hugs

I have no qualms about admitting that I'm a hug whore.  I really enjoy a nice passionate hug and I seek them out and can't think of one time where I shied away from one.  I've always looked at hugs as the feminine equivalent of a hand shake.  Like handshakes, I do judge people on the way they hug.  With a handshake, however, it's very simple, was it firm or was it not firm?  Ever since I was young, I always respected someone that when they shook my hand, my hand hurt afterwards.  I actually have a moral problem with shaking without a firm grip, which gets me in trouble with women since a lot of times they will shake their hand in pain.  I do feel bad when this happens, but I really can't shake with a non-firm grip.  this is why I try to hug women.  In Ohio,where I grew up, this is almost always taken the wrong way and the women cower back thus leaving me in an awkward position since I went in for a hug, got denied, shook hands and now I just have to hope I don't hurt her hand.  I have never gotten in trouble for squeezing too hard on a hug.  That's why I like European and New York culture where women and men (and in Europe men and men) hug as a greeting even if it's their first.  Hugs are so much cooler than handshakes because the way people hug is as unique as people get.  Here are some examples. 

Almost always when a guy hugs another guy, there is a last second pull back as they don't fully commit and use their arm lengths to cover the slight distance they pulled back just before impact.  Now, when I'm hugging another guy, I expect and don't mind this.  I realized though that when I hug my homosexual guy friends, they don't have this last second pull back.  This is regardless of if they have a boyfriend at the time.  It also crosses gender lines the other way, one of my female friends does hug me like a guy.  Now, how big of a deal is this?  Well, I used to have another female friend that hugged me like a guy and I will briefly talk about her.

Throughout the time i've known her, we were very close friends.  I believe a lot of people have a hierarchy of friends but I'm one of the few that puts a lot of thought into it.  There are 9 people I have let in my highest hierarchy of friends.  Three of them were mutual friends of hers.  Although I loved hanging out with her and I was a guest at her house on many many occasions, I always put her just a hair under the highest hierarchy.  When she hugged me, she hugged like a guy, and more often then not only used one arm.  It was just enough so that I didn't complain.  During the first couple years of our friendship, I would call her out if she didn't hug me good bye, which is why I thought these hugs were just to stop me from calling her out.  I came up with other reasons why she wasn't welcomed into my hierarchy but I realized that was wrong when in 2011, after we had been close friends for 8 years, we decided to go on a trip to Europe together.  I saw her at JFK and she walked up to me, wrapped both arms around my waist, interlocked her hands where my spine meets my buttocks and pulled hard toward her.  Immediately my posture straightened and I hugged her back passionately.  At that exact second, she was elevated as the 9th member of the hierarchy.  it turns out that the only thing that kept her out was the way she hugged me. 

The other interesting thing about a hug is that it shows how well you know someone.  Unlike hand shakes, I don't hug everyone the same way; since i know what they're going to do I react accordingly.  One of my best female friends hugs by lunging forward and literally jumping into your arms.  Usually when I hug, I lean in, but with her, I plant my feet because I know that I'm not only hugging her but I'm going to have to catch her.  My friend's cousin also comes at you with a running start but rather than jump, she wraps her arms around you and twists to her left (your right)  so, when I hug her, I relax the right side of my body and twist to ease the impact.  when she shifts, I ease her back.  My friend's other cousin will not let go until I pick her up.  She affectionately wraps her arms around my neck and nestles her head in my chest and waits.  Since I'm a foot taller than her, I'm leaning down to hug her, I merely straighten and she comes up with me and then she lets go.  The weird thing is, it's never planned or articulated, it's just that somehow I know she wants me to pick her up.  One of the other hierarchy friends wraps her arms aroud me, nestles her head into my chest and relaxes her body as if she's going to sleep.  This is what I call an affectionate hugs.  The ones who charge at me forcing me to set my feet I call passionate hugs.  The JFK girl is still a passionate hug but rather than charge toward me, she grabs me and pulls me toward her.  I haven't decided which hugs I like best.

My standard hug with a girl is to lean in wrap both hands around her and rest them in the middle of her back.  I pay attention to what she does so i'll know for next time.  I'm still thrown off guard by the JFK friend because I don't know when I'm going to get a passionate hug or a standard hug.  Although, since our trip to Europe in 2011, she has never hugged me like a guy like she used to. 

Hugs are the # 1 thing that cheer me up.  As I say in my book, there is no greater manly feeling than when a woman is wrapped in your arm and you feel her body relax.  As I think about this, there really are no two people that hug alike.  I still know two girls that hug me like guys but they do so in different ways, one uses one arm, the other two.  Asians don't like hugging, I can't possibly imagine why.  There's something mysterious, instinctive and unspoken about them.  Never have I consciously prepared myself to hug someone, I just naturally know what I'm supposed to do and the more times I hug someone, the better I get without even realizing it. 

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