nope, in this case there isn’t a difference. not everyone needs to be coddled and i’m certain this guy doesn’t need coddling. Just some good advice.
Really, @hiitisit all you have to do is put yourself in the situation, acknowledge, do not avoid, your fears and discomforts, tell yourself in a sentence that you’re going to both “suffer” through and “learn” from it for exactly 2 minutes regardless of the outcome, take a second to break eye contact, look at her hand and then just be completely honest with her: “for some reason you give me some kinda trepidation about holding your hand, but i really want to”... then do it!
because of the honesty, you won’t have to worry about her “Finding out” because it was phrased so well, you won’t have to worry about her not wanting to. and the last amazing thing about this is that you’ll be doing it together, no longer alone.
the outcome for this exercise will be positive. get to work. tell her (more honesty) you want her to force you to hold hands at least once every 20 mins. ask her to help you to remember your goal. eventually, after you’ve gained that experience, you’ll just do it on your own quite naturally.
your inexperience is what’s making you scared. humans naturally fear the unknown. because you don’t know what holding hands and shit like that is suppose to be like, you’re mortified.. and because you didn’t have a proper understanding of how your baser instincts are working against you, you thought you needed some doctor’s prescription when really, all you need is familiarization with the activity that you fear.