Don’t Let Heteronormative Playacting Ruin Your Cuffing Season

This is my first collaboration for Rewire News Group, a national, nonprofit media organization exclusively dedicated to reporting on reproductive and sexual health, rights and justice. I'm excited for more to come in the future!

Around this time last year, as summer in Chicago turned to autumn, I did what many lonely, big-hearted suckers do and got caught up with an emotionally unavailable person I liked having sex with. It was, in so many words, cuffing season, when the weather turns cold and dark and people seek out the ease and comfort of a short-term relationship.

Cuffing season, according to lifestyle and sex writers besides me, takes place from November to March. Like clockwork, the phrase has trended every winter since 2013, when the rapper Fabolous introduced it into the popular lexicon. (Yes, as so much of our contemporary slang does, “cuffing season” has origins in African American Vernacular English.)

That’s where my Winter Boyfriend came in.

We met on Tinder and arranged to get some non-alcoholic drinks on a Thursday night at my local haunt. About two hours later, the bar got livelier and we decided to hang out “someplace quieter,” aka my house. We started making out, then we started having sex.

And eventually, we started seeing each other once or twice a week. At some point between these dates and hook-ups, I stopped referring to him as “Tinder man” to my friends and started referring to him as “Winter Bae” or Winter Boyfriend.

My Winter Boyfriend had many admirable traits in a partner: consistency, courteousness, and clear communication. He was so good at communicating, in fact, that he made it perfectly clear that we should remain casual. He was explicitly not looking for a serious relationship (or at least, not with me).

I am a proponent of casual dating, but it’s hard to say that someone who’s taking you out to dinner and licking your private parts is just a friend. But, still, I swear that the “boyfriend” part of my completely private nickname for him was more of a fun and easy shorthand than it was a desire to elevate our status.

At some point in January 2025, he reminded me of his intentions to remain unattached. The disappointment I felt about this signaled that I’d fallen into a kind of pseudo-relationship.

The part of my psyche that has been conditioned by a culture of rom-coms, and marriages, and love matches whirred. We were seeing each other so often (even if mostly to bolster our respective moods with post-movie oral sex) that the heteronormative sleeper agent inside of me had been activated. My wifey fantasy had leaked a little too far into the real world, and I started to really imagine a long-term relationship. Maybe Winter Bae could be For-Life Bae?

That fantasy came crashing down this past March, when he broke up with me right as cuffing season came to a close. Although I always knew our “relationship” had an expiration date, I still sent him several long and angry texts about how I didn’t deserve to be dumped via iMessage.

And while I was totally, righteously, crashing out about how it all ended, it had been nice to find some chemical comfort in cuddling and fucking Tinder man through the winter. And, anyway, I can’t be that mad—it pretty much ran the typical course of a cuffing season situation.

Physical touch and companionship do make the dark days of December and January way more bearable, but I’m personally not in love with the origins of cuffing season being so blatantly heteronormative. The “handcuff” and “ball-and-chain” metaphors in Fabolous’ lyrics feel so regressive. Fabolous’ “Cuffin Season” also reinforces the whole Madonna-Whore complex—the idea that you can either be a wifey or a ho (or in this case, a winter wifey or a summer ho).

I know it’s totally basic to say some rap music from ten years ago has a misogynist streak, but I also resent the lyrical implication that there’s something artificial about wanting to temporarily lock in with someone over the cold months. Winter is a time when partying and dating is less appealing because no one wants to go outside, and anyone who is immunocompromised is taking an extra risk by gathering indoors during what is often a peak season for infection.

Maybe it’s time to approach our Q4 sluttery a bit more mindfully.

I suggest we take a page out of Beyoncé’s “Cuff It,” in which Bey sings about partying, getting drunk and or high, and having a “hypersonic, sex erotic” ol’ time with someone. While the song title refers to locking someone into a relationship, it is mostly about messing around. The lyrics don’t even mention playing wifey.

What I’m saying is: Let’s reconsider what “cuffing season” is—and isn’t.

It’s not really about locking it down. It’s about making sure you can have sex through the winter. Let’s abolish the hierarchical heteronormativity of being someone’s winter spouse.

The way I see it, cuffing season is fundamentally about a physical connection. Unless there’s been some explicit communication about dating for marriage, the romantic partnership part of hoeing around in winter is fun. I enjoy the feeling of emotional and intellectual engagement even in casual sexual relationships—but I know it’s just pretend.

As it gets colder again, I challenge everyone to remember this: There are ways to access the kind of intimacy and physical connection associated with cuffing season without having to play house. Personally, I’m going to find solace in the queer utopia of free sex and love, remain vulnerable and brave, ask people out on dates (and maybe even go back to the dating apps when it gets too cold outside.)

Plus, living as a queer person in a big city means I can return to the tried and true warmth of gay bathhouses.

Let’s be true to our hearts, stay slutty, and better communicate emotional boundaries. We can leave the winter wifey fantasy back in 2024.