Related Articles
Did you know that winter is often spoken about light-heartedly in popular culture as ‘cuffing season’, because it’s the time of year when even the neighbour’s cat might start eyeing up your dog, just to avoid spending Christmas alone?
Singles of the younger generation call it this because you’ll effectively handcuff yourself to a partner despite knowing they aren’t ‘the one’ – less Fifty Shades of Grey, more sharing a blanket and mutual loathing of January.
It’s basically a winter deal where you latch on not for everlasting love, but for someone to defrost your toes and split a box of shortbread until the daffodils make their annual come back.
Before you roll your eyes at the concept, it’s worthwhile acknowledging that while the young ones have given it a name, this isn’t a new thing.
I often remember my granny declaring “Thon one is handcuffed to a lunatic!” – usually referring to whatever weirdo that my cousins or I (usually I) brought home for presentation to the queen of the family.
Since it’s Valentine’s Day, I thought I would invite all the gloriously single women and men to take a bow at their own self-restraint, not simply falling for the first dog that barks at them in order to get a novelty card through their letterbox on February 14 (or if they’ve used Royal Mail, any day between the 16th and 22nd).
Of course, as much as cuffing season is played for laughs, there are real anxieties that come with dating, especially for women.
It’s not just the awkwardness of meeting someone new and being afraid to fart in front of them; there’s also the underlying apprehension about personal safety, navigating red flags and trusting your own judgment.
Many women find themselves weighing every message, every meeting and every gesture for signs of aggression or control, knowing that the stakes go far beyond a bad date.
Dating apps can make it all feel like a big casino where we spin the wheel hoping for a win, but in rushing to find love we are playing Russian roulette because, like it or not, we live in one of Europe’s most unsafe places to be a woman.
If you look at the numbers, domestic violence in the north of Ireland is really alarming.
In 2023 the PSNI was called out to deal with it every 16 minutes – and we wonder why there’s nobody out catching robbers?
That year, more than 32,000 incidents were reported and many women were targeted more than once, which shows just how hard it is for some to escape these situations.
According to a study from Ulster University and the IMPACT Research Centre, a staggering 98% of women said they’ve experienced some kind of abuse or violence, and more than half went through something traumatic before they even turned 11.
These statistics aren’t just numbers. They reflect a serious, deep-rooted issue that will continue year after year if we don’t actively make changes to the way we approach it as a society.
One male friend recently declared that his biggest fear is taking a woman home from a date and an awful accident happening that would result in him looking as though he had deliberately harmed her.
I was about to recommend a visit to the doctor for this level of paranoia, before another guy chirped in that this was a universal fear for the good men out there.
I reassured both my friends that regardless of whether a woman came to harm in their company – even if it was any fault of theirs – the odds are they wouldn’t be punished by the law anyway, but for some reason my mates weren’t comforted by this.
Long before the sectarian divide, women everywhere had good cause not to put their faith in the police.
The case of Sarah Everard sparked outrage that a member of a trusted police service could so heinously kidnap and murder.
However, the Policing Board disclosed in October 2024 that 78 PSNI officers were reported to the professional standards department for allegations of domestic abuse, sexual assault or rape in the 30 months prior, which gives me mental images of frying pans and fires.
Everybody wants a great love story in their lives, but I reckon it does well to remember that Romeo and Juliet isn’t one – it’s a tragedy that was told long before Shakespeare took the credit, so buy yourself a big box of chocolates and enjoy scoffing with nobody watching!
If you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article and would like to submit a
Letter to the Editor
to be considered for publication,
please click here.
Letters to the Editor are invited on any subject. They should be authenticated with a full name, address and a daytime telephone number.
Pen names are not allowed.
Source link
