Why does hand-holding now feel more intimate than sex?

21-year-old Orla has romantically held hands with three people. “I’ve had sex with more,” she says. “And in those three instances, sex came before hand-holding too.” This includes her boyfriend: “We had sex long before we held hands. Reaching for his hand or taking his when he offered it felt like a bigger deal than having sex for the first time together.”

Orla is not alone; many other young people also feel as though hand-holding is more ‘intense’ than sex (as one much-liked post on X reads: “First base is sex, second base is holding hands”). Zara, 25, says that for most of her adult life she has “subscribed to the Samantha Jones school of sexual liberation” – AKA, seeing sex as being “very separate from other acts of intimacy” such as holding hands or cuddling after sex. “I never held hands with about 70 to 80 per cent of the people I have had sex with – including one situationship which lasted upwards of five months, which is ridiculous to admit now,” she says. 

Zara’s attitude is hardly uncommon. As ‘hookup culture’ has become increasingly normalised over the past few decades, growing numbers of young adults have adopted a largely black-and-white attitude towards dating: relationships are either ‘casual’ or ‘serious’. And if they’re ‘casual’, affection – particularly public displays of affection – is off the cards: no cuddling, no forehead kisses, and certainly no hand-holding. (The prevalence of this attitude is largely why situationships – where the lines between ‘casual’ and ‘serious’ become blurred – can feel so disorientating).

“Hand-holding is associated with relationships,” Orla adds. “If I see two people holding hands, I assume they are definitely dating.” This all chimes with Charlotte, 26, has also dated people where sex came before hand-holding. “I once dated a man who was very keen to have sex with me, but holding my hand in public was a different matter,” she says. “I think hand-holding is something you do with someone you want to be in some sort of significant partnership with.” 

To some extent, this has remained true over time – public hand-holding between two, unrelated adults has largely always been a signifier of a close bond. “In the 18th and 19th centuries, when courtship rituals were more formal, a couple might hold hands as they danced, for example, or as a gentleman escorted a woman”,  says Dr Hannah Charnock, a historian of modern Britain at the University of Bristol. As courtship became less formalised in the 20th century, “hand-holding became more common as a way for couples to express and show their romantic connection when other public displays of affection – such as kissing – were still seen as inappropriate.”

But over the last 60 years, Dr Carnock says, “British culture has become more sexualised – people have sex earlier, have more sexual partners, and are more likely to have sex outside of marriage or engagement – and the meaning of hand-holding has changed in relation to this.” It’s a shift which has been documented for many years now: for her 2017 book American Hookup, sociologist Lisa Wade spoke to college students across the US and found that while many engaged in casual sex, “expressions of tenderness” like “holding hands” were rare. She referenced a New York Times article from 2014, where one freshman woman at Yale reported attending an intimacy workshop where “several men [said] that they found holding hands more intimate than getting a hand job”. Young people interviewed for an even earlier New York Times article from 2006 expressed similar views: one 23-year-old interviewed for the piece said that “It is a lot more intimate to hold hands nowadays than to kiss.”

“In previous eras, sex and romance were connected - romance was associated with courtship, which led to marriage, which was the precondition of sex,” Dr Charnock explains. “The idea that hand-holding is more intimate than sex, I think, reflects the fact that in modern society sex and romance are not the same; people have sex with partners they have no intention of marrying, having a long-term relationship with, or sometimes even seeing again! In this context, hand-holding is understood as a symbol of a romantic  – rather than purely sexual – relationship.”

Young people are now more reluctant to commit to another person, and holding hands tends to symbolise commitment

This chimes with Dr Natasha McKeever, a lecturer in applied ethics at the University of Leeds and co-director of the university’s Centre for Love, Sex, and Relationships. She explains that “holding hands [now] seems to express or symbolise a higher degree of intimacy than sex does [...] I would guess that some people in monogamous relationships would find it more hurtful if they saw their partner holding hands with someone else than if they saw them having sex with someone else.” She ascribes this attitude to the rise in ‘situationship culture’: “Young people are now more reluctant to commit to another person, and holding hands tends to symbolise commitment.”

It’s unsurprising that young people are increasingly afraid of commitment, given that the explosion of social media has robbed us of the ability to keep things private, leaving many of us with the nagging sense that we’re being constantly “perceived” – and consequently unwilling to take potentially humiliating risks. “Expressing genuine interest or desire for connection is frequently seen as risky or embarrassing, while appearing detached or indifferent is a way to maintain control,” Dr Jenny van Hooff, a sociologist at Manchester Metropolitan University, told Dazed earlier this year. “Emotions become bargaining chips: whoever shows less feeling holds more power.” 

Zara admits that she shies away from hand-holding as it “shows vulnerability”, which is daunting when dating feels so “precarious” in our current day and age; she says that withholding affection is essentially a means of “self-preservation” or “a way of ‘holding power’.” This tracks with research which shows that Gen Z are much more likely than previous generations to worry about coming off as “cringe” when dating: a 2024 report from Hinge found that over half (56 per cent) of Gen Z daters claimed that fear of rejection has stopped them from pursuing a potential relationship, and that Gen Z are 50 per cent more likely than millennials to delay responding to texts to avoid seeming “overeager”. 

But we can’t let our lives become governed by fear of rejection, hurt or humiliation – especially as love demands vulnerability by design. Thankfully, though, many of us are wising up to this fact. In 2023, Zara decided to abstain from sex for almost a year, and in that time she reflected on what she wanted to get out of her relationships. “Now I’m trying to find a balance,” she reflects. “Because casual sex can be fun – but I’m also trying to not avoid the more ‘sincere’ acts of intimacy.”