I want to know when relationships went out of fashion. When did taking a girl out on a date without expecting anything in return, or waiting to ‘seal the deal,’ stop being the norm? And why does every guy act like commitment is a disease that they need to stay as far away from as possible? Now I know that not every guy feels this way, but it seems like the odds are against me as a hopeless romantic. I ignorantly thought that coming to college meant that I would finally be around guys that were serious about relationships, but boy was I wrong. College boys are no more mature than high school boys when comes to dating. In fact, college is a playground for guys to shop the aisles of hookup culture. And before you assume that I’m some preachy feminist who has never slipped up in her quest to win at the dating game, think again. I’m human. I have wants (not needs, there’s a difference) and sometimes I want to feel wanted in an adult sort of way. For the past two years, I’ve been in an on and off relationship with hookup culture.
It didn’t all start out this way. It all began after high school, when I entered into my first relationship with the opposite sex. I’d been seeing a girl for about a year, but I realized that being together wasn’t best for our friendship. I couldn’t see myself with another girl after her, so as a bisexual I went the other route. I began seeing this guy and I would describe our relationship as a summer fling. We went on dates, he took me out, but nothing was phsyical and nothing was serious. It was innocent and something that I could comfortably share with my grandmother. He was my first kiss with a guy and something sparked in a way that it hadn’t with girls. Even though I still liked girls, there was a different kind of attraction to being with guys. When I was with him, and he kissed me, I could feel electricity running through my body. Being with guys made me so nervous and weird that I would literally shake after being kissed by them. But I liked the excitment and I wanted to know what it felt like to be in a relationship with a guy. I realized that this was something that I really wanted and I wanted to be kissed every single day.
I went into my freshman year of college, excited by the possibility of meeting someone who could light up my life. I finally realized why everyone is so obsessed with love and I wanted that. I wanted to be able to to wake up to cute texts every morning and fall asleep in someone’s arms. Unfortunately, that’s not always how things work out. I met this guy a few weeks after school started and, for a while, it felt like things were moving towards a relationship. He made me feel excited and I wanted to tackle some major milestones with him. I thought he would be my first. But when he realized that I was inexperienced in relationships and that he’d be my first, he freaked out and ditched me. I was heart broken. But I was ok with the fact that I hadn’t lost it to him. Then he did the unthinkable and started dating someone two weeks after he’d told me that he wasn’t ready for a relationship. I’d never felt jealous like this before and I wanted to be the kind of girl he was looking for. So I made a huge mistake. I gave in to hookup culture.
I lost my virginity as a way to prove to him that I could be the girl he wanted. It sounds crazy that I’d have sex with another guy to get his attention, but it worked. I soon found myself back in his company and I wanted more than anything to be with him. Yet I was willing to give up my morals and expectations for a relationship in order to be with him. He was an addiction and my gate way drug into casual sex. But it wasn’t casual for me. I went through this hookup relationship hung up on my feelings for him. I knew that he didn’t love me, or even respect me, but I was addicted to feeling wanted by him. Because when I was with him, it was real for me and being intimate was the closest thing to love that I’d ever felt. I felt high when I was with him, like I was living some type of dream. I was ok with the fact that he didn’t have feelings because at the time, just being his number one fuck was enough. I was heart broken when he left me to be in a relationship with someone else. That literally almost ended me. I had left behind my innocence and my values to be with this guy. Despite the fact that I hated hookup culture and wanted to be someone’s girlfriend, I went along with the game for almost eight months. And he had let me go like I was nothing for another girl. It killed me thinking about the fact that he loved her. I had wanted to be his girlfriend and I thought that by having sex with him, I could convince him. Although, instead of letting my wounds heal and being single until I met the right guy, I needed that fix. I needed to feel wanted and loved through physical contact. I craved being intimate and I didn’t feel confident unless I was getting it.
