The power of affectionate touch

The power of affectionate touch in our relationships

One of the most poignant stories I have ever read was from an article I assumed was satire.

There used to be a local conference in my hometown of Portland called Cuddle Con (or Cuddle Conference).¹ At Cuddle Con, cuddling aficionados gathered to share hugs or snuggle in a non-sexual way; a premise that I assumed was a made up example of a quirky Portlandia event.

But when I actually read the article, I was moved by the participants’ stories. The most riveting case was of a man who drove ten hours from California to participate in the conference. When asked why he made the effort, he said that since his wife had died five years prior, he hadn’t so much as touched another human being.

Photo by Cathy Mü on Unsplash

Isn’t that astonishing? We have created a world where someone can go five years without touching another person. It got me thinking, what is the role of (nonsexual) touch in our lives as human beings? What about when it is a romantic partner, a friend, or a stranger? How does physical contact change things?

It might not surprise you that touch is a relationship superpower. But it might surprise you why and how.

The Science of Affectionate Touch

Here’s my favorite study on touch: 183 couples were broken up into two groups. One group talked about their day and watched a video for 10 minutes while holding hands, and finished with a 20 second hug. The second group rested quietly for the same amount of time, with no touch.

Then the researchers surprised participants with every psychologist’s favorite tool for provoking anxiety: public speaking! Each participant had three minutes to prepare a 3-minute recorded presentation on a recent situation that caused them stress or anger.

Researchers learned that the two groups responded very differently to this stressful task. Participants from the first group who’d received physical contact from their partner experienced smaller blood pressure and heart rate increases compared with the no contact group. Affectionate touch literally reduced their bodies’ physiological stress response.²

Affectionate touch is associated with increased love between partners,³ more positive emotions, and greater well-being,⁴ resulting in changes to our physiology and how we think.⁵ Even imagining affectionate touch from someone we care about promotes a greater sense of security.⁶

There are many more examples of studies showing the positive impact of physical touch:

• Women who held hands with their spouse while in an fMRI were less distressed compared to those who held hands with a stranger. Significantly, the degree of relief the women felt was correlated to how happy the relationship was.⁷

• A study of 953 adults over five years found that the frequency of affectionate touch with their partner predicted increases in spouses’ own relationship satisfaction, life satisfaction, and mental health.⁸

• One study in Germany found that men who kissed their wives for 6 seconds or longer in the morning lived 5 years longer than those who didn’t.⁹

All of this points to a clear conclusion: physical touch is good for your relationship satisfaction, your mental health, and perhaps even your longevity. To a degree, we need it to thrive in life.

So, should you go to Cuddle Con?

No, you don’t have to travel to Portland for the next Cuddle Con. But I would recommend working to integrate consensual and affectionate touch in moments of stress and moments of reconnection in your relationship.

This is especially important because affectionate touch tends to decline over the course of a relationship; like so many good things in life, it takes intentionality to maintain. The longer couples are together, the less likely they are to hold hands, and parents are almost twice as likely to not cuddle as couples without children.¹⁰

Here are three fun ways to do this:

1. Create your own “Cuddle Con”! It could be a movie night where you snuggle or hold hands, a weekend where you agree to have some affectionate touch as part of every shared activity, or a week where you snuggle every morning or evening.

2. Talk about your opportunities to integrate touch: Do a date night where you each share how you want to include touch as a part of your relationship rituals, especially around stressful times (inside and outside of the relationship) and daily partings and reunions. For example, you might want a certain kind of goodbye hug or to hold hands at dinner.

3. Re-engineer your house! I’m not talking about a remodel. But one of my favorite suggestions from therapy training is to literally buy a smaller couch to facilitate more physical touch. This could also extend to the size of your bed, how you lay out the dining room table (do you sit next to each other or across from each other?), or even having only one reading lamp in bed.

Remember that touch should be all about a safety signal (“I’m here, you’re safe, and we’re okay”), not as a tactic to get more physical intimacy. The science says you will likely improve your love life, but only if you do it for the right reason.¹¹

Enjoy Valentine’s Day next week! I hope you have a special time together, and don’t forget to cuddle 🤗

1. Note! If you search “Portland Cuddle Con” you will find all sorts of other things. But this conference was a really cool idea.

2. Grewen, K. M., Anderson, B. J., Girdler, S. S., & Light, K. C. (2003). Warm partner contact is related to lower cardiovascular reactivity. Behavioral medicine (Washington, D.C.), 29(3), 123–130.

3. Sorokowska et al. (2023). Love and affectionate touch toward romantic partners all over the world. Scientific reports, 13(1), 5497.

4. Debrot, A., Schoebi, D., Perrez, M., & Horn, A. B. (2013). Touch as an interpersonal emotion regulation process in couples’ daily lives: The mediating role of psychological intimacy. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 39(10), 1373-1385.

5. Jakubiak, B. K., & Feeney, B. C. (2016). Affectionate Touch to Promote Relational, Psychological, and Physical Well-Being in Adulthood: A Theoretical Model and Review of the Research. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 21(3), 228-252.

6. Note: This works less well for people who have avoidant attachment styles.

Jakubiak, B. K., & Feeney, B. C. (2016). A Sense of Security: Touch Promotes State Attachment Security: Touch Promotes State Attachment Security. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 7(7), 745-753.

7. This is a weird study in so many ways. Why didn’t they study men? How could holding hands with a weird guy you don’t know possibly be relaxing?? It’s almost as weird as the German kissing study coming up…

Coan, J. A., Schaefer, H. S., & Davidson, R. J. (2006). Lending a hand: social regulation of the neural response to threat. Psychological science, 17(12), 1032–1039.

8. Zhaoyang, R., & Martire, L. M. (2019). Affectionate touch and relational, mental and physical well-being in older couples: A national longitudinal study. Innovation in Aging, 3(Suppl 1), S792.

9. This one is also kind of strange! What happened to the women??

Kirshenbaum, S. (2011). The science of kissing: What our lips are telling us. Grand Central Publishing. Page 147.

10. From a study of over 70,000 adults around the world: 75% of couples hold hands through the first five years of their relationship, then it drops to 64% for the next five, and below 50% for couples together for more than 10 years; 82% of childless partners cuddle but only 68% of parents do.

Northrup, C., Schwartz, P., & Witte, J. (2013). The normal bar: The surprising secrets of happy couples and what they reveal about creating a new normal in your relationship. Crown Archetype.

11. From the same study: Of the 35% of couples who rarely or never cuddle, only 6% were sexually satisfied and only 11% were happy in their relationships.

Northrup, C., Schwartz, P., & Witte, J. (2013). The normal bar: The surprising secrets of happy couples and what they reveal about creating a new normal in your relationship. Crown Archetype.