I should have posted something on this last week.  After we serve dinner on Tuesdays, we usually have some sort of bible study or devotional time and members of the group take turns doing this. Last week someone elected to explore the concept of love language, that is to say, to become more familiar with the different ways people express/perceive love, by doing a multiple choice survey. There were five basic categories. I don't remember what they all were, but the two categories where i scored predominantly was in spending time, and physical touch, which for some reason came as a big surprise to the person who chose the topic, probably because i I tend to give off this worf-like "do not hug me" vibe as part of what I've learned to do to make myself feel safe when I was younger.

Afterwards, while I was sitting at the table talking with one of the regulars who show up, an older guy I usually just call 'Murph'  (his last name is murphy), who was kinda doubting that i hadn't been adversely affected by my attack, when one of the other regulars, a guy named Jay, came up from behind and gave me a hug around the shoulders, catching me entirely by surprise, as he's never done anything more than shake my hand in the past.

Two things hit me at that moment, and I commented on one of them immediately to Murph, that if I was really always looking over my shoulder, I should have been freaked out by someone coming up from behind and being grabbed around the shoulders and neck. But I wasn't.

The other point was that Jay had heard what was more meaningful to me in terms of expressing love, and responded to it completely unbidden. And that's the flip side of making yourself vulnerable and putting yourself out there. I got attacked from behind, but I also got loved from behind.