How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

by Lane Moore

We section off physical comfort and intimacy so heavily. We reserve it for partners only, and platonic friends can only chitchat and that’s it. How can you tell people to be okay with being single while also telling them they can only get the basic human needs of physical touch from not being single? But then, TV characters cry in each other’s laps, and race over with ice cream and hair braiding when someone so much as drops their car keys. And we’re told this is normal and everyone but you has six loyal friends they see every single day. It’s incredibly frustrating. So you take physical affection when you can get it, almost feeling guilty when you do. You might sleep with someone just to get to the cuddling part, knowing full well if the cuddling had been on the table, you might not have even slept with them to begin with. You might get super happy when your yoga teachers do adjustments because having someone touch you in a safe, gentle way, even for two seconds, feels like it changes your whole world. I know I do. Partly because human beings are designed to be physically comforted by one another, but also because it’s soothing parental behavior I didn’t often get as a kid. So when I get it now, it’s the closest thing I can get to immediate happiness.