I was reading a book yesterday about living happily as a single woman, and one of the issues discussed was what the author defined as "skin hunger".

We've all heard the stories about how babies need human touch to thrive - not just the occasional touch of someone feeding them or changing them, but the touch of love. Babies who receive only routine, minimal contact tend to suffer in their physical and emotional development.

You don't hear much about adults needing touch as well, but it turns out that they do.

Not that I'm surprised to hear that! I just haven't thought about it in those terms. I have recognized that I miss being touched in a loving way, but I never viewed it as being an actual need. I know how I'm affected by my issues of loneliness, I just never identified the aspect of that loneliness that includes the absence of touch. Yet the more I go over it in my head, the more it makes sense.

Since reading that section of the book, I've reflected on how different my mood and personality seem to be these days, and I wonder if somehow "skin hunger" plays a factor. Has the lack of touch in my life contributed to my being sick a lot lately, and tired, and depressed, and just not the happy me I once was?

The only people I ever touch these days are my children - and that clearly doesn't happen often enough. And maybe because it does occur so rarely, it heightens the sensation when I do hug them. It's not merely about missing them or loving them, it's also about feeling that human connection that comes from sharing bodily warmth with someone you love and who loves you.

My skin hunger doesn't necessarily relate only to the lack of a lover in my life. I realize that since I rarely tan anymore, I'm also not touching myself like I used to do - every time I applied the lotion all over my body before and after tanning, I was providing myself with a tactile stimulation that was probably good for me.

As the author pointed out, for a single person who lives alone, opportunities for actual skin-to-skin contact with another human tend to be rare. Some women quoted in the book mentioned scheduling appointments with a masseuse, "accidentally" touching a co-worker's hand, and snuggling with their pets - just to satisfy their craving for physical contact with someone or something outside of themselves.

The ideal solution for my own personal skin hunger hasn't occurred to me yet.