Single But Don’t Want to Mingle: Cuffing Season Diaries
Ah, fall. The weather is dropping, the leaves are falling, the Pumpkin Spice lattes are steaming and ready to drink. And you know what that means…cuffing season is afoot. Not to be confused with summer bae season (summer baes are not intended for the long term), cuffing season is that period beginning around Labour Day when all the single people realize that they have to find a mate to keep them warm when the winter comes (and to find someone to get them a Christmas present). Single millennials from all walks of life flock to Bumble, Tinder, Grindr, and sometimes even the outdoors in order to get cuffed.
This year though I, the quintessential single, am feeling more cynicism towards cuffing season than ever. This is the season that seems to really hammer home singleness, and I feel like my attitude towards it this year is a kind of protest against the pressure bearing down on all sides for people to become coupled. Almost everyone I know is in some kind of relationship, and in this day of social media (especially Instagram) I kind of feel like they’re throwing all of their pumpkin patch dates in my face. It’s almost like attitude is “it doesn’t matter how bad the rest of my life is, I have someone to fuck when my apartment gets cold!” It’s not that I resent people loving and being in relationships, I just resent the expectation that I should also be doing the same. Hardly a conversation with a friend or family member goes by where someone doesn’t ask me if I’m single, why I am single, or giving my tips as to why I remain single (by all means PLEASE give me a rundown of all the character flaws you think I should fix in order to bag a man, no really, I’m listening). Pair this with my constant neuroses that I have fallen behind my peers and cuffing season has become a minefield. So maybe this year I will simply…cuff myself. I will go on long walks through fire coloured trees myself, I will sit in a coffee shop and people watch alone hell maybe I will even take myself to dinner and let me take me home (sorry for both that confusing metaphor and that mental image).
In fact this year I declare cuffing season, like so many men in my life, cancelled. With all that’s going on in the world these days I think we all need to focus a little bit more of the love back onto ourselves.