Well if you did decide to become pro you should avoid belittling future clients lol.
It is totally ok to want your needs met, and to make exclusions based on who doesn’t appeal to you (physically or otherwise). Just not for money. It reads like an enthusiast whose reasoning for going pro is shaky at best.
I do think pros should have every right to turn away anybody that raises red flags. Just not to preemptively exclude people based on OPs criteria.
@dfwfitchick Even though I don't use pros, I'm behind you 100% in your endeavor here. You are right on the mark with your wants, hopes and desire to help. And your openness about your experiences is appreciated. I don't doubt a word of it. Best of luck in this new and wide open field.
Time To Get Myself Into Trouble
I've noticed a trend. If you look through other forum posts and see where a man says he wants a fit lady cuddle with, the number one response is that he is looking for more than cuddles.
When a female says the same thing, the comments are "it's her prerogative".
I'm fat. I don't want to cuddle with a fat lady. She has to be fit. Let the trolling begin.
NOTE: In the line above, the first sentence is true. The other sentences is me being a dumb-@$$.
@CaliCuddlingGuy i don't fault anyone for having personal preferences . I do feel that man or woman , if you put the physical looks above all or at least most factors, then it likely does mean it's about more than cuddling .
@dfwfitchick Maybe arrange to cuddle in public?
@pmvines: Agreed. Like @FunCartel said, "[T]he 50 over seems very random and more a target of what you are attracted to." It likely does mean it's about more than cuddling.
In a perfect world, where aesthetic attraction didn't usually drag that other kind of attraction after it, having physical looks as your priority would be so much less likely to mean you were after something non-platonic. If only we lived there instead of here....
LOL, I'm still trying to figure out why does it matter if a person is overweight or ugly if you really only care about "Platonic cuddles". What's it matter?
@Kense: Well, hypothetically—suppose you're an incredible aesthete, someone who needs things to be pretty almost as badly as an obsessive-compulsive needs them to be tidy. If you were like that, you'd surround yourself with pretty things and people not for any non-platonic reason, but just because you really like having the world's most eye-pleasing refrigerator (and so on).
...There probably aren't many people like that in the world, never mind on this site.
Edit: On a purely sensory level, the muscle:fat ratio of a human body makes a difference to how it feels when you lean up against it. Like with mattresses, some people like them firmer and others like them softer.
I’m not certain how to politely explain that humans aren’t mattresses, and treating them as if they are means you are a selfish jerk...
But I think most adults realize that their expectations and entitlements are expressions of unhealthy ego, and a deep-rooted lack of self-esteem.
@CharliesTwisted: Well, you've got me there. I agree: whether you're treating someone as a mattress or a painting, you're not doing right by them. The aesthetic and sensory facets of a human body are fine and all, but the person should always come first.
Of course, "should" isn't "does."
Despair: loss of hope. In general, I'm guessing if someone still held out hope that they'll be able to find sufficient affection/physical touch in their life through more "normal" (free) social means, they probably wouldn't be considering paying a stranger from the internet to cuddle with them. Hence, as a pro cuddler, the "desperate" are maybe, largely, your demographic (blanket statement and not necessarily true of all potential clientele I know) Perhaps you meant lack of manners, crudeness, and disrespectful messages aren't attractive?
@CharlesTwisted If you're not certain how to do it politely, perhaps you shouldn't do it. One day you are asking admins to mute people who don't agree with you and you are now on here calling someone a selfish jerk for their opinion that someone might not want to lean against someone bony, or with too much flab. To each his own! (or her own) How many times must it be said? All you need do if you want to participate is give your opinion that to you, it matters not if someone is thin, fat or in between...there...done.. You don't have to start calling people names.
@Fairbutfirm: Of course it's okay to have preferences for what type of body you want your cuddle buddy to have. But should those physical preferences be the most important thing?
If I had to choose between a hard-to-look-at person who likes the same things I do and is fun to talk to and easy to be around, or an extremely-pleasant-to-look-at person who doesn't like the things I like, isn't fun to talk to, and has a personality that makes me feel tense, I'd pick the ugly cuddler every time.
An uncomfortable-to-snuggle-with person (with a great personality) vs. a comfortable-to-snuggle-with person (with a lousy personality) would be a tougher choice, but I figure there are ways to cuddle comfortably with just about any body type so long as you're both inventive enough and willing to experiment. So when it comes to picking cuddle buddies, shouldn't the person come first, and their body second?
(Or maybe third, or fourth, depending on how important and/or inflexible location and times of availability are.)
I don't think @CharlesTwisted is saying that the physical characteristics of potential cuddle buddies don't matter at all, but rather that the physical characteristics shouldn't be the only (or even the most important) thing you consider, as though your buddy were primarily just a sort of living mattress for you to snuggle up against, instead of another human being who may not appreciate being rated on a tactile scale from 'hard' to 'soft' and picked out like a bed at a furniture store.
