When I was in college, there was a Facebook group called "Will someone just please lie on top of me?" This was in an era when Facebook groups existed mainly as quirky avatars of real-life groups of friends, not as message boards for organizations or marketing for companies. It was a large group comprising people who didn't necessarily know one another.
The group has since been disbanded, but its purpose was to express the simple pleasure of having someone, well, just lie on top of you. "Do not kiss me. Do not gyrate on top of me. That is not what this is about," the group's description read. "I just want to feel the weight of another person's body compressing mine."
The idea of touching strangers makes a lot of people uncomfortable. But for others, there may be a middle ground between a sexual encounter, affection between family and accidentally bumping into someone on the subway. According to Charlie Williams, it's time we loosened up. Last week, Mr. Williams launched Cuddlr, an app forged in the mold of Tinder or Grindr, but with the sole intention of helping individuals find someone to cuddle.
Mr. Williams believes, as he says in an interview with Tracy Clark-Flory on Salon, that "we don't get enough touch in our daily lives." "I think as a culture we're ready to consider cuddling as more than just something that happens before or after sex, but as something worth pursuing in its own right."
To find a cuddle buddy, a user creates a profile that consists of one photograph and his or her name. The app adds a tally of positive or negative ratings following cuddling sessions and omits information about gender and age. The user can then scroll through potential cuddle partners in the vicinity and send a request to cuddle. The recipient must reply within 15 minutes; if he or she consents, then the two users will see walking directions for how to meet up.
Mr. Williams says that it's then up to the pair how they want to proceed. Cuddling can take place in public or in private, lying down or not. "Cuddling takes communication, respect for boundaries, and self-control," Mr. Williams says, and figuring out how to express what you want is part of the exercise.
Mr. Williams is very clear in his conversation with Ms. Clark-Flory that Cuddlr isn't meant for dates or hookups. He is likewise alert to the possibility that cuddling might transition into a sexual encounter, and he offers guidelines for how to avoid an uncomfortable or dangerous situation. "What we state in the app's 'Rules of the Road' is that you wait until the end of the cuddle, ask nicely, and be prepared to take either 'yes' or 'no' as an answer. Keep your cuddle a cuddle, don't try to 'change gears' midway through."
Cuddlr is intended not only to facilitate cuddling but also to get people thinking about physical touch, how it makes us feel and who we share it with. "From some folks, there also seems to be a visceral reaction against the idea of casual platonic cuddling," Mr. Williams writes, making his case on Medium. Ms. Clark-Flory confirms that: She begins her article with a firm statement: "I don't like being touched by strangers. I enjoy a hug with a friendly new acquaintance, but the physical intimacy stops there," she writes. The same goes for Lucia Peters at Bustle: "I'll admit that my initial reaction to the idea was, 'NO I DO NOT WANT TO BE HUGGED BY STRANGERS THANK YOU VERY MUCH.'"
According to Mr. Williams, it needn't be that way. In other cultures, he points out, straight men hold hands. We are willing to transgress physical space boundaries by offering a hug when someone is sad or grieving.
Furthermore, physical contact is healthy for us. Physical affection, especially as a child, is essential to emotional well being, as we know from Harry Harlow's 1950s studies with monkeys and maternal love. GOOD magazine recommends "a good cuddle" as a remedy for a hangover: "Physical contact releases oxytocin and other happy-making hormones.'' Research shows that oxytocin reduces stress; improves communication, trust and attachment; and can help sleep.
The idea of platonic physical contact may also help us relate to one another more openly as a society. Mr. Williams writes, "Bringing platonic cuddling into the public discussion of commitment and monogamy-and-its-variants will help couples negotiate what they are and aren't comfortable with (and even start to explore why)." It might reverse the trend to avoid touching people of the same sex out of homophobia, something that Mr. Williams argues that we learn during adolescence.
An op-ed by Elizabeth W. Dunn and Michael Norton in The New York Times states that interacting with strangers, rather than avoiding them, likewise makes people happier. The article didn't address touch, but it was illustrated with photos by Richard Renaldi, an artist who approaches passers-by and asks them to touch one another. He then captures these encounters in group portraits (as seen in his monograph, "Touching Strangers.") By creating tableaux of people who are unlikely to touch one another, Mr. Renaldi's photographs encourage the viewer to consider more expansive ideas of what a relationship can be.
Mr. Williams's enthusiasm for cuddling among strangers shows up in other venues. Gideon Lewis-Kraus reported last summer for Harper's on a co-sleeping cafe in Japan, where you pay to sleep next to someone (in his case a young woman) for an hour but can add, at an additional charge, a pat on the head, spooning, staring into each other's eyes, or sleeping with your head in your co-sleeper's lap.
Jon Fortenbury wrote in July for The Atlantic about attending a cuddle party, an event attended by "mostly middle-aged" and "predominantly white" men and women. Similar to Mr. Williams's protocol for Cuddlr, the evening began with an hourlong discussion of appropriate behavior and an opportunity for each participant to state their intentions. (Mr. Lewis-Kraus was similarly briefed that no sexual advances would be tolerated.)
Then, "people held each other, gave massages, nuzzled, spooned, puppy piled, and laughed over snacks. It was not a front for an orgy or a bunch of touchy-feely hippies preaching peace and love, but a group of individuals who craved the kind of non-sexual human connection that many people don't get if they're single." Mr. Fortenbury, initially skeptical that the whole thing would be "pathetic and weird," found that "I left that night feeling more appreciated, connected, and relaxed."
Even for those whom touching a stranger seems like an uncomfortable idea, the urgency of the need for touch has caused people to get creative. Temple Grandin, the autism activist, designed the "hug machine" to provide the physical pressure of an embrace in cases where someone can't tolerate physical contact. The machine and, more generally, the sensation of deep touch pressure has been shown to have calming effects for people with autism, animals and college students.
Whoever started that Facebook group may have had the right idea. In the meantime, we'll see if the initially skeptical can warm up to the idea of Cuddlr.
This article is part of Op-Talk, a new feature of NYT Opinion. Get unlimited access to our expanded Opinion section and try our new NYT Opinion iPhone app for free.
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