The Awkwardness of Hugging

So I met up with a few old friends recently (multiple instances; different sets; essentially, disclaimer for avoiding being identified by said friends). I realised:

Hugging is awkward!

Now, don't mistake me - I am not this random emotionless cold person or someone with major issues of physical contact with another human. It's more about the social complications that it entails.

Consider the scenario of shaking hands. Apart from the complications requiring the understanding of the cultural background of the person, there's also additional complications of occasions. I am unexpectedly meeting this colleague at a common party after work and I will meet the person in another 12 hours. But, I shook hands with the others guys, who I was meeting after some time. Or, the timing of it - you offer the hand just as other person looked elsewhere. Or, there's a mismatch on the firmness of the handshake.

That encapsulates the complexity of a hug but there are a few other reasons that make it more complex. It's not helped by the fact that there would be times when one needs to anticipate accurately if the situation calls for a hug or a handshake.

There's the issue of gender - and I've just resorted to the rule that to the opposite gender, just wait for the other person to offer. Despite that, there have been a few (greater than 2) faux pas in the past month where either I offer a handshake while the other person was moving towards a hug, or not even offering a handshake.

Now, in most of the hugs, there's nothing sexual to it (tangential link: xkcd). But, if the person of the other gender is married, there's that added doubt that plays in mind - at least mine - regarding the appropriateness of it all, especially for the spouse.

Some people are pretty clear-cut 'natural huggers'. Either you know it from the history or they are going to come with their arms outstretched from quite some distance to clearly signal. I love these types. However, there are the more ambiguous ones.

There are those who hate physical contact. There are those who you meet after a long time - in which case it is fair to anticipate a hug - but are immediately meeting with the next day as well. There are those who you aren't sure are close enough to hug or acquaintance enough to gracefully shake hands with. There are those who would hug if it's a big group meet-up but not so, if it's a much smaller meet-up. Then there are those who just don't consider a hug to be particularly important. That last category I mentioned - now there are two fairly close friends of mine who aren't particularly 'touchy' about physical contact and yet, despite having a good friendship with each for more than 3 years, and on multiple occasions meeting after a long time, we might have hugged less than 3 times.

Apart from the complexities of the different kinds of people, there's the point about the different kinds of hugs. There's an oatmeal comic on it! A handshake, broadly, just comes in the spectrum of firmness but a hug has multiple parameters in which it varies - the percentage of body contact one has (ranging from a side/bro-hug to a bear-hug), the duration of the hug, the intensity of it etc.

So, what's the point of this? Just good old rant. However, to be fair, past history of meet-ups is somewhat an indicator but not a 100% clear one. So, if you are a reader and a friend, you can make it easier for me to categorize you - just come up and have a conversation on the subject, so I can mentally classify you better (and there's a good chance I'll forget the classification - apparently I have memory issues). And, if you are a reader but not a friend/acquaintance - to my knowledge that set didn't really exist but if it does, that's pretty cool - either have a chat with any two of your friends on the topic, especially two of the friends you've actually not hugged in some time despite having met up. Just bring this up randomly. There's some chance the other dude is somewhat like me and has these same doubts etc.

But, all said and done - a 'goodbye hug' is awesome! Period.

P.S.: I had a tonne of ideas to make this a much better post than it turned out. This Waitbutwhy link is a reference to how I wanted it to be <random aside: if you read my blog and don't know of/read Waitbutwhy, that's actually a 'Wait-but-why!?' moment and you should totally check some of the posts there; longform, somewhat humorous, hugely enlightening articles <also, stuff written in such brackets are thought bubbles. FYI.>>. But, in some form or the other, it had been in my drafts for a good 3 months and I just decided to 'Fuck it!' and let it go. Path to Zen.