Aisle Always Love You
My boyfriend and I have been together for a year and a half, and we really love each other. His parents adore me and are thrilled that he might not die alone. After his mom saw us being all cuddly in the supermarket, she warned him that we may be getting in people's way or annoying them by "hanging all over each other." (We aren't doing anything dirty or gross -- just hand-holding, play wrestling, quick kisses.) She wondered whether we do this because one of us is insecure. I felt sort of offended. We're just affectionate. Most people who see us smile.
--Lovey-Dovey
There's being cuddly at the supermarket, and then there's being cuddly in a way that says, "We usually do this with whipped cream."
Even if what you're publicly displaying is affection, not foreplay, there are a number of reasons it may make onlookers uncomfortable: It's them. (They were raised to think PDA is not okay.) It's their relationship. (The more warm, cuddly, and adorbs you two are the more you remind them that their relationship temperature is about 3 degrees above "bitter divorce.") It's the wrong time and place. (They're watching you do huggy headlocks at Granny's funeral.)
You're actually onto something by being so physically demonstrative. Charles Darwin observed that expressing the physical side of an emotion -- that is, "the outward signs," like the red-faced yelling that goes with rage -- amps up the emotion. Modern research finds that he was right.
For example, clinical psychologist Joan Kellerman and her colleagues had total strangers do something lovers do -- gaze deeply into each other's eyes. Subjects who did this for just two minutes "reported significantly more feelings of attraction, interest, warmth, etc. for each other" than subjects in the "control" condition (who spent the two minutes looking down at each other's hands). Research on touch has found similar effects. The upshot? Act cuddly-wuddly and cuddly-wuddly feelings should follow.
Maybe you can science his mom into feeling better by explaining this. Consider that she may just be worried that you two are going to burn yourselves out. If you think that's part of it, you might clue her in on what the greeting cards don't tell you: Love is also a biochemical process, and a year and a half in, you're surely out of the hormonal hurricane stage.
You also might dial it down a little around her (not because you're doing anything wrong but because it's nice to avoid worrying Mumsy if you can). The reality is, we all sometimes get in other people's way when we're trying to find something at the supermarket -- organic Broccolini...grape kombucha...precancerous polyp in the girlfriend's throat.
Play wrestling in a supermarket? That might get in other people's way, and even if it isn't is highly inappropriate in such a setting. I'm with the mom on this one.
Amazed_476 at October 12, 2016 5:27 AM
I think it's just a thing of the older generation. (And I feel funny saying that, because now I am the older generation, but whatever.) As long as you aren't doing it to intentionally inconvenience other people, or to be exhibitionists, I have no beef with it.
Cousin Dave at October 12, 2016 5:56 AM
"Thrilled that he might not die alone???" Does he have a dread disease or something?
Helena Handbasket at October 12, 2016 6:45 AM
It's a grocery store! You know, that place where you hang out like at Starbucks.
It's not like I'm fighting little old ladies w/big carts shuffling along, or little kids yelling for candy, or even other adults trying to get some stuff and get home to fix supper, make the kids do homework, and put up w/a 12 year old's "knowledge".
Nope. I LOVE watching young adults INVENT SEX! Wow! Never in my several decades of being married did I know about that stuff. (Let me know if you want to stop playing and really fool around sweetheart.)
IT'S SO CUTE! LOOK AT ME!
Sorry. It's like nails on a chalkboard. There's a reason children should be seen but not heard.
Bob in Texas at October 12, 2016 7:32 AM
"Thrilled that he might not die alone???" Does he have a dread disease or something?
@Helena, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who picked up on that. Couldn't help but snicker.
I'm with Bob in Texas on this one. Smooching and wrestling in a supermarket seems like immature attention-seeking. Go back outside and wait in the car.
Pirate Jo at October 12, 2016 9:03 AM
Most people are not attractive enough where their displays of affection don't gross the rest of us out.
Ppen at October 12, 2016 9:41 AM
Its cultural and generational. Where I live in México the level of making out in public is much much more intense than say Wisconsin. Particularly among adolescents who need a boardwalk to get under, not having apartments of their own. That said, anybody who gets in the way in supermarkets deserves to be overrun with a cart, excepting infirm slow walkers or disabled.
zapf at October 12, 2016 10:49 AM
I thought it was just me. So many times I'm thinking, "You are just not appealing enough to pull off this PDA."
Insufficient Poison at October 12, 2016 12:16 PM
By all means...
Call the police, like you want to when other people do anything at all you don't like. No transgression against your obviously superior judgment is so minor it doesn't require examination by uniformed personnel.
Film us as we put the public at risk of injury and death by momentarily blocking a supermarket aisle.
Stick that righteous nose in the air. Maybe cosmetic surgery can relocate it to the top of your head.
That'll make you SO much happier than we.
Radwaste at October 14, 2016 7:43 AM
Radwaste,
If I "picture" you saying that w/a limp wrist and a lisp I snort my coffee out of my nose. LOL!
Bob in Texas at October 14, 2016 11:43 AM
No need for the police Rad. I can bump them with my cart and go 'Harumph'. Then I point at what I want which they are blocking.
Making out at a super market is a bit weird. Same with that dying alone line? How old are these two? First relationship at 40? Buy hey, as long as they aren't hurting anyone else weird isn't that big of a deal.
Ben at October 14, 2016 11:25 PM
I am with Ppen and Insufficient Poison on this.
Public mackers are never attractive enough to want to watch and if they are, they go nowhere near far enough to make it interesting.
So Ben, make sure you hit them in the ankle with that shopping cart.
FIDO at October 16, 2016 8:28 PM
It would be great if they actually were doing something unique.
Bob in texas at October 17, 2016 1:15 PM
Is there anything unique left? We have the internet and a wide variety of porn available. There are even special effects and whot not. You can watch a porn version of Star Trek if you want. I don't think supermarket mackers have the budget to compete.
Ben at October 17, 2016 2:17 PM
As our kindly hostess is frequently referring to evolutionary psychology, let me apply it here.
The hunting band needed real-time situational awareness. That was guys.
It's why women leave their carts in the middle of the supermarket aisle. They're not mean. They just have to find something and the next step---what is the situational issue here?--does not occur to them.
Going with evpsych, it occurs to me that the discomfort with PDA is that it takes the participants' eyes off the savanna.
Reduces survival and reproduction.
Hey, there are probably other reasons, but I figure evpsych explains so much I'd take a shot.
Richard Aubrey at October 20, 2016 8:18 PM
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