To Have and to Hold

"We so much embrace sexuality and we so much embrace sex in marriage and relationships with others that we lose that connection with just feeling safe in touching and holding."
"I think a lot of guys don't know how to do that very well with their partners. They don't know how to hold a physical non-sexual space with a partner."
Mark Stone, holistic kinesiologist, Chicago

"They can't touch men because that's gay. They can't touch women because that's creepy. They can't touch children because, well, everybody knows you'd be a pedophile if you touched a kid."
"So men can either touch a sexual partner or they can touch in violence."
Kassandra Brown, cuddlist.com provider, Boulder, Colorado

"Most clients are under some level of duress: anxiety, stress, loss or need."
"If there's sexual chemistry [arousal] does that mean you have to act on it? You notice it, you let it pass."
Adam Lippin, co-founder, cuddlist.com

Cuddler Madison Powell says people often think her occupation is weird, but she believes providing human touch is an essential service for people who lack it in their lives. (Madison Powell)

 

There's a market for everything. Build it and they will come. Sometimes the service being marketed deals with deep-seated emotional needs. A market deserving to be served, perhaps. Perhaps the need for such a market reflects the deep alienation pervasive in modern society. On the other hand, it's possible that remoteness from one to another always existed, anywhere, at any time. In the modern era, however, it is all too likely exacerbated by our ability to communicate anywhere, anytime. Which is to say, remotely.

Our need to physically confront another human being for any reason; to pass the time of day, to indulge in deep conversations, to share experiences, to express our desires, to explore the possibility of finding a life companion, is being circumvented to a certain degree by the distance we place between ourselves and those we communicate with online. There are all too many who have a presence online with a nefarious agenda; how to separate them from the genuinely concerned?

In an era when companionship seems more elusive than ever, when more people live single lives, when it seems difficult to meet potential friends and partners in life, and when emotional bonds that form all too frequently break down as people exert their individuality and forgo the simple expedient of compromising in the greater interests of living congenially with others in mutual respect and fondness, separations constantly occur, and people are left emotionally deprived, shiftless.

"I was kind of an empty shell of touch deprivation. I thought, 'Why isn't there a Starbucks for hugs, where do I go for that? So I realized that this is a thing that should exist", explained 20-something Portland, Oregon resident, Samantha Hess. On the dissolution of her marriage she thought long and deep and in 2014 opened a shop she named Cuddle Up to Me, and there trained cuddlers to hold, stroke and hug customers platonically, fulfilling a need for a physical touch of another human being.

How innovative.... Casual physical touch appears an anomaly in current social culture where onscreen interactions is where socializing largely takes place for far too many people, leaving them with an aching vacuum. The website cuddlist.com is now two years old. It has been responsible for training roughly 400 professional cuddlers and works to connect clients to providers across the United States. (The concept has now spread to Canada, an indication that physical-touch deprivation is universal.)

Some of those clients have a physical disability, suffer from post-traumatic stress, or have been diagnosed on the autism spectrum. Increased attentiveness, decreased depression and immune-system boosts have been linked in studies with massage therapy. An hour session with a cuddlist.com provider comes in at $80 U.S, which the site has managed for over ten thousand requests for service. Although providers are both male and female, 91 percent of cuddlist.com clients are male, three-quarters of providers, female.

Marylen Reid, founder of The Cuddlery, said she dreamed of starting the business when she had trouble finding platonic 'cuddle buddies' online. (Marylen Reid)

 

There are strict rules imposed by cuddlist.com on how a session engages and performs. The initial contact between client and cuddler is by telephone after which a meeting takes place where both agree that there will be no sexual quotient involved and either provider or client may end a session at any point should either feel constrained to do so. Conversations usually run through a typical session, while clients and providers hold hands or hug.

"Massage therapy ethics are all about one-way touch. There was not a way for (clients) to be OK with saying, 'Could you hold me'?", explains Annie Hopson, a Cuddlist provider from Ellicott City, Maryland, who also works as a massage therapist. Steve Curry of Northampton, Massachusetts, who struggles with spina bifida, explains: "As far as being in a touch relationship, most touch centred around my medical-care needs, not emotional needs."

To fulfill those needs he books two-hour cuddle sessions twice monthly, and for him, "It's never enough". Once a pro cuddling session has concluded, some clients claim they feel more comfortable initiating touch casually among their friends, or they no longer, when someone happens to touch them casually, flinch.

Paid cuddling services have started up in several cities across Canada in the last year, charging between $60 and $100 for an hour of snuggling. (The Cuddlery)