She can't embrace hugging custom

DEAR AMY: After many years of travel and scholarship, at 60 I find myself now living in a small and tight-knit community. I like this and want to be involved, but the custom in the community is to hug everyone, indiscriminately, upon saying hello. I am a very warm person, but I am not comfortable with this community habit. The life energy exchanged in a full frontal hug is meaningful for me, with people I know well and with whom I have established communion. But to hug people I have just met with whom I haven't yet formed a meaningful relationship is distasteful to me. My husband says I should just get over it and go with the flow, but I don't particularly want to. I don't want to compromise my comfort and ethics, but I also don't want to put people off. So, my question is, how can I decline a hello hug without offending the greeter? I have tried simply saying, "I don't hug," offering my right hand for a shake and smiling deeply while looking into the other person's eyes. Consistently, people are offended and I have to explain further. I want to meet each person in an authentic manner, and to do so, I don't want to opt in to what I feel is superficial contact that mimics meaning.

--CC

DEAR CC: It sounds as if your years of travel and scholarship have led you to view these encounters as an anthropologist might. If so, then perhaps you can treat the natives of your new home as you might if they were inhabitants of a remote and affectionate island. If you were a respectful newcomer, presumably you'd work hard to adopt the native customs.

If you couldn't respect these islanders' customs, you would explain patiently, "I'm not much of a hugger. Can we shake hands instead?" As a compromise and alternative, I offer you my patented "sidewinder." The sidewinder is a sideways rather than full-frontal hug. (I'm working on a patent now.) Be yourself, but don't overthink it.