Skin hunger is the desire to be touched.
Amae is something more. It’s what we feel when we want nothing more than to be held in the arms of someone who loves us, to be comforted by the embrace, and to feel that we can depend on that person for care.
Amae is not a sexual desire. It’s a longing to be sheltered and held like a child.
The temporary regression inherent in amae tells us something of the desire at its core, a yearning to abandon the pretensions of control and independence that form the hardened shell of our adult identities.
There is a judgmental bent to many descriptions of the emotion of amae, depicting it as a pose of false childishness adopted by spoiled people who want to be treated as children even though they’re perfectly capable of taking care of themselves.
Such criticism comes from a perspective that regards strength as the primary measure of a person’s merit. People can derive feelings of worth in other forms than independent power, however. Most people find value in their ability to cultivate relationships, and relationships are built not only through being useful, but by providing opportunities for others to be useful. Besides, no matter how old and callused we are, we long to be soft again, and to be held softly, to be indulged.
Perhaps a society in which people feel able to depend upon each other now and then isn’t spoiled so much as it is compassionate.
