I was where these men were when I was married and not out. It took me a while to learn to feel comfortable with touch. The primary way I did that was to learn to feel comfortable with my sexualization of touch. My major beef with the article is this statement “How to parse out the sexual from the platonic”. Its not possible for me. Touch with a man and a even a woman many times has a sexual aspect to it for me. I am aware of that and enjoy it thoroughly. I have no desire to suppress it in any way. I own my own reaction and don’t project that onto the other person — i.e. they may or may not have some sexual response to touch. The person who wrote the article needs to understand why having a sexual reaction to touch is personally uncomfortable for him. A healthy discussion would be to learn not to project our reaction/feelings onto others. Own them and then state tuned to how the other person is reacting. I believe the Italians he refers are very comfortable with their sexual feelings on touch. They haven’t “parsed them out”. He states that men need to learn to do “gentle non-sexual touch”. That implies that somehow I own how the other person reacts to my touch. I can only own my reaction to touch and what my intentions are with touch. My intentions are connections. Part of connection for me on touch is that in many cases it triggers a sexual reaction in me. I love that, own that, and have no interest in “parsing it out”.