Most chatter about relationship woes at this time of year is generally associated with cuffing season, the period defined by everyone changing their statuses to ‘in a relationship’ because it’s cold outside, pulling feels like even more effort than usual and having company (and a comfortable, reliable sex buddy) at Christmas is always nice.
But according to a survey by IllicitEncounters.com, a dating website for married people (yep, that’s a thing), Friday 17th November is the most popular day for people to cheat on their partners. On this day, now apparently referred to as ‘Unfaithful Friday’, last year the site saw a huge increase in photo uploads and profile creations, reports the Express. 79 percent of the 500 adulterers surveyed by the site had plans to go away with whoever they’re planning to have an affair with over this particular weekend.
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The logic behind it (if we’re calling it that) stems from the fact that this is the last weekend before the Christmas season properly gets started and probably the last real opportunity to stretch the boundaries of your relationship before you’re committed to festive companionship. And even though many of us over here are neither married nor looking to sign up to a digitally enabled adultery service, there is something about this time of year that encourages us to reassess what’s going on in our love lives.
As much as Christmas is generally a jolly old occasion, relationship-wise it’s a huge commitment. There’s the obligation of meeting family, spending money on another human, attending parties with a date on your arm and having someone to kiss over spilt champagne while Auld Lang Syne plays somewhere in the background. It’s normally at this time of year that the reality of such prospects settles in and we opt to take one of two paths – a) lock down the relationship, commit to Christmas coupledom and dedicate yourself to a life as Queen of Cuffing; or b) cut that shit off and revel in the prospect of flying solo for the next month or so.
Many of us can attest that the pressure to make a relationship change at this time of year is very real. While the allure of cuffing season might be particularly enticing for some people, for many young women option ‘b’ has often felt the most logical course of action to take. ‘I didn’t want to go into a new year with an old relationship that wasn’t working’, 26-year-old Annabel tells me. While 25-year-old Marie says she ended a relationship at this time of year just because she didn’t want to buy her boyfriend a Christmas present. We've all been there.
Of course, there's no actual rule that states that now is the time to either end things with your significant other or start creating wedding boards on Pinterest, but if there's something in the back of your mind telling you to take another look at how things are going relationship wise right now, don't worry it's not just you. It's Christmas's fault.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.