



About the Author
Nancy Fagan-Murphy, M.S., author of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Romance" and "Desirable Men: How to Find Them."