For the rest of that year, I indulged. I found myself a hookup buddy and I had my weekly fix for a whole semester. I picked him on purpose because I knew I would never develop feelings for him. He was just someone to help me get over the guy from freshman year. And for a while, I thought it was working. I cut off contact with my former hookup and I was letting all of my wants be met by a cute guy who got the job done. It worked because he didn’t want anything out of it either. But even though I was allowing myself to have my share of physical intimacy, I wasn’t happy and I was still searching for boyfriend material. I had learned that the types of guys that I had been drawn to in the past were bad news and that I could sleep with them, but they weren’t the kinds of guys that you date. My sophomore year hookup and I ended things amicably before Christmas break and, for the first time in a long time, I felt ok being on my own. I thought that I had been healed and that I was finally ready to be single. And I was single, for a few months. Then everything changed.
I met this guy and he seemed different than the other college guys that I’d met. He actually wanted to get to know me. We began to talk constantly, he would take me out on real dates, and all of his friends told me that he couldn’t stop talking about me. This was fucking amazing. He made me feel so wanted and so beautiful, and for the first time in a long time, I had hope. I had hope that I would finally get out of my rut and that I’d met someone who wanted to be with me for the person I was on the inside. I was careful not to go too fast with him and he understood. Because he liked me and I was starting to fall for him. Being liked for who you are is something that a hookup can’t fulfill. I felt like I was more than a body, more than sex and I didn’t think that there was something more than sex. I didn’t need to sleep with him to feel wanted and I felt secure that he wasn’t going to leave me because I wasn’t putting out. I thought wrong. He ghosted me. He got scared of being in a relationship and stopped talking to me and would turn the other way if he saw me. I was devastated. I had only been with this guy for a month but it was one the best months. It killed me that he’d done this to me and I felt like everything that I had ever wanted was being ripped from my finger tips. It wasn’t fair and I drove myself crazy wondering what I had done wrong. Why I wasn’t good enough to be a girlfriend. Because I don’t believe in a guy not wanting to be in a relationship because he’s afraid of commitment. Because if he really liked me and wanted to be with me, it wouldn’t matter. I was so hrut that I had been led to believe that I could have been someone’s girlfriend that I plummeted into the depths of depression. I was diagnosed with depression at 12 and have been medicated since I was 13 and it’s safe to say that this was one of my worst lows. I wasn’t upset that I’d lost him, but upset that I was tricked into thinking that I could have been in a relationship. It took me a long time to realize that I didn’t even like this guy, I just really fucking wanted to be in a relationship. And I resented him for taking that away from me. I got scared. I would spend night after night wondering why these guys didn’t want to be in a relationship with me, what the hell was wrong with me, and why I wasn’t good enough. Was I not pretty enough? Was I not cool enough? What about me wasn’t girlfriend material? I began comparing myself to those girls who get a new boyfriend days after they end their last relationship. How did they fucking do it? What made me so different from these girls? I couldn’t figure it out and I wanted nothing more than to feel happy again. To feel like myself and to feel normal after being fucked over. I said that I was going to find a way to love myself, single or not. That I would build myself from the ground up and not need to be with someone to feel important. But I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready to let go of the feeling of being wanted. I craved intimacy and it had been about six months since I’d had sex. I went back to hookup culture.
So yes, I don’t like hookup culture but I’m contributing to it. I hate to admit it and I often lie to make myself look better. I’m still a monogomous person and I have still been with less people than most, but I haven’t been in a real relationship. I’d love to be able to end it with hookup culture, but it’s hard. It’s hard to be 100% single when being wanted feels so good. Because when I’m with someone, I forget all of my insecurities. I feel confident, beautiful, and loved, even though I’m not getting the kind of relationship that I truly desire. I’ve been settling and it’s hard to cut the cord. I know that I’m not the only girl who feels this way and that it’s completely normal to be in this situation. But it sucks. I am not shaming casual sex because it is great, but it’s not where I see myself. I don’t want to be hooking up with people years down the line, I want to be feel completed by a relationship. And I think that the only way that I will get there is by completing myself first. I need to be ok with being alone for a little while. I can’t get sucked in to this world because it’s toxic for me. If I ever want to be the girl who gets the guy, I need to be the girl who loves herself. And I think I’m getting there. I’ve started to be ok with being single, because even though I’m single, I am still a person who deserves love. And I know that one day I will get there and that a relationship will come with time.