The Absence of Touch

In this day and age, the main thing that most people in a LDR cannot have is physical contact. I used to think that this was a trivial and base issue and that, if your relationship is based on loftier things such as communication, personality, and even a sense of energetic (or "spiritual") unity, then the physical part was the cherry on the relationship sundae. When I looked at what I endured back in 1987 with postal delays, prohibitively expensive phone calls, and higher cost travel, I used to think that free long distance calls and video computer calling (like Skype) made the only thing you were missing a relatively trivial loss. I was wrong.

My opinion stemmed from a very basic problem that many people have when it comes to their sense of self. We see our bodies and our minds as two separate things and that the "real" person is the character, the soul, or the personality. We should not tether our value to our bodies nor should others do so. The body ages, falters, and can be broken, but the mind and the soul that it represents, is perceived as "eternal."*

My mother raised me to believe that I was not equivalent to my body, and, perhaps, that was for the best. What she didn't do, however, was to help me make any connection between my body's reactions to the environment and how it shaped my mind. This was less a failure and more a reflection of a lack of understanding on her part. The mind and body work together to create reality. They are not two separate entities interacting on separate tracks.

In relationships, this is particularly so and I'm not talking about sex primarily, though that is a part of it. There is a chemical in our bodies, a hormone, called oxytocin, that is very important in bonding with others. While we may like to think that the mind operates on its own despite the body, the chemicals that mill about in our body influence behavior. You don't have to see it as the chemicals creating the behavior, but you can see it as the behavior releasing the chemicals and nudging us more toward certain feelings and actions.

For women, oxytocin is a complex thing. It's released during childbirth. It's also released when people touch even if it's just a caress or a held hand. It's released during social interaction. This is probably one of the reasons women bond more closely and rapidly as well as why they bond more tightly to their children in most cases. They are getting more chemical nudges more often in these directions.

Since women get oxytocin from more actions than men do, there is a difference in what they need in order to feel bonded with a partner. Men, primarily, get oxytocin from orgasm. That's one reason why men tend to value sex more than woman and why they often demand it more in relationships. Fewer orgasms means less oxytocin and a sense of a weakening bond. So, yeah, your guy has to have sex to love you the way he feels he should. Sex may, indeed, "equal" love in the eyes of some men.

Incidentally, oxytocin also increases empathy. If someone is given a drink spiked with it, they feel more deeply and are more sympathetic to others. If you're in a distance relationship and your partner seems to understand how you feel less well, it may be more than simply not being with you and seeing your body language or facial expressions. It could also be less oxytocin because of the lack of touch.

In distance relationships, less touch means fewer chances to reinforce a sense of bonding. This cannot be helped to some extent, but it can in others. If you know what is missing, you can attempt to pursue other means to release oxytocin. It might not be a bad idea to think about your partner while doing some of these things to help pair their image or your sense of him or her with the hormone's release. It also means that you can provide experiences for one another which link oxytocin to each other. If laughing releases oxytocin, then send your partner something that makes him or her laugh. Be the source of that hormonal bonding chemical release.

Since I fell in love with someone I had never met, and conducted my relationship with him without knowing what it felt like to be touched by him for nearly a year, I didn't know what I was missing (nor did he). In our case, I think that the bond could have been seen as "incomplete", though we didn't really deeply "know" what was missing. This is one of the reasons why I think it's that much harder for people who knew each other face to face and then have to take part in an LDR later on to endure the distance. They know exactly what they are missing and the presence of touch (and the oxytocin that it releases) that helped intensify and maintain their bond is now gone.

*Note: I realize this is a philosophical perspective. Atheists will see things differently, and I'm not inclined to disagree or agree either way. I'm just speaking generally.