I don't know about you, but I'm bracing for the crippling solitude of yet another cuffing season spent uncoupled and utterly alone, save for my own self-indulgent introspective melancholy to keep me company until March's spring thaw, when I can take my emotional dependency to the great outdoors.
What is "cuffing season," you ask? It's that period starting somewhere between fall and winter when single men and women react to the drop in temperature and desperately seek another body to keep them warm, physically or even emotionally, especially if your girlfriend Rachel—okay, ex-girlfriend Rachel, fuck, I've got to get used to that—of two years recently left you.
Cuffing season is somewhat of a recent phenomenon, spontaneously originating somewhere around 2008 and disseminated as a novelty meme until it achieved fluency, mostly on—yeah, you guessed it—the Internet. And although people insist it's a valid concept, I have my doubts it's actually a thing, much like reverse racism. The default state for most people is bachelorhood and the best we can hope for are temporary interactions with other people. I'm optimistic that everyone will eventually find a lover to enjoy quality time with until your still beating heart is ripped out of your chest and you're left broken, used up and alone forever until the die you die. Meanwhile, check out this handy guide to spending cuffing season solo!
1.
I don't know about you, but I'm bracing for the crippling solitude of yet another cuffing season spent uncoupled and utterly alone, save for my own self-indulgent introspective melancholy to keep me company until March's spring thaw, when I can take my emotional dependency to the great outdoors.
What is "cuffing season," you ask? It's that period starting somewhere between fall and winter when single men and women react to the drop in temperature and desperately seek another body to keep them warm, physically or even emotionally, especially if your girlfriend Rachel—okay, ex-girlfriend Rachel, fuck, I've got to get used to that—of two years recently left you.
Cuffing season is somewhat of a recent phenomenon, spontaneously originating somewhere around 2008 and disseminated as a novelty meme until it achieved fluency, mostly on—yeah, you guessed it—the Internet. And although people insist it's a valid concept, I have my doubts it's actually a thing, much like reverse racism. The default state for most people is bachelorhood and the best we can hope for are temporary interactions with other people. I'm optimistic that everyone will eventually find a lover to enjoy quality time with until your still beating heart is ripped out of your chest and you're left broken, used up and alone forever until the die you die. Meanwhile, check out this handy guide to spending cuffing season solo!
2.cuffinglead
3.social media
Engage Social Media In New Ways
One way to stay stimulated when it's so cold out that your feet are somehow both cold and sweaty at the same time is to refresh your approach to social media. I recommend unsubscribing from almost everyone on Facebook because no one gives a shit that it's legs day at the gym, Tyler. No one cares where Becky and the "blonde-tourage" are doing brunch. Instead, follow comedians, entertainment sites and niche news outlets relevant to your interests. Basically, you want to turn your Facebook feed into a Twitter stream. Speaking of which, many of you still don't "get" Twitter. Sign up and repeat the same steps as outlined for Facebook and you'll be fine.
Maybe strike up a photography project on Instagram. But be careful, you might stumble upon pictures of Rachel and some other guy. Who is that? A new guy she's dating? A co-worker? A cousin? A one night dick she fished off Tinder? Who knows? Images are worse than specific details because your cynical imagination creates it's own story of why her arm is slung across his shoulder, or why she's wearing a dress she only wore once on a special date with you to what looks here to be a dive bar called Pluckers on a random goddamn fucking Tuesday night.
4.drawing
Take Up A New Hobby
Cuffing season affords large windows of time for self-reflection. A great way to distract yourself from the non-stop torment of your anxious inner monologue is to take up a new hobby. Learn to play an instrument, immerse yourself in a video game, check out one of the millions of slice of life YouTube tutorials you can assimilate into your daily routine.
Me? I've picked up up drawing. I like to think composing a sketch is a type of visual language that communicates a unique beauty lying somewhere between clarity and ambiguity. I particularly like figure drawing, rendering the curvature of the human form, simulating the way her green eyes glitter like wet jewels in the sunlight, the porcelain of her exposed neck as she threw her head back to laugh, the isolated gesture of her hand curling her hair behind her ear in the shape of a question mark, her full form etched in charcoal, consecrating her as a goddess, a goddess that has abandoned me and left me in a desolate winter purgatory, a personal apocalypse where my inner kingdom is laid to waste, left to wander the land, listless and lonely.
Learning to cook is also pretty fun I hear.
5.reading
Read And Write
Alone time is the perfect context to do some reading and writing. Not only are they fun, but they are forms of productivity that polish you into a more literate, empathetic person. Take time to read the classics, or check out the first 100 pages of Infinite Jest before giving up. At least you tried, man.
