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He just can't keep his hands off me

My husband and I have certain friends, a couple we’ve known for years and years and like very much.
Recently they’ve suggested that all four of us go off together on a cruise. I’d like to, but the problem is the husband, Bob. He just can’t keep his hands off me. He’s a terrible toucher. Of course, it’s not only me—he seems to touch everyone at parties and social evenings, even when his wife is around. What is he trying to tell us with all this contact?

Without knowing Bob and his background, nobody can say just why he has such a great tactile need. Dr. Theodore I. Rubin, who has written a good deal on psychological matters, suggests that for many touchers the presence of the wife may be just the thing that causes the problem. He feels that often excessive touchers are men rebelling against their mothers. They have made their wives into substitute mothers, and touching other women is a way of getting back at their own mothers—in the image of their wives.

With other men, the touching may be an attempt to manipulate and embarrass their wives. To act this way, they would have to be hostile to their wives on a deep level, Dr. Rubin adds. He believes that there are other men who touch excessively just to annoy the husbands of the women they touch. They feel this is masculine
behavior.

Still another reason, he says, may be an unconscious contempt for women in general, a feeling that they are all there for his enjoyment, nice objects to be touched and fondled as he wishes.

Lastly, Dr. Rubin feels that some men use this touching for sexual stimulation and a substitute for more complete involvement.

In addition to the reasons given by Dr. Rubin, there may be a simpler, more acceptable explanation. Touch is a very basic means of communication. Children need touching and fondling in order to grow up into normal, healthy adults. If the touching is denied in childhood, they often search for it in adult life.

Such a man, deprived of this basic need, can become an excessive toucher. The touching will have a little sexual connotation, and a woman will be completely “safe”—if not at ease—in his presence.

Your problem with Bob might be easily solved if you could bring yourself to have a frank, but friendly, talk with him. You might even take a tip from the men in Greece and buy him a string of worry beads. Greek men fondle these smoothly shaped beads constantly as a means of discharging an excessive need for touching or an extra amount of anxiety.

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