BENGALURU: Does your need, or desire, for love and connection change with the weather? Do you find yourself craving more connection and contact when the weather is pleasant? When the weather is horrible, especially in the super dry, itchy kind of summer days, like what we experience in Bengaluru, or the sweaty, damp, steam room climate of coastal cities like Chennai and Puducherry, do you find yourself wanting to be pretty much left alone with lots of space and don’t want much human contact at all?
You wouldn’t be alone if you find yourself not craving much touch in these summer days, not without air-conditioning for certain. We are physical creatures, social beings – yes, and we are also very much warm-blooded creatures in our bodies. We need our body temperatures to be regulated to a large degree and only then do we find ourselves a bit more physical and social.
When it gets very uncomfortable, our natural response is to first try and get to our own regulation before we are comfortable with contact. We are likely to push away any attempts at amorous contact, and even if we feel much of a drive in our own selves, it is likely to be short and swift. It is uncommon to be uncomfortable in our body and still want a great degree of contact.
We then find ourselves needing to feel loved and express love for each other in trying to make each other feel comfortable in this discomfort. We get gifts of cooling foods or other items, we try and spend time with each other in the cooler, more tolerable hours of the day or hunt for quiet air-conditioned spaces in which to hunker down, we do small acts of loving service by keeping bottles of water to chill in the fridge or other actions, and we just whine and gripe to each other about how intolerable it is and get some solace in it.
For people whose love language is touch, this kind of horrible weather can be especially frustrating. Not only is it physically uncomfortable, but it is also emotionally frustrating. The loving part of you longs for a hug or a cuddle but the very cells of your body revolt against closeness. If you cannot afford air conditioning or your environmental consciousness doesn’t permit you to use one, it is all the worse.
Loving each other in the long, hot, horrible summer is an especially challenging thing for people here in the plains of India. We are likely to be more irritable, quicker to anger, more tempted to want to be alone. Conflicts may feel harder to repair. It may be tempting to call the whole thing off and go cool off by yourself.
If you are feeling all that, if you want to just break up already, hang on. It may not be really what you want – it might just be how you are feeling about the weather and not each other. Take the space. Cool off in whatever way you can – both physically and emotionally. This too shall pass.
(The writer’s views are his own)