smooch
You’re OK by me, DtC. 
But that’s the same thing that people who decry casual sex say about casual sex. There’s no real affection or closeness, it’s just a bunch of empty groping with the trappings of intimacy, etc etc.
(And don’t try to say “but sex is real sex”. If sex were about the stimulation of erogenous zones and nothing more, we’d all be content to just masturbate. We have sex with other people because of the emotional content).
So how is this different?
But an interesting quote: "The creepy vibe that one would expect was almost completely drowned out by the sheer enthusiasm of the fledgling members of our party. "
Casual sex isn’t supposed to involve affection or emotion. There’s no pretense about it. It’s a purely physical release. It’s about having an orgasm, not a desperate attempt to get people to pretend to care about you.
Do you really think that real sex is no more physically satisfying than masturbation? :dubious:
I am amazed by this thread. I can’t believe that so many Dopers can’t understand how other people could derive benefit from physical intimacy.
Many years ago my son’s daycare mother used to drop him off at my place after I walked home from the train. One evening she arrived and a thunderstorm began. As we lived in the mountains the storm was very close. She asked if she could come inside because she didn’t like thunder and lightning. She was clearly frightened and agitated so I took her into the dining room (away from the kids), sat down and sat her on my lap and cuddled her until the worst of it passed.
There was no sexual element, she thanked me afterward and it was never mentioned again. If I hadn’t done something it would have been like watching someone bleed to death without calling an ambulance.
Turned out her fear of storms was caused by her brother locking her out in a thunderstorm when she was little.
Intimacy includes closeness and affection and familiarity. Physical closeness is not intimacy; if it was, I would never travel on the tube.
Errr… all I can say is that you’re not selling it to me; you just described an incident that sounds… well… freaky to me. Maybe it was fine by you (and vive la difference), but… nope, still not getting an ‘OK, this is normal’ vibe. Sorry.
Yes, it most certainly is! For the emotional reasons its better of course, but even on the physical side.
I, for one, am not saying that the feelings that come from cuddling would be artificial. My problem is that the cuddling itself would be artificial. There wouldn’t be any feelings at all. I honestly can’t imagine myself feeling warm and fuzzy while cuddling with a total stranger.
In my experience, you can lust after a person shortly after meeting them. If you end up cuddling with this person, it’s highly likely to be part of something else, or will lead to something else. But how many times have you felt affectionate towards someone you just met? “Gee, I’d really like to snuggle down into the blankets with that person in a purely platonic manner.” For me to cuddle with someone in a non-erotic context, there has to be some kind of pre-existing bond. (Well, either that or I’m really drunk 
.)
FTR, I’m not really into casual sex. But I can see how people might be. If the purpose of sex is pleasure and ultimately orgasm, then I guess it really doesn’t matter how long you’ve known the person you’re having it with. But for me, the purpose of cuddling is comfort and intimacy, and how you get that with someone you just met is something I just can’t understand. (But if you do, that’s cool. I’m not judging people here.)
I, for one, don’t have casual sex with dozens of strangers at a time, facilitated by a Casual Sex Lifeguard on Duty who encourages me to hold stuffed animals and cry. So I’m not sure it’s an apt analogy.
Which reminds me of something I meant to say before. When I masturbate, it’s not an expression of how much I’m in love with myself. I don’t buy myself a nice dinner first or or tell myself I’ll call in the morning. In fact, then, most people routinely have sex without any particular emotional connection involved, since they’re doing it by themselves.
Can you cuddle-masturbate? Does anyone enjoy snuggling up with themselves and stroking their own skin while wearing footie pajamas? Do you like cuddling with yourself, AHunter3? I’m guessing not. There’s nothing in it if it doesn’t involve emotional connection with another human being. Obviously there’s something to sex even if it doesn’t involve that intimacy, though, since most people routinely have sex all by their lonesome.
