Why Does a Hug Make You Feel Safe? How Affectionate Touch Builds Emotional Security

Affectionate touch — a hug, a held hand, a reassuring arm around the shoulder — helps us feel safe because it communicates care, reassurance and emotional support without a single word. Research on touch in adulthood suggests it can strengthen our sense of connection and emotional security, and may help ease loneliness and stress. The leading theoretical model, developed by psychologists Brooke Jakubiak and Brooke Feeney, proposes that affectionate touch supports our relational, psychological and physical wellbeing at the same time. It is important to be honest about one thing: this research looks at affectionate touch in everyday relationships, so it points to why cuddle therapy is promising rather than proving its specific outcomes — but the underlying principle is well supported.

That is the short answer. Below is a plain-English look at how affectionate touch builds emotional security, and why it matters for anyone who feels starved of safe connection.

Why does affectionate touch make us feel safe?

Affectionate touch is one of the oldest forms of communication we have — older than language. Long before a child can understand words, they understand being held. That wiring does not disappear in adulthood. A warm, affectionate touch still sends a direct, wordless message: you are cared for, you are safe, you are not alone.

This is the core idea behind the theoretical model proposed by Jakubiak and Feeney (2017). After reviewing a broad body of research, they argued that affectionate touch works as a kind of signal of support — it reassures us that someone is there for us, which in turn calms our emotions and strengthens our sense of security. In other words, touch does not just feel pleasant; it changes how safe and supported we feel.

What does affectionate touch actually communicate?

Part of what makes touch so powerful is that it conveys several reassuring messages at once — things that can be hard to express, or hard to believe, in words alone:

When we feel these things, it becomes easier to relax, to trust, and to face difficulty. This is why a hug during a hard moment can be more comforting than any advice — it speaks to a deeper, more basic need than words can reach.

How does affectionate touch support wellbeing?

One of the most useful insights from Jakubiak and Feeney's model is that affectionate touch supports wellbeing on three levels at once. They do not operate separately — they reinforce one another:

This three-part picture matters because it explains why a lack of affectionate touch can feel so hard. When touch is missing, it is not only the physical sensation that is absent — it is the reassurance, the sense of closeness, and the bodily calm that come with it.

Can affectionate touch help with loneliness and stress?

This is where the research becomes especially relevant to modern life. If affectionate touch communicates care and belonging, then its absence can leave a real gap — one that many people feel as loneliness, disconnection or a background sense of stress.

The findings reviewed by Jakubiak and Feeney suggest that affectionate touch may help people feel more connected and emotionally secure, which points to a meaningful role in easing loneliness and stress. For anyone living alone, grieving a partner, or going through a period without close physical affection, this helps explain a common but rarely discussed experience: that you can be coping well in every practical way and still feel an ache for simple, safe human contact. This experience even has a name — touch deprivation, or "skin hunger."

Does this prove cuddle therapy works?

Here it is important to be straightforward, because honesty is part of what makes this work trustworthy.

The research by Jakubiak and Feeney provides a strong theoretical foundation for why cuddle therapy could be beneficial. It shows that affectionate touch is linked to care, reassurance, connection and emotional security — exactly the needs cuddle therapy aims to meet. But their review examined affectionate touch in broad, everyday contexts, such as touch between partners, friends and family.

That means it cannot be taken as direct proof that professional cuddle therapy produces the same outcomes. To establish that firmly, we would need research investigating cuddle therapy specifically. So the honest position is this: the principle that safe, affectionate touch supports emotional security is well supported, and cuddle therapy is a thoughtful, boundaried way of applying that principle — but it is a promising application of strong theory rather than a proven treatment.

How cuddle therapy applies this principle

The value of cuddle therapy is that it offers safe, affectionate touch to people who may not otherwise have access to it. Not everyone has a partner, close family nearby, or friendships that include physical affection — and for some, including many LGBTQ+ people, safe and accepting physical closeness has been in short supply.

Professional cuddle therapy provides that contact in a structured, consensual and fully clothed setting, with clear boundaries throughout. It is a way of meeting a genuine human need — the need to be held and reassured — deliberately and safely. If you would like to understand the biology behind why this feels calming, our guide to how touch calms your nervous system explains the mechanism, and you can also read what actually happens in a first session.

If the idea of safe, affectionate, reassuring touch speaks to something you have been missing, you are warmly welcome to get in touch for an initial conversation. Everyone is welcome, with LGBTQ+ expertise, in a calm, private and cosy space in Archway, North London.

_This article is for education and is not a substitute for medical or mental-health care. It draws on Jakubiak, B. K., & Feeney, B. C. (2017), "Affectionate touch to promote relational, psychological, and physical well-being in adulthood," Personality and Social Psychology Review, 21(3), 228–252._