If I like and want to hug everyone at a gathering except one person, and that one person asks for a hug after I’ve hugged all the other people and deliberately not hugged them, that’s gonna be awkward no matter what norms we have unless I have a reason like “you have sprouted venomous spines”.
Out of curiosity, are there any particular behaviors you have encountered at a gathering (or worry you may encounter) that you find off-putting enough to make the hug an issue?
I prefer to hug only people I like, and I don’t like literally everyone. Hugging people I merely don’t like that much is not so much “an issue” as it is “a thing I do not think should be subject to social pressure”—who I’m going to touch and how should be solely about the intersection of my preferences and the other person’s. It’s not about a specific behavior (i.e. I’m not particularly afraid someone’s going to take a hug and turn it into unexpected rear-grabbing or anything like that).
Update: I am now a little afraid that people will take a hug and turn it into unexpected cheek-kissing. I now wish I hadn’t hugged that person. All, please be careful with this sort of pitfall.
Where was that person from? In certain places, cheek-kissing is the default way to greet a female with whom one is on a first name basis, so if they were from such a place, maybe they didn’t assign a higher prior to you being weirded out by a kiss on the cheek than to you being weirded out by a handshake.
I didn’t know his name, first of all. Second, as far as I know (based on lack of obvious accent and later learning his name) he’s from America or some comparable culture. Third, reasonably aware people in the United States interacting with Americans should figure out not to kiss near-strangers pretty quick.
(I was assuming that you had at least introduced to each other and interacted for a while first. Possibly because I myself don’t usually hug people whose name I don’t know (unless we’re dancing or it’s midnight on New Year’s Day or something). Damn typical mind fallacy!)
Out of curiosity, are there any particular behaviors you have encountered at a gathering (or worry you may encounter) that you find off-putting enough to make the hug an issue?
I prefer to hug only people I like, and I don’t like literally everyone. Hugging people I merely don’t like that much is not so much “an issue” as it is “a thing I do not think should be subject to social pressure”—who I’m going to touch and how should be solely about the intersection of my preferences and the other person’s. It’s not about a specific behavior (i.e. I’m not particularly afraid someone’s going to take a hug and turn it into unexpected rear-grabbing or anything like that).
Update: I am now a little afraid that people will take a hug and turn it into unexpected cheek-kissing. I now wish I hadn’t hugged that person. All, please be careful with this sort of pitfall.
Where was that person from? In certain places, cheek-kissing is the default way to greet a female with whom one is on a first name basis, so if they were from such a place, maybe they didn’t assign a higher prior to you being weirded out by a kiss on the cheek than to you being weirded out by a handshake.
I didn’t know his name, first of all. Second, as far as I know (based on lack of obvious accent and later learning his name) he’s from America or some comparable culture. Third, reasonably aware people in the United States interacting with Americans should figure out not to kiss near-strangers pretty quick.
(I was assuming that you had at least introduced to each other and interacted for a while first. Possibly because I myself don’t usually hug people whose name I don’t know (unless we’re dancing or it’s midnight on New Year’s Day or something). Damn typical mind fallacy!)