For instance, I don't have the first idea what Fairbutfirm's muscle tone is like, and I'm terrible at remembering faces so I couldn't tell you whether he's good-looking or not, but I've talked to him enough to believe I'd have a good time sharing a couch with him and watching, say, Sliders (if he was down to cuddle my type of person).
It'd be a nice bonus if, in addition to being easy to talk to, he was also easy to look at and soft to cuddle—but those would only be icing!
You don't pick a cake for its icing, do you?
Great, now I'm talking about people like they're cake. Aaaugh, I give up. All metaphors fall apart if you stretch them too far, anyway. The inside of the cake, in this case, is the person proper and the icing's just how they look and feel to the touch—I am not suggesting you eat your fellow cuddlers.
@DarrenWalker dang why'd you use a cake analogy? 😣 I do pick the cake for the icing 😂🤣 I dislike cake but looove icing 🤤
@Sashamcgee: Oh no, I blew it. There's always one!
Say... did I attend a birthday party with you once? Because I remember a kid at some party eating all the icing off their cake, and leaving that lovely block of lemony goodness slimy but (tragically) entirely uneaten.
...If we ever attend a birthday party together in future, I'll cut the icing off my cake and you can have it.
@DarrenWalker I think you missed @Fairbutfirm’s point altogether and it had nothing really to do with body types or preferences at all. His point had to do with how an opinion is given. You can deliver an opinion like you did in a logical or analogous way and leave it at that or you can spew venom, disdain and hate with your opinion. @Fairbutfirm was absolutely correct in his assessment partially because it was formed across several threads and posts from @CharlesTwisted.
@FunCartel: The one comment by Charles on this page seemed fine to me... all by itself. Multiple threads and posts, huh? That would make sense. I haven't been following that—I tend to forget who said what in any thread other than the one I'm reading at the moment.
@DarrenWalker The post by @CharlesTwisted in question is passive aggressive and @Fairbutfirm’s first sentence is spot on regarding if you cannot say something politely perhaps you shouldn’t say it. Charles started his post by acknowledging he knows he should say it politely then doesn’t and emphatically uses name calling to make his point. That is pretty much the crux of the problem, and no matter how you slice it, @Fairbutfirm is right about that.
@FunCartel: I don't know how to tell someone politely that they shouldn't treat people like things, but that doesn't mean it's something that should go unsaid.
In isolation from the rest of his posts (whatever they are), it's just a tiny touch of passive-aggressiveness, and actually pretty funny. Stack the rest of it in and maybe it would become too much even for me—I don't know. But that one comment, all by itself, is fine in my book.
You find it funny but more than one finds it condescending and mean because most of us do not live in a vacuum where we ignore a larger sample size. It is too much and I will leave it at that.
And Darren, that is a very specious thing to say that it can’t be said politely as you just did in your post above arguing you cannot.
@FunCartel: ...I did? Oh, well done me!
Maybe I should make a habit of visiting the comments part of people's forum profiles more often; I just don't remember who said what without going to check.
@DarrenWalker Yes, you said “you shouldn’t treat people like things.” That is polite and all that needs to be said. Adding anything to it in the form of rage, insults or name-calling is toxic.
@FunCartel: Since it implies that the "you" in question is treating people like things (otherwise why would I need to say it?) I figured saying it at all was rude. Acknowledgement of unfortunate truths is so often seen as impolite. I'm glad it's not in this case.
Still... doesn't treating people like things make whoever's doing it a selfish jerk?
I'll probably never really understand why tone makes facts unacceptable. I'm bad with stuff like that (which is why I'm so inept socially, I suppose).
@DarrenWalker Tone does matter or we would not need moderators. You manage to keep your tone on the straight and narrow here, so I think you are more in tune with tone than you let on.
But if a leader—be it a coach, a president or an activist (one could go on)—were to just dryly state facts without being aware of tone they would not be much of a leader. In addition, many facts can be shaped by tone. There is more gravitas in “Four score and seven years ago...” than in “It has been 87 years since....”
@FunCartel: I suspect I'm just lucky, and happen to have a personality that naturally results in acceptable tone (most of the time). It's not as though I do it on purpose.
That last bit makes more sense to me, though. I have a vague sense of how writing style changes the feel of a story—though I still don't really understand it on an intellectual level! Thanks for taking the time to help me figure things out, FunCartel.
@DarrenWalker that child was not me BUT they're good in my book 😋😎
I'll gladly accept your icing at any cake events you sweet human you 🤗
@Sashamcgee: Yay! 🎂 🍰
This is being addressed outside the forums in private. As nothing else constructive can be added to the conversation I am closing this discussion.