Perhaps you should try reading the thread again. If you did, you might notice that a lot of us are very clear on what’s pleasurable about actual physical intimacy. It’s physical intimacy with random strangers, all under the watchful eyes of cuddle facilitators, that’s creepy. If you don’t see the difference between that and holding someone who you actually have some emotional connection with, then I’m pretty amazed myself.
It’s a little odd to me, but it doesn’t strike me as nearly as weird as cuddling someone who you don’t have any particular relationship with at all in a group of people who’ve gathered for the express purpose of doing the same thing. It still seems to me like a bit of a violation of normal interpersonal boundaries, but it’s one that has some context behind it and makes a little more sense than simply gathering together with a bunch of strangers to group-grope en masse.
You’re saying that you do have casual sex with people and then don’t cuddle with them at all as part of or immediately afterward? What the heck do you do, then, give her a long stare and then say “So… Patriots or Redskins in the Super Bowl, ya think?”
Shake hands?
Either you’ve found some really spectacularly sexually-adept strangers to do casual sex with or you aren’t very good at masturbating.
Excalibre:
Hmm… as I said, I’ve never actually been to one of these things. I might be gicked out by the “lifeguards” or whatever-the-fuck they’re called at cuddle parties. If cuddle parties didn’t have these whatchamacallem-facilitator-folks, would a good portion of your distaste for the idea be dispelled?
HazelNutCoffee:
Ummm… I take it you don’t, huh?
I don’t mean I get hit by waves of irresistible compulsions to hold someone if I find myself liking them when I’ve just met them, but a little bit, yeah.
Now lemme guess…everyone just moved several feet away from me and is looking for the door? Great, just great, I needed new and additional ways to feel freaky and different. <sigh>
I’ve been with my wife for 16 years. I haven’t had casual sex since the 80’s, but when I was in my early 20’s I played in a lot of rock bands and engaged in my share of decadence. I’m sure I did sometimes but I don’t remember those days all that well. There were generally a lot of chemicals involved. I think passing out was the more likely denouement. In any case, at least there was sex.
Dude, you’re really missing out!
AHunter3, it’s been a while since I had casual sex, but as I recall, we usually basked in the afterglow for a while, and then fell asleep. Also, although casual sex was mostly about being so horny that masturbation just wasn’t cutting it anymore, there was also definitely an emotional element of feeling desireable.
I think a cuddle party would just be crazy tempting. Sounds like the idea was conceived by a guy/guys who wanted a non-threatening way to feel an ass or boob, and hey, once you’re in that position maybe things will proceed from there.
No, because it’s still a group of people gathering together to pretend to have intimacy with a group of strangers. The fact that “lifeguards” are present is a red flag, but I have to wonder whether they’re there because the alternative is even worse.
All your comparisons to casual sex are off-base here. You might not want to admit it, but casual sex exists, and has always existed, and it’s a pretty normal part of the spectrum of human sexual behavior. Sometimes it’s part of an emotional connection, but sometimes it’s not. And, when people look for casual sex, they’re generally a lot more selective than would be permitted by a cuddle party. Cuddling only exists as a marker of emotional intimacy. People cuddle because they’re emotionally close to one another. That’s why people don’t like to cuddle with random strangers. If someone meets someone in a bar and goes home and curls up with them on the sofa while watching a movie, I might be surprised that they’re not having sex, but it’s certainly not disturbing to me the way an organized, facilitated cuddle party is. I might also be disappointed that they’re not having sex, because obviously I was outside the house with binoculars and a videocamera hoping to spy on some hot nasty sex through the window. But such is life, eh?
Most human behavior is not this organized. At least not human social behavior. (More formalized events like athletic competitions are obviously a different story.) When people go to a normal party, they interact in an informal, unstructured environment where the only rules are whatever social rules the people operate under. It’s not necessary to have explicit rules set down prescribing proper behavior, and it’s not necessary to have people present in the explicit role of supervisors. Same goes at dances and singles bars.
