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Are you dreading spending the winter alone on your couch? If this is the case and you are rushing to dating sites and apps in the hope of quickly finding a cocooning partner, you may be a fan of the “cuffing season”.
They say that summer is the season of love. However, these passionate idylls often fade as quickly as the flowers with the approach of autumn and with the return to reality imposed on us by the start of the school year. Already, the object of our summer desires seems very far away. However, another time of the year would be conducive to fleeting relationships and romantic disappointments. And this is precisely what we are going through.
Winter cold warms single hearts
As we prepare to switch to winter time and the cold is fast approaching, the temptation to take refuge in your sofa to curl up there all weekend is growing. Spending the winter alone? An idea that depresses more than one. This is why some do not hesitate to embark on a frantic search for a partner to spend the winter. The reason: lower temperatures associated with low morale, or even for some people with seasonal depression.
A phenomenon that has not escaped the radars of certain companies. The American reservation site Hotel.com, for example, recently carried out a survey of 2,000 single French people on this phenomenon that the company likes to call “mating season plaid”. According to the survey, more than one in two French people (60%) would have spent “a great summer” as single, but plan to get married this fall.
“Cuffing season”: definition and principles
This love trend – which has been talked about in the United States for several years – is beginning to take hold in France. Since 2020, the Urban Dictionary defines this trend as “the cold season when everyone is in a relationship”. Proof that the concept of looking for a partner at all costs to “warm up” has become a real phenomenon. The term “cuffing” refers to the notion of exclusivity.
But are these relationships destined to last? If there are of course no rules in love and no one is safe from finding their soul mate by practicing the cuffing season, we can still deduce that they will be short-lived. And that’s even the whole principle: we stay together until Valentine’s Day which, in addition to falling in the middle of winter, is often perceived by some as an injunction to be in a relationship and therefore badly experienced by many single people.
The arrival of spring and the rise in temperatures change the situation, on the contrary restoring the desire to be “free” again and to prepare for the madness of summer. And therefore to separate from the person who has shared his daily life in recent months.
Between “cuffing season” and “snow globing”
This mechanism is also very close to another trend, also initially identified in the United States. Its name: snow-globing. The principle is in fact the same as with the cuffing season, but more specific, since it is a question of finding partners so as not to spend the end of year celebrations alone. Indeed, the pressure of being in a couple, exerted by the family and social sphere can be particularly felt at this time of the year.
Especially since the idea of celebrating Christmas can be associated with real anxiety, to which shrinks have even given a name: natalophobia.