Professional cuddling: what it is and how it works

Professional cuddling is cuddling by appointment: you hire someone to hold you, purely for the warmth and the contact, without it turning sexual. You keep your clothes on. It is about closeness, nothing else: an arm around you, lying together, a hand that rests calmly on your back. For a lot of people that sounds a little strange at first. Until they realize how long it has been since someone held them just like that, without rushing.

How does it actually work?

The most important part happens before we touch: we talk beforehand about what you do and do not want. No surprises, no fuss. You stay in charge, from beginning to end.

• We first talk calmly through what you are looking for and where your limits are.
• Your clothes stay on, always.
• You decide how much or how little touch you want, and the pace.
• If at any point you say “not now,” it stops, without my having to ask why.
• Non-sexual with me really does mean non-sexual.

Beyond that there is little to “do.” That is rather the point. You do not have to perform anything, keep a conversation going, or please anyone. You can simply lie there and notice your shoulders slowly drop.

Is it really non-sexual?

Yes. And I understand the question comes up, because most people have started to blur touch and sex. That is a shame, because they are two very different things. Your skin longs for warmth and safety long before any desire for sex comes into it. Professional cuddling is only about the first. An embrace that lasts a little longer than politeness allows, a body against yours that says: you are safe here.

Keeping those limits crystal clear is exactly what it comes down to for me. As a psychotherapist I sense what you need and where it becomes too much, often before you have put it into words yourself. That calm guards the limit, so you have nothing to worry about and can simply give yourself over to the contact.

Who is it for?

For anyone with a lack of touch. And that is more people than you think. People who live alone. People who have just been through something, a divorce, a loss. People in a relationship where the touch has quietly slipped away. Anyone who goes months, sometimes years, barely being held starts to feel that in everything at some point: in their sleep, their mood, the tension in their neck and shoulders.

The longing for touch is not a weakness and nothing to be ashamed of. It is a basic need, just like food and sleep. Professional cuddling gives you a safe place to still that hunger, without anything being expected of you.

Want to quietly see first whether this is something for you? Read more about cuddling and skin hunger at Touch / Skin hunger. No expectations, just a look at what might do you good.

Why it is so little known

Professional cuddling barely exists as a separate service in the Netherlands, while in the United States and Japan it has had its own profession for years. That difference says little about the need and a lot about the discomfort: we have no word for touch that does not lead to sex and does not come from a relationship, and what has no word gets rarely asked for.

I notice that too in how women ask about it. Almost always by a detour, whether it can be “just that,” whether it is “odd” to want only that. The answer is no, and it is one of the most requested things there is.

What it is not

Not therapy. Nothing is treated and nothing analyzed, even if something comes loose along the way. If something bigger is going on, a therapist is the better route and I will simply say so.

And it is not a disguised step toward sex. What you agree on happens; what you do not agree on does not, even if the mood suggests otherwise. That limit is set in advance and I do not go back on it during the appointment.

More about where this longing comes from is at Touch and skin hunger.

How a session runs in practice

We begin with talking, with something to drink, and with the agreement on how you stop. After that there is no program: lying down, sitting, an arm around you, a hand on your back that simply stays there. You keep on whatever you want to keep on, and that changes nothing about what it does.

Count on at least two hours. That seems long for something so simple, and the first half hour goes on getting used to it for almost everyone. To the situation, and to the idea that truly nothing is expected of you. Only after that does something settle, and that is the part you come for.

Afterward the aftercare carries on into the days that follow. With touch after a long stretch without it, the response often comes only when you are alone again, and then you are welcome to just message me.