thealternative
"I would rather be curled up with someone, watching a movie, than getting groped by a guy I just met."
This, written in by a Princeton student in The Daily Princetonian, expresses how many people engaging in the hook-up culture actually feel. So why do people hook up in the first place?
Paradoxically, it’s because many college students think that hooking up is a necessary first step to arriving at the curled-up-with-someone-watching-a-movie phase. In other words, a major motivation for both men and women to hook up is the hope of meaningful, committed relationship. From word of mouth to movies and books, a lot of people are talking about how hook ups are the modern “pathway into relationships” (England et al. 2008, p. 540).
Friends with Benefits?
Yet a study conducted at Princeton showed that only 10% of “friends with benefits” develop into actual romances (Sense and Sexuality, Miriam Grossman, p. 9). Expectations that hook ups can turn romantic are often crushed when hook ups become no more than isolated, often drunken, outlets for purely physical – and wholly unromantic – pleasure.
According to this study, more than 50% of all hookups occur under the influence of alcohol and 49% of students who experience hookups that include intercourse never see their partner again.
Relational chaos, discomfort and confusion, whether verbally admitted or not, very often accompanies the sexual culture at Princeton. One Princeton student recounts her displeasure with the relational dynamic that characterized her experience with the Princeton sex culture:
“…(I experienced) the creation of a third category of relationship between “boyfriend” and “friend,” a vaguely defined and haphazardly executed territory of genuine attraction without genuine attachment. Whatever direction our relationship might’ve taken, I thought it had been irrevocably marred by frustrations and fears. Could a real, meaningful relationship have happened after I’d spent so many nights hating myself and my Nice Boy in turn? And the kicker, the question that eats at me to this day: If we hadn’t met on the Street, would things have been different?” (http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2012/11/29/31967/)
Long-Term Ramifications
The relational costs of hooking up extend beyond the here and now. One-night stands, and even continuous relationships of the "friends-with-benefits" variety, teach people to habitually repress or wholly eliminate resulting feelings of attachment. Such habits formed during casual sexual encounters rarely encourage mutual self-giving, or consideration of the other as a whole person. Rather, habits of selfishness, disconnectedness and superficiality are formed, which are inevitably counterproductive to the health of the future long-term, committed relationships that most people intend to pursue at some point in their lives.
So why don’t we see more people turning away from the casual, non-committal lifestyle to pursue real, authentic, genuinely connected relationships? Fear may be the answer. Fear of getting attached…fear of getting hurt…fear of getting “tied down”…fear of being held back from personal dreams and ambitions…the list goes on.
What Princeton students need, as do college students everywhere, is the courage to overcome the fear of vulnerability; after all, being vulnerable with another person is part and parcel of forming real relationships. Listen to the benefits one student experienced from giving real relationship a shot, despite her initial fears:
“I realize that I am a better person for our relationship. We had memories and intimacy we couldn’t have had if we’d stayed in the middle ground between hookup and relationship. We met each other’s families. We visited each other’s homes. We took cute pictures and took fun trips to the city. Most importantly, with him, I was able to be vulnerable in a campus environment that so often necessitates hiding true emotion and feelings. He knew me better than any friend I’d ever had before. Falling in and out of love was scary, sure, but the experience of being so open with someone was completely worth it.” (http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2012/10/18/31537/)
Made for So Much More
Falling in and out of love is scary, as is pursuing meaningful interaction with an attractive person of the opposite sex without the help of alcohol or blaring speakers on a dance floor. But, while fighting apprehension is often a necessary part of forming real relationships, there’s something so much worse about the emptiness of a hook-up, that hollowness that leaves you with a pit in your stomach afterwards. We believe that emptiness points to the reality that we were made for so much more than a hook-up.
So, put simply, don’t settle. Don't settle for fooling around in a crummy pseudo-relational sandbox when you could actually take a trip to the beach. Be real, be relational, be alternative.