What's wrong with people?

Sue22
Sat, 30 Dec 2017 22:38:34 +0000

Different kinds of touch send different messages, and those messages can change depending on the context and the people involved. A pat on the head would mean “Silly girl” to me. I would laugh if patted by my husband, brother, or one of my kids. If an adult patted me on the head after I’d said something dumb at a cocktail party I’d be severely irritated.

A pat on the butt from one football player to another on the field wouldn’t be unusual. That same pat to my behind at the office? Totally out of bounds. At a cocktail party? Depends who’s doing the patting. My husband-fine. My best friend-weird but still okay. My husband’s business partner, Harvey Weinstein, a woman I met five minutes ago-no, no, no!

My point is that trying to generalize from liking to be touched in general to this hand on the shoulder in the particular may not work. I’m a very huggy person and I have close relatives from both one cheek and two cheek kissing cultures but I don’t think I would have liked this touch either. In my experience the OP’s move would signal, “poor, poor you” and I would experience it as a bit of a power move unless the other person were a very close friend. Unless I’m in clear and extreme distress (e.g., just got the news a close relative died) I don’t want some acquaintance feeling sorry for me.

I’m not saying the OP deserved to be yelled at but had she listened to the other woman’s words she might have anticipated a negative reaction to her action. After all, the woman essentially asked to be left alone and in the OP’s own words, " I just thought she didn’t mean it literally."