Cuddle parties are carefully organized events designed to encourage strangers to engage in activities together that are normally only practiced as a sign of emotional closeness. I see all this organization as a symptom of how weird the behavior is, which is why I keep mentioning the “Cuddle Lifeguards on Duty” and “Cuddle Caddies”. Doesn’t that stick out to you? In social events that aren’t centered around violation of normal rules of social conduct, such rules aren’t necessary. Sets of complex rules are used when strangers gather to accomplish some goal - parliamentary procedure, for instance, which permits groups of antagonistic strangers to meet and accomplish the tasks of governance, while hopefully reducing the frequency of duels and poisonings. Normal social events don’t involve those things.
That’s why this comes across so immediately creepy - it’s the juxtaposition of the rules and organization normally associated with purpose-oriented gatherings of strangers and activities normally performed with close friends and partners. Parties organized around a particular purpose or event aren’t unusual either, but that purpose is normally making fondue or watching movies, not “cuddling”. Intimate human interaction ordinarily proceeds spontaneously, among close friends or partners, not in an organized, deliberate fashion. You could also hold parties in which the participants divulged their innermost secrets to total strangers. That doesn’t sound very nice to me either - it’s peculiar to me to mix the emotional vulnerability associated with intimacy and hanging out with strangers. In normal circumstances, it’s our trust in others that allows us to be vulnerable around them. At cuddle parties, that trust is replaced by rules and supervision. That’s why it seems artificial. That’s why it seems counterfeit - if real relationships existed, lists of rules wouldn’t be necessary to guide something as simple as holding each other. That’s why it reeks of desperation - because people who aren’t desperate don’t need to unburden themselves to strangers while under supervision; they engage in social interactions with intimates whom they can trust.
Why don’t you understand this? What’s so puzzling to you, AHunter3? It’s disturbing to me that people would engage in emotional intimacy with strangers, because those are things that people ordinarily do with friends. Why aren’t you able to explain why you’d want to be emotionally vulnerable around a bunch of people you don’t know? That’s not normal behavior. People who totally lack those sorts of boundaries make other people uncomfortable for a reason. I don’t want to cuddle a random stranger. I also don’t want the person next to me on the bus telling me about how their uncle molested them. Why, AHunter3, are you so eager to engage in an activity that revolves around pretending strangers are your close friends? Why in the world do you find it puzzling that many of us don’t like the idea?
The word “cuddle” is starting to seem really gross to me at this point.
Excalibre, I’ve been following the thread (and posting unhelpful wisecracks at a rate of about one per page) since the start. You’ve finally managed to phrase yourself in a way that illustrates exactly how I feel about this whole deal. Got a newsletter?
You act as if I’m denying that casual sex exists, or else am saying it should not (I’m doing neither), while you meanwhile are asserting that casual cuddling should not exist.
My comparisons to casual sex are spot-on.
I never said casual cuddling was normative, I said that your objections to it are all equally applicable to casual sex.
(Except for the ones pertaining to whatever “Lifeguard”-whatever silliness may be imposed on one at these actual cuddling parties. I’ve disclaimered all that stuff several times)
No, I said nothing of the sort.
You have written numerous posts now trying to put those of us who don’t think this behavior is normal on the defensive. Believe it or not, we’re not all uptight. I don’t see any evidence of prudery in those who agree with me. You may think there’s something wrong with all us squares who don’t support your ideas about hippie-dippie love-ins because The Man has convinced us that we need to be uptight and seal ourselves off in our plastic-fantastic world. The Man outlawed the weed because the weed creates peace, and The Man needs us to fight in his useless wars! Don’t drink that beer, man, it’s full of toxins! Take a hit off this bong and then let’s paint our feelings.
