Introduction
Everyone desires to express affection and to receive it as well from their loved ones. But, what is affection? It is the assistance and cooperation from others that a person needs to survive in society. It expresses care and symbolizes protection, approval and comfort. With affection comes joy, happiness and satisfaction in life which brings about a state of well-being, physically, socially, spiritually and emotionally. This state enables one to live well in society with a cheerful mind.
How do people show and express affection? First, being affectionate is good for everybody: it’s easy, it reduces stress and enable one to react to stress better, and it does not require medical prescription (Boudreau, 2007). Expressing affection can comes in different forms, it could be by verbal expressions where one says something positive about the other person and make them feel loved and appreciated. For example, telling them, “I like you.” Also just spending quality time together is a way of expressing affection as it makes one feel special by being with them.
Main body
Many a people love gifts and when they are given, they feel pleased and loved while others prefer acts of service where one partner can do some jobs on behalf of the spouse. For example, a husband deciding to cook, especially when he doesn’t like to, in order to let his wife watch her favorite programme on TV. This can make his wife experience a wonderful moment. Moreover, one can express affection by touch which could be holding hands, hugging, cuddling or even kissing. Such kind of touch shows love, support and appreciation for the other person, also without affection, a spouse can feel awful about the partner.
Lack of affection can therefore be very dangerous. In intimate relationships where it is an essential element, it can make one feel rejected and alienated and hence break the bond that holds that relationship. Eventually, some spouses divorce their unaffectionate partners when they find out that their partners can no longer show them affection, while others end up cheating on their partners with those they can connect with intimately. Other spouses feel neglected and consider it an abuse from their partners. As a result, they develop low self-esteem and can end up losing or gaining weight, their beautiful appearance disappears and they start doing things they would rather be doing together, separately. Loneliness and isolation sets in and the attraction they once had for each other reduces. This makes them see their partners as heartless and indifferent to them.
Children who are not shown affection at home tend to perform poorly at school. This is due to the fact that they are never motivated and inspired by their parents or guardians (Hill, 2001). They also find difficulties in relating with their schoolmates and hence they end up not being active in co-curricular activities that are essential for their growth and development.
Conclusion
At work, employees who are not shown affection tend to do things on their own and find difficulties asking their co-workers for help whenever they are stuck (Floyd, 2006). This lowers their productive and prolific prowess to the organization which ends up recording low output from them. Also, employees who are not shown affection find it hard to engage in teamwork because of low self esteem they would have developed about themselves. Therefore, they do not participate fully in the team and even withhold vital information that could be useful to the organization. Others become violent and at any slight provocation, they may pick up a fight with their co-workers which is detrimental to the company. Furthermore, they too start finding it difficult to express affection to their co-workers and as result, their co-workers may isolate them from making vital decisions that affect the organization to social functions such as birthday celebrations and wedding anniversaries. Consequently, they may get depressed and resign or even commit suicide which will lower the morale of the employees of the company.
Reference
Boudreau, D. (2007). Research Story: The Effects of Affection. Web.
Hill, G. (2001). A level psychology through diagrams. New York: Oxford University Press.
Floyd, K. (2006).Communicating affection: Interpersonal behavior and social context. New York: Cambridge University Press.