Hugs are awkward. I find them easy when it comes to my younger children, but if anyone bigger tries to embrace me for anything longer than three seconds, I stiffen. Is this because I am British, or just cold?

R and I are not doing an awful lot of hugging at the moment; we are not having an awful lot of sex either. We are in a period of detachment, a result of him telling me that I’m involving myself in his actions too heavily, and me telling him that he is not being very kind to anyone, least of all himself. If ever a group hug were needed, this family would be first in line.

I laughed when I heard that replicas of the Big Mug Hug – used by the strangely sexy but acutely un-huggable character of Rust Cohle in the American drama True Detective – are selling for mega bucks on eBay. I didn’t go hunting for one, but it might be the sort of vapid consumer psychology I sometimes adopt: if I can’t do something but like the idea, I try to buy into it. Surely it would be big hugs all around if I got to drink my coffee from a cheery, huge-font mug.

Until recently I thought I was huggable, and very able to give good hugs too. But a couple of months ago I was in my mother’s kitchen and she was upset. I wanted to say that everything would be all right by putting my arms around her and letting her head rest on my shoulder. I could picture comforting her, but when I tried to jolt my body into action I found I was too self-conscious to actually go through with the hug. I said, “It’s all right,” instead, from a distance. I thought of my sister’s ease in the same situation. They have always been so tactile with each other and I wondered if I had once been like that, and, if so, when hugs began to feel awkward. My mother and I talk on the telephone every few days, we say I love you at the end of emails and texts. But standing near, I realised that I couldn’t hug her. Perhaps this is not something that many parents and their adult children do, but the fact is, on that occasion I really wanted to.

I think of my own daughter, and how I behave with her. There are plenty of occasions when I’d like to hug her, such as when she’s down. I dish out the usual meaningful but predictably dull advice. She’s a teenager and I understand how my concern – whether physical or verbal – can often be seen as highly irritating. But sometimes I know that she wants to be held, and I’m the one who should be offering. The last time she was upset, I hugged her and her arms stayed by her side. But eventually her rigid body softened, and everything did feel decidedly better for a while afterwards.

Now that I’m looking at all of this, I have to question why I mistakenly thought I found physical closeness in relationships easy. I think it was because, as soon as I started having sex, I knew I could meet a man and within a couple of hours be lying next to him totally naked. And that, to me, meant being close to someone. Nakedness equalled sexual liberation, even though I felt horribly self-conscious and not at all comfortable with anyone.

When it came to my friends, people who I really liked and who seemed to like me back, the idea of a hug, or calling them up when I was upset, or talking about things that were awful without laughing the pain away, was terrifying. I though that friendship had to be an immediate transaction: I’ll tell you something and you’ll help me, and then you tell me something and I can pay you back by helping you.

I didn’t realise that the reciprocation could be delayed or that, in fact, sometimes the person who does the helping gains just as much as the person who is helped. Quid pro quo, in a less calculated fashion.

Friendships don’t usually require nakedness and sexual antics, thank God, so intimacy has taken on a whole new life and meaning. A life of calling people up when I’m in need, despite worrying they might be busy, or saying thank you when a friend pays me a compliment, or trying – but not always succeeding – to open my arms when a hug is needed.

Now I’m married, I can’t practise my ersatz intimacy by stripping naked or giving blow jobs to random men as gratitude. And this is useful, because I’m beginning to understand that real intimacy demands an overcoming of fear and awkwardness; it requires an increased level of trust and confidence. It’s arduous work indeed.