We were crossing the parking lot, leaving a restaurant with friends who had been married for over 30 years. Looking at us, the wife said, “Oh, look, they are holding hands,” as if it were a remarkable oddity. I smiled, and thought, “When did they stop holding hands, or did they never hold hands?”

Many years ago, when I was in my twenties, I lived in France. A French buddy was expounding on seduction, as men in every country do, explaining, “When I touch a woman’s hand, it is as if I had touched her breast or between her legs.” Of course, I never had the opportunity to hear the woman’s side of that encounter, so I have to be wary of accepting it verbatim. Nonetheless, it is true that touch, particularly the least threatening form of touch, the two hands, makes a connection between individuals.

When men shake hands in business, it is firm, brief, and often perfunctory; however, when friends shake hands, they maintain the touch longer, and may engage the left hand on the handshake or with a pat on the back. When men shake hands with women, if they maintain the grasp a millisecond longer than expected, they are conveying the kind of message that my French friend was describing.

Holding hands can establish or validate or maintain a connection between people. Some situations call for more than holding hands. When a friend described to me the death of her young children in a car accident, I did not hold her hand: we embraced. When I met another mother from the PTO in the supermarket, I asked why she looked down. She told me that her sister was dying of cancer and was afraid that her young children would not remember her. As we talked, in the middle of the supermarket, she began to cry. I embraced her right there. Describing the scene to my mother, she asked, “What did you do?” I told her, “I cried, too.” However, those are rare instances. Usually, we can reach out for each other’s hands, to help and to comfort and to say “I love you.”

My wife and I are from two different and distant countries. As we became acquainted on the Internet (thank you, Skype), it was important to us to build and maintain connection, something we discussed. We made sure that we were available to one another for sufficient time to hear how the day had gone and become part of each other’s lives despite the physical distance.

Now, that distance is no longer an obstacle, as we have been married for three years and living together, but the challenge of maintaining connection is always there is a world filled with distraction, some pleasant, some less so. Part of that connection is physical; part of that connection is emotional; however, the boundaries between the two are not clear ones. Some couples consign love-making to the physical connection and leave it at that. We don’t.

When we walk into a supermarket, we hold hands, or my wife slips her arm around mine. We don’t think about it—it is simply part of who we are. When I am driving, we are often holding hands in routine traffic. It was not very difficult for our friends to spy us holding hands. I hope it keeps us as young as school children holding hands for fire drills or to cross the road, but I have no doubt it will keep us connected and focused on how fortunate we are to be together.

It has been written that the eyes are the windows to the soul. I wonder if the hands are not the doorknob to the soul. If you have not held hands with someone close to you for a long time, try it—and then let me know what happens. I recommend it.