I am not a hugger.

I don’t really know any reason for this.  Perhaps if I spoke to a therapist about it, he would have some incredible insight into why this is, but that’s not something I really feel the need to investigate.  This is not to say that I never hug, nor that I don’t hug well.  My daughters have been the recipients of good hugs their entire lives.  Every woman I’ve been involved with has been thoroughly hugged.

But with non-child family members and other people, I either don’t hug, or when a hug is required or cannot be avoided, it’s pretty much the same: touching only at the shoulders and only one arm around the back.  It’s not something I consciously do; it’s just something that is.

This does not mean I have problems with intimacy.  In fact, I find as I grow older that intimacy is something I crave more than I did as a younger man (back then, I had no problem with solitude).  Perhaps that is because over the last few years intimacy is something that has been hard to find.

Before mid-2011 my relationship history was quite short.  I’d only dated a few people, and two of them I married.  When my wife and I separated I felt many things, many of which I won’t get into here, but one thing I felt was in need of physical contact, in need of somebody showing me she desired me.  In October and November of that year, I did something I had never really done before.  I don’t know the most accurate way to describe it.  You could say I played the field.  Someone has referred to it as my manwhore phase.  In December I started dating someone, until we broke up in March.  I began seeing someone new in August.  Those were the only two people I had been with since my “phase.”

I talked to a very good friend recently.  She and I became friends during my “phase,” although she was never part of that phase herself.  What I liked about her is that she was going through some of the same issues I was and that we though quite a bit alike.  She is involved with somebody now, and she appears very happy and on the cusp of making a big step forward.  I told her I was happy for her.  And that was the truth.  That was the first thing on my mind and out of my mouth.  Underneath, though...I was...what’s the word here?  Not jealous.  Envious.  I wanted her to have her joy and her love, but part of me whined how come I don’t get that, how come she gets to fall asleep in someone’s arms and someone’s love, when I fall asleep in this king-sized bed.  Alone.  Again.  It’s not that I’m jealous that someone else is with her, or that I don’t want her to be happy.  I just want what she has.

But, you know, with a girl.  I’m sure her guy is great, but I just don’t swing that way.

Not yet, at least.

The thing that I thought about today is that through my “phase” and even when I was dating people afterward, I have, to the best of my recollection, only fallen asleep with someone in my arms only ten nights in almost 19 months.  Three women, ten total nights.  I was in love with one of them.  Another I love to this day still, and I value her as a friend and confidante, but it was easy to understand that we would never be “in love.”  I don’t know if anything would have deepened with the third, but it is a moot point now, as circumstances at the time kept things from growing, and both of us moved on to other things, other people, and she is very happy now, and my happiness for her isn’t even envious (for it occurred at a time when I thought I might be just as happy, if not happier).

That time obviously is only in reference to women with whom I am intimate.  It doesn’t take in last week when my eldest daughter visited, which required the five-year-old to sleep in the same bed as me.  And, believe me, waking up on the edge of the bed with two feet pushing at your head...I can do without that.

I like to think that everybody has those moments in which they look in the mirror and ask the reflection, “what is wrong with you?”  I hope they do; it would be incredibly sad for me to realize it was only me.  I am blessed or cursed with extreme self-awareness.  I know who I am.  I know my good points.  I know my bad ones.  I know the ones that I could overcome and that I probably never will.  I know me very well.  And yet I still look in that mirror and ask that question.  Because my arm reaches out in the night and encounters nothing...except a kitten who thinks I’m trying to play and scratches the shit out of me.

I look at my cat Jaden.  She’s about 13 to 14 years old now.  When she was younger she had very little tolerance for people.  Whenever anybody came in, she would make a run for it and hide.  Nowadays, somebody comes in and Jaden heads right for their lap, as if to say, “here I am.  Pet me.”  Maybe both Jaden and I realize that, while death may not be waiting for us in the night as we rest restlessly, it might!  Is it the thought that I’m mortal that makes me desire intimacy this much?  Has something changed this much in me?  Or have I spent so long the loner that the loneliness has overwhelmed me?  I know so much about me, but this I don’t know.  Maybe I’m just one of millions, of billions, just holding out my arms and asking someone to show me she loves me.

Maybe I just need a hug.