S/O holding hands: do you shake hands with strangers?

[Laurie4b]

I am totally fine with shaking hands with a stranger. It is a brief interaction that has long been socially acceptable. Holding hands with a stranger is something else again. Holding hands is a gesture that is reserved in our society for some type of intimate relationship. I voted that I would not be comfortable holding hands with a stranger in church while praying for them because someone told me to. (It would be different if I had just met someone, they shared that they had cancer or something, and I sensed a need for human touch) For me, the other thread was about fake, forced intimacy not about whether I'm freaky about touching people.

[TKDmom]

I am never the first to initiate a handshake, but I am happy to shake someone's hand if they offer it. Hugging is usually over the line for me. I have one friend (an older lady) who is always trying to give me a kiss on the cheek. I always have to fight the urge to push her away and wipe off my cheek. But I do have some Hispanic friends who always offer a hug and a kiss. It doesn't bother me at all. I have no idea why. Maybe because I know that is their cultural norm? It just doesn't feel like an intimate gesture coming from them.

[Impish]

You could offer your left hand then lean in for the air kisses. This is how women greet each other here all. the. time. They will greet men that way as well. (But men do not air kiss each other -- they just seem to nod at each other and grunt an unintelligible, yet mutually understandable utterance. :001_huh:)

 

People won't embarrass you with unwelcome questions. They will start thinking you are more "cosmopolitan." :D

Forgive me, but my first reaction was, "EEEWWWWW!". So was my 2nd. And 3rd. I like the guy's version better! :lol:

 

When visiting in Quebec, I had to endure the kissing. There's a reason I live in AB. The closest you get to strangers is when you huddle together in a bus shelter during the winter months. That's not a greeting issue though, its a basic survival issue. :lol:

[kalanamak]

I am totally fine with shaking hands with a stranger. It is a brief interaction that has long been socially acceptable.

 

Not only do I not mind it, I do it whenever I think it acceptable, including shaking hands with my insurance agent, patients, my son, etc. It is an old-fashioned custom I'd like to see stay alive.

 

If I sense a woman is a girly-girly, I will smile and nod instead of shake, but I am so used to working in the world of men, I find that if I want to be taken as *not* a girly-girl, I ought to mimic any male customs I can get away with without appearing frankly butch.

 

Few people have limp ones, but I do dislike them. The "hardest" handshake I ever had was the first time I met hubby (he came as a pair of men doing an estimate on my foundation problem). It actually *hurt*. I have since taught him to shake hands with anyone not as burly as himself, he needs to think of their hand as a cactus pad. I think he has improved!

 

Since I was already feeling like I'd been hit in the chest with the backside of a splitting maul, the hard handshake nearly make my knees buckle. But I sure got a lesson on the handsome but uncouth sides of hubby-to-be in the first 10 minutes I'd known him.

[Impish]

 

Since I was already feeling like I'd been hit in the chest with the backside of a splitting maul, the hard handshake nearly make my knees buckle. But I sure got a lesson on the handsome but uncouth sides of hubby-to-be in the first 10 minutes I'd known him.

:lol: