It's a summer Friday in New York City media… five years ago, the whole industry would be on its way to the Hamptons right now. These days we just phone it in on dog day afternoons (but we do not rob banks to pay for sex change operations). Here are links to great things other people have written this week:

Em & Lo summon their man panel to bat around this query: do dudes dread just sleeping over with a new date? Next time we'll ask the ladies how they respond to, "Is it creepy that I just want … Read More

These days, women are suckers for anything labeled "lite," whether it's cookies, ice cream or bacon-flavored spread. It was only a matter of time before we started taking our intimacy lite too. Intimacy lite is a new way of dating, bridging the gap between casual sex and full blown relationships.

Two of my favorite sex writers, Em and Lo, recently posted a piece about intimacy lite. As they say, "If you’ve ever spooned your booty call or held hands with your one-night stand, you’re familiar with intimacy lite… commitment-phobes (i.e. 99.9% of male college … Read More

Em and Lo's Wise Guys column—a regular feature asking three guys a sex/dating question—tackled hand holding, cuddling and the men who claim they don't like doing either this week. A worried reader wanted to know if a cuddle-phobic man she recently started dating is as he says or (those dreaded words) "just not that into me."

Gulp.

We're torn on this one. While we certainly think a friendly hand hold and post-coital spoon are sweet and appropriate, people come in all different shades of quirk and eccentric. Being affectionate after sex doesn't … Read More

The sport of cuddling is fun for everyone involved but what happens when you lose circulation to your limbs? Rather than taking away from your time together, consider a few alternative cuddling positions.

After alternatively sweating and shivering (sometimes simultaneously) for 10 hours last night, I realized the most important thing in life is a good night’s sleep. In fact, Coach Finstock (Teen Wolf's basketball coach) sums up life thusly: "There are three rules that I live by: never get less than twelve hours sleep; never play cards with a guy who has the same first name as a city; and never get involved with a woman with a tattoo of a dagger on her body. Now you stick to that, and everything else is cream cheese." Words to live by. How is … Read More

Springsteen once sang "Cuddle up, angel, cuddle up, my little dove." And, as always, he was onto something. And science now wants in on the action. According to the Brisbane Times, women dig cuddling. Yes yes, shocking. Another case of someone with a clipboard telling us what we probably should have guessed if we thought about it for 2 seconds. But some of the other pieces to this puzzle are pretty interesting. Per the survey referenced by the Brisbane Times, women seem to want additional post-coital cuddling more than they want increased foreplay or … Read More

Work stress got you down? Monday blues getting the best of you? There may be a cure: more cuddling! According to a new study, couples that express intimacy, be it through snuggling, kissing or sex, have lower levels of the stress hormone, cortisol. The study supports past research that's found that married people are generally healthier than singletons (and we're not just talking health-care benefits) and that women who are in bad relationships have weaker immune systems.

For a week, 51 German couples recorded their anxiety levels and activities and collected daily saliva samples so scientists … Read More

"Where are you guys doing dinner on Valentine's?"

If we had a nickel for every time we heard this one…well let's just say we'd be sunning on a yacht in St. Tropez instead of sitting here in the office. Dinner and some x-rated cuddling afterward? So cliché. Why not have the bedroom action serve as the aftershocks of an invigorating and romantically spontaneous event?

The countdown is on, and if you don't have dinner reservations yet – consider yourself better off without them. Get a clue from some of our YourTango staffers, who dreamed up their ideal Valentine's Day plans … Read More