If it's writing you're into into, journaling can unpack the meandering thoughts in your head into more concrete observations and opinions of yourself and the world around you. If you can't think if what to write, just start with the simple rule: Write what you know. That's exactly why I excel at writing about jealousy, abandonment, victimization and restlessness. The ink in my pen drains out like poison as I describe my surroundings, for example, but not limited to: the indifferent silence of my apartment broken up the bleating of traffic outside, the intermittent chirp of a smoke alarm that needs a new battery, the echo of Rachel's voice in my head that's as lost to me as a child's death rattle at the bottom of a well.
6.exercise
Exercise
Just when you think the misery of another unpartnered cuffing season is truly limitless, consider alleviating that emotional decrepitude by nourishing your body. Although cold weather isn't kind to the idea of exercise, there are plenty of solutions, like joining a nearby gym or doing yoga in the comfort of your own home.
The philosophy behind yoga is especially helpful. The mind, body and spirit form one whole, and yoga strengthens that unity. The principles of meditation, controlling your breath, physical endurance and elasticity lead you toward transcendence. Here's a an anecdote/fever dream that occurred to me while in the throes of spiritual enlightenment:
She holds my head underwater for a long, long time, for what seems like an eternity in 60 seconds. Eventually, bubbles rising to the surface become fewer. Just at the brink of asphyxiation, she jerks her handful of my hair up from the water, reviving me. "When you crave me as you crave air, you will know what love is." Breathless, I don't know if I've reached the rocky bottom of despair or the immeasurable height of fulfillment.
Yoga is also known to enhance posture and lower blood pressure.
7.tv show binge
Watch All The TV Shows And Movies Your Friends Are Always Talking About
It seems you can never really keep up with all the television series and movies that come out from month to month. During cuffing season, when you're alone and stewing in an existential quagmire, why not distract yourself with a binge Netflix session or illegal torrent of what's in theaters this weekend? Take this opportunity to finally stop your piece of shit friends' incredulous barks of, "You've never seen The Wire?! But you're white!" Or, watch a few Criterion Collection movies so you can leverage that experience into banging the next film student you meet.
I mostly stick to documentaries because every fucking feature film or television show is centered around a love story. Sure, you have basic story of elements of (wo)man versus nature, (wo)man, environment, technology, self, religion, etc., but the main character is only ever truly redeemed, validated and lent a sense of immortality through the process of finding romantic love. Fuck that. All of these tales of sparking an amorous relationship typically launch me backward into revisiting the magical amazement of Rachel and I's first few dates. These simulations of memory mock me and I always end up realizing I am nothing more but a man imprisoned in a net of tyrannies and beset on all sides by scenes, vignettes and expressions of sense memory that draw my thoughts back to her. Goddamn this cruel life. Right, so, yeah, turn on a doc. I recommend Blackfish. Whales are dope.
8.stoicism
Adopt A Stoic Philosophy
Stoicism is an idea that dates back to the times of ancient Greece. In a hard, calloused nutshell, stoicism is a worldview that insists your life is determined by fate, and rather than toil trying to change your situation, you should just own that shit. You have control over the abstractions of your personality, but you should not be dependent on other people, places or external factors.
You see, the idea of happiness has so many coefficients attached to it. We are situated in a highly volatile world, one where our infrastructures and relationships are in a constant state of decay. Our bank accounts fluctuate in a series of peaks and valleys, our careers pivot independent of our longterm goals, and Rachel texts you out of the blue on your birthday and it somehow ends up ruining the one day of the year you thought you might be the master of your emotions.
Use the solitude of cuffing season as an opportunity to disassociate the idea that you can control the events in your life and instead marry yourself to the idea that you can only control yourself. Day to day life is a nauseating carousel that spins you into the vertigo of chance, loss, obstacles and setbacks. Reinforcing yourself with stoicism in the cold of cuffing season will soften the blow of failure and temper your arrogance in the throes of success. This is the worldview I needed when I was collecting a heap of checks to cash and accidentally found a lover letter Rachel wrote me when we were still in the loving throws of our relationship.
Had I a firm grip on on this philosophy I wouldn't have slipped into a violent inner crisis, feeling condemned to total destruction simply by reading the introductory words: "My dearest Omlette du Fromage" (sorry, it's an inside joke pet name thing). Had I had the strength to meditate toward a state of conscious control, I wouldn't have barreled into a wretched nightmare of unspeakable depressive zones. Of course, I latched onto the cloying pleasures of nostalgia. I became sick like a child that had gorged himself on too much candy. I couldn't float above these feelings. I failed to enter a Socratic dialogue with myself in an effort to hoist myself from the cauldron of violent, ill-tempered passions, unhappy and endangered to slip into suicidal fantasies knowing Rachel had swiped me left for the remainder of my time on Earth. I also noticed in the letter that she doesn't know the difference between "then" and "than," so I guess there was some silver lining in there after all.