Hands Joined Where People Can See
When you walk hand in hand with someone in a dream, how firmly the hand grips yours, or which of you walks half a step ahead, can still register in your palm after you wake. A joined hand is a signal between two people and also a sign telling passersby that the two are together. In the grip and direction of a holding hands dream, a wish shows through about how a relationship is presented: how much of the bond you want others to see.
Out for an early walk along a river, you are passed by an older couple holding hands. They hardly speak, and only their joined hands swing gently in time with their steps. Making the person watching wonder whom they could walk with like that is part of what hand-holding does: it is a gesture that also faces outward.
Hands Joined on Dream Paths
- Holding hands with your crush - The person you have feelings for takes your hand without hesitation on a busy tree-lined avenue and starts walking. That ease about who might be watching carries a wish for the two of you to be acknowledged as a pair in public.
- Holding hands with a stranger of the opposite sex - You find yourself hand in hand with someone you do not recognize in an unfamiliar town, and only the size of their hand comes through clearly. A nameless hand that fits yours so naturally suggests a readiness for an encounter not yet formed, settled in the hand before the head.
- Holding hands with a little boy - A small boy grips just two of your fingers at a crosswalk and waits for the light to change. Here the small hand decides how much to lean; it takes the shape of a bond in which you protect but leave the amount of reliance to the other.
- Holding hands with your left hand - Your left hand is joined to the other person's right, and with your free right hand you point the way or push open a shop door. Handling errands while staying connected reflects a deft way of relating: keeping hold of a companion while moving your own plans along.
- Holding hands with your right hand - With your dominant right hand left in the other person's, opening a door or shifting a bag falls to your less practiced left. Handing over the hand you rely on reveals a readiness to put your own efficiency second and walk without letting go of your companion.
- Having your hand let go - On a crowded street the hand you were holding slips away from the other side, and when you turn around your companion has vanished among the passersby. That it was their hand that let go carries an unease that the other person was holding the connection together all along.
- Having your hand squeezed hard - The person beside you grips your hand hard enough to make the bones creak, and your fingers will not open. It is a scene in which the strength asked of you crosses the line of comfort and turns into pain.
- Crossing a footbridge hand in hand - Going up and down a footbridge while holding hands, you pull the other person on the way up and are pulled along on the way down. Leader and led trading places with the direction of the steps takes the shape of a relationship in which leaning and being leaned on shift from moment to moment.
- Holding hands with an ex - You walk hand in hand with someone you broke up with, as you once did, yet cannot recall how to adjust your grip so it fits as it used to. A hand that has forgotten how to hold mirrors the way a finished relationship fades from how hands fit before it fades from the heart.
- Hands growing sweaty - Your palm grows damp, and though you want to let go and wipe it, you walk on without saying so. A reluctance to make the other person uncomfortable has seeped into the damp hand you cannot release.
Hands Moving Forward Side by Side
Joined hands keep two people walking in the same direction. The handshake in hand dreams is a greeting exchanged at a meeting or a parting and released at once. In dreaming about hugging, the two stop face to face and take each other in with their whole bodies. In a holding hands dream, the two stand side by side and look at the road ahead before they look at each other.
In kissing dreams, the lips carry a closeness shown to no one else. In a holding hands dream, the closeness sits at waist height and reaches the eyes of anyone passing by. Because it rests where others can see it, the joined hand gains a second audience besides your partner: the people on the street.
Letting Go at the Nameplate
A holding hands dream carries the restlessness of a period when a relationship is moving toward a new name and you have not yet told the people around you. Someone who has just started dating a friend from their student days is invited to a friend's birthday party and, until that morning, cannot decide whether the two should arrive together or a little apart.
In the end they meet at the bus stop, their hands join without a thought, and talking all the way, they reach the friend's apartment building a little before the agreed time. In front of the nameplate, their hands come apart, neither one letting go first.
A Sign That Two Are Together
Tie signs are the gestures and belongings that tell both the pair and those around them that a personal bond exists between two people. The zoologist Desmond Morris took up the term in his 1977 book Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behavior and named holding hands in public as a familiar tie sign shown by couples. His examples are all behaviors in view of others, and none is drawn from an account of a dream. When tie signs are made the groundwork for a holding hands dream, a way of reading opens up: the joined hand can be taken as a message aimed at eyes beyond you and your partner.
Morris also notes that the term depends on the setting, since holding hands means something very different for a couple at the altar than for a doctor taking a patient's hand. In their 1991 paper "The Waxing and Waning of Relational Intimacy: Touch as a Function of Relational Stage, Gender and Touch Avoidance," Laura Guerrero and Peter Andersen showed that once a couple reaches a settled stage, their touching in public drops markedly. Why it decreases is left undetermined in the paper itself. Holding hands in a dream, after a long time, with someone you have been with for years carries a wish to confirm once more, as a sign, a bond you no longer show when you are out.
How Holding Hands in Public Is Received
How people regard walking hand in hand differs widely between countries. In China, the Li Lou I chapter of the Mencius, a collection of anecdotes and dialogues of the Confucian thinker Mencius, holds that etiquette keeps men and women from letting their hands touch even when handing something over, and the view that contact between the sexes calls for restraint has long been passed down. Even so, men and women walking hand in hand, and couples in matching outfits, are a familiar sight in Chinese cities.
In Western Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Latin America, including Mexico, holding hands, hugging, and similar touches in view of others are generally a common sight. In India, such behavior may be frowned upon if it disturbs people nearby, while physical closeness between people of the same sex is accepted. Even a dream scene in which you let go of a hand because you feel watched can quietly carry the customs of the place where the dreamer grew up.
Fingers Interlaced
Interlaced fingers take a little more effort to release than palms simply pressed together. Whose hand slid its fingers into that grip first can come back after waking as a stiffness at the base of the fingers.
Along the way that joined hands lead, even the shadows at your feet can keep close to the pair's steps. On the dream's paving stones, the two walkers' shadows merge into one at their joined hands and stretch ahead of them to the street corner.