New York now offers busy & lonely women opportunity to be professionally cuddled by strangers

Loved-starved women are paying hundreds of dollars to cuddle strangers in intimate sessions that last for two hours.

Cuddlist, based in New York, offers lonely, career-driven women a chance to enjoy human contact for $80 (£55) a go. But the professional 'cuddlers' who embrace, snuggle and even spoon with their clients insist there's nothing sexual about what they do.

Amazingly the service is also popular with married women who have husbands that are too busy to provide the affection they need. Saskia Fredericks, 41, has been using the service for just over a year because she only gets to see her husband for a few months.

The aspiring actress and masseuse spends most of her time in the city while her husband Arthur, 45, lives in Connecticut working as a police officer and serving in The National Guard.

She finds the lack of human contact difficult to deal with and her husband is fully supportive of her employing a cuddler twice a month.

Saskia added: “My husband is a lieutenant in the police department so he is on patrol 24/7 and we don’t live together full time because I am here in NYC.

“I am 99 per cent sure that he doesn’t get jealous of the cuddling because I check in with him and talk with him about it.

“Maybe if we seen more of each other we could go to cuddle groups together – I don’t think it’s something he would talk to his cop buddies about but he is an open minded guy.

 “He’s more protective than jealous so as long as I am safe he is happy.

“I really look forward to it because I love affection and I love how it makes my body feel – I get excited because it’s my treat.

“If I didn’t have these cuddle sessions I would go through my life with no touch and that would be really lonely.

“It’s great because I don’t have to battle in the bar scene for attention and I don’t have to feel awkwardness with a girlfriend – it’s all about me because I pay for it.”

The cuddling business is growing rapidly in New York and cuddlist.com employs more than 40 professional cuddlers to deal with more than 200 requests a week for the service.

CEO Adam Lipin, 52, said: “The sessions last for around two hours and cost $80 per hour.

“We are expanding our cuddlers by around three a week so this is definitely a viable business model.

“We have all kinds of clients; men, women, old people, young people - they come for the personal touch and human interaction. That’s what I value about it.”

But there are risks that naturally come from close human contact and professional cuddlers are equipped with the skills to deal with them.