Jonathan Baron and Hailey Green had been talking on Tinder for a couple months. 

 

Their conversations mainly consisted of sending GIFs and emojis back and forth, while their time in person involved secret encounters of Baron sneaking her into his house late at night. 

 

“I didn’t tell any of my friends or family about her until about three months of seeing each other,” said Baron. “It started off as an ‘I’m bored and she’s cute’ type of thing and I told all my friends by summertime I’d be single.”

 

What Baron was doing, even if he didn’t realize it at the time, is known as ‘cuffing’ and cuffing season is just around the corner. Now is the prospective time singles are looking to cozy up, settle down and stay indoors. 

 

According to Urban Dictionary, the term cuffing season is defined as “a time during Fall and Winter when people who would normally rather be single or promiscuous find themselves along with the rest of the world desiring to be ‘cuffed’ or tied down by a serious relationship.”

 

Baron thinks this season is almost like hand cuffing yourself to another person. “You want to be close to people and cuddle all the time because it’s so cold outside,” he said. The Toronto couple spent most of their winter nights ‘Netflix and chilling,’ a common activity for young couples in university to take part in as their date night. Green was unavailable for comment.

 

Baron isn’t the only one who has unknowingly participated in cuffing season. According to an article in The Refinery, in 2010 and 2011 more people changed their Facebook status to “in a relationship” between the months of January and February than any other time of the year. While stats were lower during the spring and summer months.

 

William Fisher, a social and personality psychologist from Western University, who focuses his research on relationships and sex patterns, said “there have always been seasonal patterns in university students’ relationships.”

 

Fisher also said that individuals use things like ‘cuffing season’ or ‘friends with benefits’ as an adaptive placeholder to delay marriage and child bearing. “This is just another component of what people think they should do until settling down with a permanent relationship,” he said.

 

“I mean I did end up liking her,” commented Baron on his ‘cuffing relationship’ of last year. “But I also knew it wasn’t the real deal. I never thought it was going to last as long as it did.” 

 

Cuffing season is known to follow a common trajectory that has been compared to a sports game. “At the beginning of the school year people begin setting out their targets of who they want to cuff for the winter,” said Marissa Reingold, fourth-year Western student. “A meme on Instagram refers to this time as scouting or drafting.” [See figure 1.]

 

The Instagram post refers to November as preseason, December to January as actual cuffing season, January to February as playoffs and finally, February 14thas the championship game. 

 

“I’ve always heard of cuffing season, but I just never thought I would be a subject of it,” said Reingold, who didn’t elaborate on what her cuffing experience entailed. “I guess a lot of it was finding mutual comfort and warmth in each other.”

 

A journal in the Author Manuscript on “The Substitutability of Physical and Social Warmth in Daily Life,” explained that “people tend to self-regulate their feelings of social warmth through application of physical warmth, apparently without explicit awareness of doing so.”

 

Baron agrees. “It really makes you appreciate having a cuddle buddy on those cold winter nights,” he said. “Especially when you don’t care as much to go out and party it’s the perfect way to get the best of both worlds.” 

 

Studies show that cold weather makes people feel lonelier especially around the holiday time and they don’t want to be alone. Fisher said that during the winter season, people feel like they want to be closer to home and stay inside more. He explained that there are even seasonal variations of when babies are conceived.  

 

Although cuffing season is a term that has been defined since 2011, it has only become more prominent and easier with the uprising of dating applications. “On Tinder I’ve seen some people’s bios as ‘looking to get cuffed,’ or ‘looking for a cuffing season buddy,’ said Reingold. “I find dating apps kind of superficial, but it’s definitely convenient to find someone for a random hook up.”

 

Because Tinder is a dating app that is generally used more for hook ups, it can become the perfect platform to initiate a cuff. “I didn’t even realize it was a cuffing situation in the moment,” said Reingold. “I was just as excited to have someone when I was lonely in the winter that it didn’t register in my mind. I guess in a way we both cuffed each other without even realizing.”

 

Similarly to cuffing season, summer flings are also a common phenomenon, but usually “form into more meaningful relationships as people generally tend to be happier in the summer months,” said Baron. “In the winter I am so lonely. I stay in; I don’t really see my friends. I think everything is definitely less social.”

 

As the snow was melting during Baron’s relationship and he started going outside of his house more frequently, he began to second guess his so-called relationship with Green.

 

And on one sunny April afternoon, Green turned to Baron and said “so, what are we?” to which Baron responded, “I think you’re a really great girl and I think you’re pretty, but I’m just not ready to be in a relationship right now. I think I need to work on myself, but I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings or led you on in any way.”

 

Green stood there speechless and shocked because she thought this relationship was going to be long term. Only then did she realize she’d been cuffed.