Q: “My boyfriend hates cuddling, and says most guys do, too. Is this true? If so, why do guys dislike cuddling?
A: Well, I take immediate exception to your boyfriend’s Monarchic decision to represent all men in his assertion that we don’t dig cuddling. I mean, did he present enough qualifiable research to back up his rash claim—this claim that your average layman doesn’t feel great satisfaction as a result of spooning? I suspect he did not.
I wish that I could, but I cannot give you a definitive answer re: whether most guys do or do not enjoy cuddling. I don’t think we could ever get the data that would prove this one way or another. And furthermore, it’s too loaded of a question. Some guys like cuddling after sex; some like cuddling all night long; some enjoy cuddling while watching a movie on the couch, especially if the movie is extra-scary; some dig it when they’re feeling frightened; some enjoy it exclusively at funerals and wakes.
What I’m saying is, every guy is different. I personally enjoy cuddling, but not when I’m actually trying to get a good night’s sleep. During a movie or for a while in bed while we whisper sweet nothings? Sign me up.
If I were you, I would ask your guy what specific reasons he has for not enjoying cuddling. You may find that one of his gripes is something you can work with, thus ensuring you get that very valuable little spoon time.
But if you’d rather not confront him straight up about it, here are some reasons he may be averse to cuddling:
It gets hot.
You women might not all be aware of this, but you are like tiny furnaces. Your bodies give off a lot of heat when pressed to another body, I guess because science or god or whatever made it so, but these days it isn’t necessary for survival. It’s difficult to fall asleep when one-third of your body is attached to a life form that seemingly runs at 120 degrees Fahrenheit, while the other half is squelching whatever cool air it can from the fan that is blowing on it, that you had to turn downward so as not to cool down The Furnace.
It’s bad for circulation.
It’s kind of terrifying when you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t feel your right arm. You’re groggy and disoriented, right? So your first thought might be that your arm has been hacked off in your sleep or something. When you figure out that your girlfriend is lying on your arm, cutting off most of the blood flow, you’re hesitant to move it rapidly, lest you wake her up. So you have to become fully awake enough to slowly extricate your arm from underneath her. Then you have to wait until feeling comes back before you try to fall back asleep.
It’s out of the norm re: his sleeping regimen.
If you and your boyfriend have recently started dating, or have recently started spending nights sleeping together, he might be getting used to sharing his sapce. If he’s not a man-whore, he’s probably spent the majority of his nights before he met you sleeping alone in bed, sprawling out and all that stuff. If cuddling isn’t a foreign notion to him, then maybe it’s something he’s getting re-used to.
As men, we are paranoid that we are granted a certain amount of time in which we are able to touch you, and we do not want to waste a significant amount of that time on cuddling.
This might just be me. I’m kind of weird and superstitious. I’m also the kind of person who thinks I’ve been granted a certain number of lifetime erections and that once I use them all up I’ll have to go on drugs to get the lil’ guy to a solid state.
