Married and Single Women Now Paying £50 an hour to be 'professionally' cuddled

A SERVICE is offering busy women the opportunity to pay for a CUDDLE session with a man.

The non-sexual practice is taking off in New York City with lonely, career-driven women finding less and less time for relationships. Amazingly the service is also popular with married women who have husbands that are too busy to provide the affection they need.

Saskia Fredericks, 41, has been using the service for just over a year because she only gets to see her husband for a few days a month. 

The aspiring actress and masseuse spends most of her time in the city while her husband Arthur, 45, lives in Connecticut working as a police officer and serving in The National Guard.

She finds the lack of human contact difficult to deal with and her husband is fully supportive of her employing a cuddler twice a month.

Saskia added: “My husband is a lieutenant in the police department so he is on patrol 24/7 and we don’t live together full time because I am here in NYC.

“I am 99 per cent sure that he doesn’t get jealous of the cuddling because I check in with him and talk with him about it.

“Maybe if we seen more of each other we could go to cuddle groups together – I don’t think it’s something he would talk to his cop buddies about but he is an open minded guy.

“He’s more protective than jealous so as long as I am safe he is happy.

“I really look forward to it because I love affection and I love how it makes my body feel – I get excited because it’s my treat.

“If I didn’t have these cuddle sessions I would go through my life with no touch and that would be really lonely.

“It’s great because I don’t have to battle in the bar scene for attention and I don’t have to feel awkwardness with a girlfriend – it’s all about me because I pay for it.”

The cuddling business is growing rapidly in New York and cuddlist.com employs more than 40 professional cuddlers to deal with more than 200 requests a week for the service.

CEO Adam Lipin, 52, said: “The sessions last for around two hours and cost $80 per hour.

“We are expanding our cuddlers by around three a week so this is definitely a viable business model.

“We have all kinds of clients; men, women, old people, young people - they come for the personal touch and human interaction. That’s what I value about it.”

But there are risks that naturally come from close human contact and professional cuddlers are equipped with the skills to deal with them.

Ian Kirman has been a cuddler for three months, he said: "When you hold someone or touch someone there can be something sexual about it.

“But there are ways of dealing with it and it requires a maturity and a sense of shared values – we know why we are here and it’s not because of that.

“Sometimes when I’m with someone there’s a sexual moment but you learn to deal with and acknowledge it but you don’t encourage it and it eventually passes.”

The company is looking to expand across the US and Saskia can definitely vouch for the benefits of a professional cuddle service.

“Cuddling is the best form of therapy out there but what’s so great about it is that you don’t have to dive into any of your problems at all,” added Saskia.

“I think it’s preventative therapy.

“It’s a hard feeling to describe, you feel your body unwinding and you just let go of any tension – it just feels really safe and you can just feel yours and your cuddlers breathing.

“I would recommend every single person try cuddling because it makes you feel human.”