Fall encourages activities like apple picking and corn mazes along with things like flannel and hot apple cider. It also brings about the trend known as “cuffing season.”
Cuffing season typically starts in October and spans all the way to March and is a time when people begin to search for a serious relationship, however short lived, to help them get through the colder months of the year. The season involves finding someone to attach oneself to during a bleak time. With the colder months up ahead, the term is starting to be used and people are beginning to see it in action.
“I just had two friends celebrate their one years this week, so cuffing season led to a solid relationship,” Katie Clancy, a junior in the College of Business Administration, said. “It’s definitely been a term since my freshman year of high school.”
Clancy also said this season is about finding a partner in crime for the chillier weather.
“Cuffing season to me is the time of the year where everyone wants to do cute fall things and not do it alone, so they try to find someone like a snuggle bug to do everything with,” Clancy said. “I want to watch scary movies but not do it alone.”
Katie Knizner, a sophomore in the College of Engineering, also talked about how it is a season to have someone to do fun fall activities with.
“It definitely makes people more motivated to have someone to watch scary movies with, eat thanksgiving with, or have with for the new year,” Knizner said.
With COVID-19 cases on the rise, especially in Wisconsin, it raises the question if cuffing season will be affected, especially as it affected Knizner’s relationship last spring.
“In my current relationship, my boyfriend lives in Chicago and I live in Pittsburgh so dealing with long distance for the first time since we had started dating, and so abruptly, shook me up a little bit,” Knizner said. “We are still together, but it was hard to be apart for so long.”
JaVaughn Guadalupe, a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences, expressed that he thinks cuffing season could potentially slow down a little bit due to COVID-19.
“I think it’s going to slow down a little bit … there aren’t as many gatherings to meet new people in,” Guadalupe said.
Guadalupe talked about how when it comes to cuffing season, he sees it as something that can happen in group gatherings with a circle of friends. It’s where people in a friend group may decide to try dating one another since in this setting, you can get to know someone better.
Though Guadalupe thinks it may be harder to meet people now for cuffing season, he thinks that the desire to do so has not gone away.
“The temptation to find someone due to social pressure isn’t going to go away, but there’s going to be less opportunities to find someone,” Guadalupe said.
Clancy mentioned how many of her friends have looked to various dating apps such as Tinder and Bumble for cuffing season.
Though it can be tough to spend time with a potential cuffing season partner, Clancy mentioned different late-night Marquette events as well as visiting pumpkin patches and apple picking could be outdoor cuffing season activities.
This story was written by Ariana Madson. She can be reached at [email protected].
