There’s a peculiar kind of grief in being surrounded by people you love and yet feeling untouched — not emotionally, not intellectually, but physically. For those of us whose love language is physical affection, the need to be held, touched, kissed, cuddled — is not a luxury, it’s a lifeline. Without it, we don’t just feel lonely; we feel withered.
I have always wanted to be held. Not just in fleeting embraces or in transactional foreplay, but in the quiet, steady ways that bodies communicate love — arms around shoulders, limbs entangled in sleep, breath synchronised in the hush of night. I fall asleep best when someone’s hand is atop my body, not in lust but in love. And yet, despite this deep yearning, I find myself in relationships with men who either cannot, or will not, offer that kind of touch.
It’s a cruel mismatch. A man whose language is touch falling in love with men who speak love in acts, or words, or in silence. And when you are six feet tall — tall enough to be imposing — it becomes even harder to fold yourself into someone’s arms and feel held. When the men I love are shorter, smaller, more delicate, they assume I am the one who will wrap them. I must become the blanket, the protector, the pillar. But I ache to collapse into someone too.
So then, there’s how I look. There’s a particular injustice in gay culture — assumptions wrapped in desire. Because I am tall and masculine-presenting, most men assume I’m a “top.” But I am not. Nor am I a “bottom.” I’m a side — someone who doesn’t enjoy penetrative sex but cherishes all the other physical intimacies: the grind, the kiss, the sensuality of skin on skin. And for the longest time, there was no ready vocabulary for all of that. So I get approached by men who want to be topped — who want from me the very thing I don’t find natural to give. They long for the same care and physical affection I do — to be cradled and dominated in a way I cannot perform without a deep dissonance.
And now I find myself in what many might envy or judge — a polyamorous relationship with two men. A throuple. But love doesn’t multiply without friction. One of them is deeply sexual. He identifies as versatile, but prefers anal sex. He tries to meet me halfway, because he loves me. I see that. But still, there is a chasm between my need for slow, non-sexual physicality and his need for release. And try as we might, love doesn’t always stitch the gaps between bodies.
My other partner, meanwhile, doesn’t like touch at all. His love language is acts of service. He’ll run errands for me, cook, fix things, do what needs doing. But in bed, he shrinks from closeness. And it is agonising to be in bed with two men, night after night, and feel untouched. To feel like a satellite in the very centre of love.
People think polyamory solves problems of lack. That if one person can’t give you something, the other will. But life and time touch all forms of love. What if the very thing your soul craves most — to be held, to be touched — becomes absent? And what if the only thing you are left holding is your own longing?
I don’t know if all relationships will end in heartbreak. I hope not. I believe I am loved. And I love them. But love feels incomplete, when your primary language is unheard. When you’re the one always reaching out, and no one ever quite meets your arms halfway.
There’s a wound in this. It bleeds in silence. And it aches most not in rejection, but in the quiet lack of reciprocity. Touch, for some of us, is not foreplay. It is prayer. It is home.
And I wait to be let in.
Hearts Still Care 