An Excellent Quote

... as this began, and we reached for mutual understandings...
"Please, will you touch me while I talk? Don't say anything, just touch me closely and intimately and nakedly... while I strip myself naked with words. Please?" -- Time Enough for Love, Heinlein

... as this falters, and I try to explain the connections and differences for me between people & types of relationships...
When you take away my ability to touch you, you take away my ability to heal. It is like putting a physician in a room with sick people, refusing him instruments or medicine or even bandages, and telling him to do his job. You frustrate a natural talent that longs to be free.

... as I cry, still... and again....
Seeing you now - with us as something less than - is like giving a starving man food... but not enough food to keep him alive: only enough to titillate his senses for a brief moment, and yet leave him knowing it's not enough to keep him alive. Then chide him, insisting that he should be grateful he got food at all.