Why is it so awkward when your hand touches someone elses?

As I see it, it is intimate when two hands are touching. After all, touching is an important contact for all of us. It is a basic need, as it were. Touching someone is about trust, but also about distance and privacy. We all have our own bubble in which we store away from another, and if broken that will give a reaction, good or bad.

You guys wanna do it.

Just kidding, but maybe it has something to do with our solid habit of personal space. Strangers don’t touch each other at all. I can’t remember the last time I touched anyone I didn’t really know.

Maybe it’s because of our tendency to live in our own bubble that we subconsciously pine to have more contact with people.

Hmm, I can’t equate. As long as their hands are clean & it’s purely an accidental “glancing blow” then i’m not in the least bit bothered.

I think the issue is just with touching, period. Some people we touch, other people we don’t touch. Of course, not everyone is this way, but most of us value our space and don’t go around touching people. Touching a hand allows you to touch someone’s bare skin in most instances.. which is still different from touching a shoulder or someone’s arm, which is most likely clothed. I think that has something to do with it.
I also strongly disagree that hands are not intimate.

Your hand is naked. It is just out there. There is an enforced intimacy when you touch someone even accidentally.

Touching hands might start something

I’m not sure the hands are special in this regard. Wouldn’t any skin-to-skin contact elicit the same feeling of having accidentally trespassed?

Cooties!
Or to you touching hands is just a very intimate thing. I once had a boyfriend who only had to touch my hand and it would send shivers down my spine. I never looked at touching hands the same way after that. It always seemed very intimate after that unless its just a handshake which simply feels extremely formal.

Hands have more nerve endings per area than just about any other part of the body so they are Very Sensitive !

I’ve never had that issue unless it involved someone I was interested in (then it’s more giddy than awkward). Hands can be intimate for me, but since you don’t view them as such perhaps it’s the unexpected contact and the level of it (such a brief touch causing a greater physical feeling than you’d expect) and/or the subconscious consideration of their motive behind or perception of that contact (even if it was clearly accidental).

We use touch as a form of communication. When it’s intentional, it carries a message. That’s very deeply engrained; we learned it in our mother’s arms.

So when we accidentally make contact, there’s a sense of having unintentionally sent a message. You immediately want to take it back, lest it be misinterpreted. I suppose that must be the way Touretters feel when they blurt out some loaded word.

It’s really not awkward, when that touch sets off the fireworks!! If you know what I mean.

Because they masturbate and wipe their poops with their hands D:

It’s only awkward because you made it so

I think you guys have made me realize that hands are actually pretty intimate. Hand holding is what sends shivers down your spine with someone you fancy. So yeaaaa I get it now.

@Blackberry All hail the 5 ft of personal space! POINTS!

@john65pennington I haven’t felt those fireworks in forever. They’re the best.

Touch.
The most underestimated of the traditional five senses in my opinion.

The night my wife and I first met and fell in love it wasn’t sight or smell, taste nor the sound of each others voice that sealed the deal, it was the magical electricity that passed between us when we first touched one another’s hands.

@Boogabooga1 Awwwww +1

You know, that happens with feet too whether their bare or not. I think it has more to do with space than an intimate thing. When we touch someone inadvertently it effects us more than the one we touch. This has to do with how we would feel if someone touched us yet on the other hand, if someone inadvertently touches us, we aren’t as concerned about it as they may be. However, continuing to hold or repeat will negatively affect the other. Space.. We all own a plot (glad we don’t have space tax).