Most people who know me know how I feel about hugs and cuddles, mostly that I love them and can’t live without them. If I could start a religion it would be some crazy cuddle cult because folks, I belieeeeeve in the power of hug.

There are some great things about being in a relationship, companionship, unconditional love, regular sex, support and a feeling of home to name but a few. But one of my favourite things has always been waking up to someone in the morning and having a cuddle. Needless to say, ffor me the hardest thing about being single was always the ‘bed’s too big without you’ syndrome. But these days it seems that help is at hand for those singletons who crave cuddles…ladies and gentlemen…the cuddle party…where you can pop along and cuddle strangers without having to worry about anything.

Well, dang, that would’ve been helpful back then…

Three years ago when I found myself newly single (again) I spent an inordinate amount of time in bed trying to heal my broken heart. In that time I found myself adopting a new sleeping style, scrunched up into the teeniest ball on one side of the bed, leaving almost two thirds of the it a vast empty and empty expanse.

As time moved on and I began to feel better about myself, that sleeping ball slowly but surely began to unfurl and eventually I was sleeping more freely. But I still felt that ineffable ache that comes with realising that you go to sleep every night in a double bed that feels way too big, a bed that you rattle about in and that is half full, and every morning I would wake up missing those morning cuddles dreadfully.

I realised a while back that my sleeping style is indicative of the way I’m feeling about life in general. The child’s pose slumber ball suggests that I am finding things a little tough and trying, whilst sleeping diagonally across my bed, taking up as much space as I can normally means that I’ve managed to look insomnia in the eye and tell it to fuck off, that I feel quite chipper on the whole.

It’s telling, I think, that I had been adopting the latter of the poses (the sleep sprawler) when SP and I met. Maybe my general outlook on life meant I was more open to some wonderful boy wondering into my life. Maybe my lack of insomnia (touch wood) meant I was less grumpy and more approachable, a little funnier, a little friendlier?

Whatever it was I’m bloody grateful because now when the SP is round, I get my morning cuddles. And okay, when he’s not around I miss them, but I know I’ll be getting them again soon.

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