To hug or not to hug?

This has happened to me more than once in recent weeks, so I thought I would write a tidbit relating to hugging people you sorta-kinda-know.

The first incident happened several weeks ago. A friend of a friend that I had just met that night, after a good time walking around Chinatown and having dinner, was taking her leave. I saw it in slow motion: she went for a hug, and I had already decided to go for a handshake. Result? Awkward hug-lunge finishing in a handshake. Granted, this was after I hugged the friend goodbye so it might have been better for me to have kept the pattern going.

The second incident happened yesterday. This time, I was the victim. After this acquaintance/friend hugged other people goodbye (that she knew better), she looked at first to be going for a hug so I did too (when in Rome...). She then changed her mind last minute to do a handshake (or so it seemed to me) but ended up giving me a hug (because my mass was much greater than hers, it was harder for me to change what I was going for, you know, Newton's 2nd law of motion or whatever), and said "Ok, I guess you've earned the hug status.", or something similar.

So I guess the problem arises when the two parties are not clear on what their status is (hugging friends, handshake friends, or wave good-bye friends), which can be exacerbated by the hugging of better known friends just prior (because you don't want to break the flow).

It's also made more difficult when everyone's threshold for different statuses are different. Oh, life's quandaries.