Are People Too Touchy-Feely These Days?

[TooPatient]

I am mot a hugger. Maybe if I've known you for some time, but that better be a long time. I really really hate it when guys come up to hug me. Not okay. Close female friends only.

Yes people are too touchy feely.

 

[Smith1942]

I am mot a hugger. Maybe if I've known you for some time, but that better be a long time. I really really hate it when guys come up to hug me. Not okay. Close female friends only.

Yes people are too touchy feely.

Yes, I totally can't stand that either. Especially when it's young male wait staff in a place I go to frequently. It's as if just because I'm a friendly, non-demanding customer it's OK to be overfamiliar and touchy-feely. I only want my husband's hugs, and my mum's.

Re. the poster who said about her dad being British and therefore maybe more reserved - I am British. I only moved to the States at age 32. Traditionally the British were always much more reserved outside the family, but inside it's huggy, at least for my generation. But our grandparents were very Victorian, and of course that would be your dad's parents' era.

However, today - and I think this is a London thing - people in the UK capital have adopted the utterly pretentious practice of kissing on both cheeks as a greeting. If you are a continental European, this is not pretentious at all but a standard cultural norm in France and Italy, and it's three kisses in Holland. Everyone of every social class does it. In those countries, it's the standard way to greet people.

But the British never did the double cheek kiss until recent years, when particularly snobbish London circles adopted it as a way to appear sophisticated, and it's filtered down to all layers of business in certain London industries and certain social circles. It's completely out of keeping with all the norms of British culture and British life. Imagine two Yorkshire farmers in a pub in the Dales greeting each other with two air-cheek kisses! It wouldn't happen. The double cheek kiss is an import by a certain type of British snob, and I'll be subjected to it next week when I see my husband's London family. I wish they'd keep their French pretensions and their germs to themselves. Baaaaaah, humbug!