¿IF THE PANDEMIC IS ONE BIG CUFFING SEASON, DOES CUFFING SEASON STILL EXIST?

 Somewhere between the months of October and February, a profound event grips the souls of horny single people and horny single-adjacent people with an innate desire to get it on.

We’ve reached cuffing season, a time when people troll the dating-sphere for short-term partners to help them get through the persistent malaise of winter.

As the days get shorter and the nights grow ball-shrinkingly icy, the desire to cuff (i.e. the act of keeping someone as a human hot water bottle) gets too loud to ignore. Among the myriad wrenches so callously thrown in the air by COVID-19, a normal transition to cuffing season has just hit a speed bump the size of Utah for the second year in the row.

As long as people with genitals vaguely exist around one another, cuffing season will prevail. In the early days of March of last year, Dating.com reported an 82% increase in global online dating. Bumble saw a 26% increase in message exchanges, while “elite” dating app Inner Circle reported a 116% increase. In a perfect world, steamy messages exchanged between lusty parties would be all you need for the winter. For some, such a relationship works, but at the core of cuffing is contact.

For many, coronavirus can be the ultimate litmus test to whatever kind of cuffing season procures; a trial run that tests the strength of the relationship. During past cuffing seasons, we had the opportunity to spend time with a person with the looming fear of infection. If we felt awkward around a person, you could work through it with strategically-planned dates and home hangouts. You had the space to work out the knots of the relationships (though that usually happened in the bedroom).

Back then, the hardest part of going on a date was figuring out the time and the spot. Now, dating requires extreme preparation, testing, protection — all the communication stuff people pretended to care about during the before times.

I think there are mini cuffing seasons each time we go from partial to full lockdown mode. People scramble to find good D with a decent personality to keep them entertained until restrictions are lifted [and] they can swap out or safely date again. You're either moving at lightning speed or a slow crawl these days.

SOURCE: ASK MEN