Touching (Themes from Paris but not only ....)

Whenever I'm with Marie, there's a whole dynamic about touching. I haven't written about it before because I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it. But it must have been on my mind when I made a list of "ongoing themes from Paris," because I wrote it down. So maybe I can talk about it now.

In an email a week and a half after we got back, in relation to something else altogether, Marie wrote:

Don't remember if I've ever told you, I really like it that you are physically as well as verbally affectionate with me (independent of fucking, for which I KNOW I've expressed appreciation!) But it makes me feel very cherished, when you take my hand or are ready to steady me.

And sure. Naturally I'll put out a hand to steady her on a stairway, or along an uneven road. Naturally I'll take her hand when we are finding our way through crowds, so we don't get separated. (That's just how Debbie and I held hands when we were in Glasgow … well, more or less.) And naturally Marie and I touch from time to time when we are out in public, the way lovers do. The way spouses do. It's a normal part of being together.

But.

Marie wants to touch all the time. Maybe not literally, but it can feel like that. When we are out in public, it feels like half the time I am pulling my hand away, or gently trying to slide her hand back to her side. I halfway wonder if that's why she wrote the paragraph I quoted above, as a subtle and sideways way to complain about my pulling away so often.

The thing is, I don't think I'm being unusually withdrawn. Someone reading this will say to himself, "Gosh, if Hosea is willing to hold hands with Debbie and not Marie, maybe he's with the wrong girl." But it's not like that. If Marie wanted to hold hands as often as I do with Debbie, I would have no worries. Twice as often? Still fine with me. But every minute that we are outdoors? Wow. Sometimes I just have to scratch my nose, ya know?

And it's not like this behavior is new. Forty-some years ago, back when we were both undergraduates, she did the same thing. I remember her freshman year, when she was Mac's girlfriend, the people in my circle of friends used to laugh that "she and Mac usually had their hands all over each other." I think I remember something similar during the brief periods in the ensuing years when it was me. I never said anything, because it never seemed like a big-enough deal to be worth mentioning. But I was always aware of it.

I don't have an explanation to account for it. I could make something up, but I'd clearly be inventing it. Is there some deep psychological cause at the heart of it, or does she just read the ambient social conventions differently than I do so that this is what she understands to be "normal"? I have no idea. I won't pretend otherwise. And I'll probably never ask her about it.

But I can't help noticing it.