I’ve always felt like people avoided hugging, or really giving me any kind of platonic physical touch my entire life. I don’t know if it’s because I’m ugly, or unappealing in some way (I’m a woman who’s 25 years old. I’m also 5’4, so I doubt I’d be intimidating or anything,) but for someone reason, people don’t like touching me.
I’ve had a best friend who would tell me they don’t like it when people hug them or touch them in any way, and I respected their boundaries and didn’t initiate any kind of physical touch. However, when they’re with other people, they’d initiate physical intimacy with them, like they’d hug them, or sit in their lap, or goof around with them, and it just…it genuinely makes me wonder if they just don’t want me specifically to not touch them. It kinda hurts my feelings, and it’s tanking my self-esteem. I shower daily, so that I make sure I don’t stink. I also try to put on a smile and act friendly towards others, but none of this really seems to work
I also have coworkers who are just laughing and giggling and hugging each other, but they’re just polite to me, and they usually stay about a foot away from me.
Do I just give off an aura that makes me unapproachable for some reason? Trying to talk about it to people, I feel, would just come off as creepy (“Hey uh, why don’t you guys like touching me?”) But I don’t want people to avoid me for the rest of my life.
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At first I thought it would be a gender or religious issue that e.g. men wouldn’t like hugging you, but what you said about your best friend makes that moot.
Maybe it’s an age/maturity thing? The friend(s) you mentioned, are they younger than you? How about the people they interact with?
But more probably I think your friend didn’t want to say the real reason and instead gave a general excuse. And that real reason could honestly be anything, maybe even something flattering to you, if you get what I mean.