But you know what? I’m not buying it. I don’t need to be on the defensive, because I’ve already offered plenty of reasons exactly why this behavior is troubling and creepy. In fact, I think my monkey post back on page one was some of the most solid argument I’ve done around here. It’s up to you now. Why isn’t it gross and disturbing to be so desperate for human contact that you’ll settle for spooning random strangers while holding stuffed animals under the watchful eyes of the Cuddle Police? Why isn’t it troubling that so many people are unable to engage in real, spontaneous demonstrations of affection with friends or partners and instead have to seek out organized, rule-bound facsimiles instead? What happened in your childhood that made you so desperate for any sort of human companionship, real or fake?
If you don’t like the implications of that, you can see why I don’t really like your arguments. You’ve come up with nothing but one poor analogy to casual sex and continuous accusations that the great majority of people here are somehow too uptight and buttoned-down to enjoy giving up normal social boundaries in favor of organized, sexless infantilization. And you’ve ignored the great number of arguments that I and several other people have put forward here. It’s time for you to defend your bizarre claims that this is a normal, healthy activity, rather than just implying that there’s something wrong with anyone who disagrees with you.
Why would you even say something like this? Several reasons have been offered by me and several other posters why it’s a terrible analogy. You haven’t come up with any response. Your comparison is not remotely useful in this argument - it’s an effort to cloud the debate by making the rest of us either defend acts we don’t engage in (like orgies) or
And it’s been thoroughly demonstrated that this is not true.
I’m not saying that you (or the people who decry casual sex as “empty” or as a “substitute for real intimacy”) are wrong.
I’m saying that your attitude towards casual cuddling is a heck of a lot more than just roughly comparable to those folks’ attitudes towards casual sex.
= Why isn’t it gross and disturbing to be so desparate for human contact that you’ll settle for groping and fucking random strangers.
You deny the parallel, apparently because you think that we have a built-in lust for sex, conveniently defined as something other than the emotional component thereof, and yet other than the raw satisfaction of erogenous nerve endings nevertheless. Defensible, perhaps, but not just compellingly true and “out there” for anyone to see. I don’t think it is so at all.
But for the sake of argument, let’s temporarily posit that there is such a drive in us, a drive for sex that is in no way a drive for emotional expression/attachment and does not evoke or involve emotional satisfaction, just physical appetite and satisfaction.
Where the heck do you get off assuming and asserting that the same cannot be true of cuddling? Is it beyond the realm of imaginable possibilities that cuddling just plain old feels good for its own sake, quite aside from whatever emotional states it represents or conjures into being?
Seems to me your counterargument to my analogy to casual sex consists mostly of “But cuddling isn’t like casual sex because sex is sex, which is sex, which means it isn’t the same because it’s different and stuff”
Personally I don’t think we ever, under any circumstances, find anything pleasant or desirable, even in the most classically intellectual senses, without emotions playing a large role in those assessments. But sauce for the geese of both genders and all that: you don’t get to just waltz in and assert that casual sex is for itself (and that the people who say otherwise and say it’s a substitute for some “more real” form of intimacy are just wrong) but that cuddling is exactly that kind of substitute, and furthermore that it is in some fashion a replacement for sex, as if sex (which you’ve just said isn’t intrinsically wired up with emotional components) were the only legitimate and viable physical activity that should be experienced as sensual and pleasant.
That’s not only trying to have it both ways, it’s doing so so many times in such a short space that its a freaking logical pretzel!
Given that I’ve already offered up arguments that satisfactorily contradict everything in your latest post, AHunter3, I think it’s safe to say you and I are done.
Your mischaracterization of my position on the difference between cuddling and sex - something I’ve already clearly argued - demonstrates that you have nothing worthwhile to contribute anymore. You are continuing to ignore arguments that have been made multiple times, and that contradict the statements you’re making.
I don’t know if you’re doing this deliberately to avoid having to confront your own views or if you’re simply not capable of engaging in rational debate. Either way, there is obviously no point in continuing, because you have not conducted anything resembling a rational discussion so far and I see no signs of that changing.