This article does not express the views of Her Campus FSU.
Dear Hook-Up Culture,
Half of us hate you and the other half are so intrigued we do not know how to get rid of you. Sorry, mom and dad…
Picture this: You went out last night. You had a great time at your favorite bar with your best friends, everything went just the way you wanted… and then you wake up. Wait. This isn’t your room. This is not your bed. This looks all too familiar. Oh, no. Oops, you did it again, girlfriend.
Perhaps it was your ex? You know, that guy with whom you had an almost-relationship? Whoever it is, you’re wishing you had woken up in your own bed and not next to some dude who snores and is, for sure, making you the big spoon (um, excuse him).
Have you ever stopped to ask yourself, ‘why do I do it?’ Do you beat yourself up about the mistake that you made? Does it irk you because of the taboo that is S-E-X? Something that is so personal, that on a daily basis, on college campuses, gets pushed aside like a high five? Cue rude-snoring-dude: “Oh, you did a great job last night… let me call you an uber.” Wow, thanks.
When you’re home, your best friend disregards the entire situation by attempting to make you feel better. “People do that stuff all the time; don’t be so down about it. That’s just college. It’s just the hookup culture, dude.” That’s just it. The so-called ‘hook-up’ culture…”dude.”
I don’t know what happened that resulted in this “culture”. In fact, I’m still trying to figure it out. I would suggest that it is a reflection of the baby boomers’ high divorce rates influencing their children, but I know people participate in this fad whose parents are still madly in love. Maybe it’s technology. Yes, millennials, I know. It is immensely annoying for people to complain about how we are attached to our technology, even though it is the complaining generation that created it for us. But despite my millennial status, I find myself agreeing.
It starts in high school, when we are introduced to the “talking” stage. It’s the stage where you text all day long instead of having face-to-face conversations. I believe this is when millennials learn to depersonalize our intimacy. I’ve always wondered when talking became a relationship status instead of meaning a simple conversation. And then, I went to college.
“Talking” is a term that young adults use for a relationship in which it is acceptable to have casual sex. When did commitment become a competition over who can be a bachelor the longest? We are used to material objects being easily handed to us, so why would we pass up that striking opportunity at the bar? We strive for a relationship status and laugh at the thought of actually involving ourselves in a relationship. This casual culture that we perpetuate has made us afraid to peel each other’s layers apart to reach their core. It makes us build walls stronger than a war fortress. It drives us insane because we are running a race that we will never win. We become so infatuated with the game. We love the rebellion that accompanies being attached but feeling ambivalent.
Will he think it’s weird if I text him? I mean we had sex, so that’s okay, right? He saw me naked, so like, that has to mean something…no, I can’t. He’ll think I’m too clingy. Oh, WAIT! He texted me! He totally wants it…Oh, he just wants his shirt back. Damn.
I’m forever trying to understand why we put so much effort into our infatuation that we believe in an invisible relationship. Since I’ve been in college, I’ve realized that college students everywhere have this odd deficiency. It’s the inability to emotionally connect with someone. Most peculiarly, is that we do connect. Besides physically, we still have a weird sense the next morning that we did something raunchy. It is not because we do not want to connect, it is not because we do not want to commit, but it is because what we are doing is looking at the printed word ‘sex’ and refusing to give it a definition. We crave meaning that is not there.
It’s interesting how in high school we used to hide behind our phones and now we just want to pull his covers over our heads and pray that he didn’t just turn our world upside down.
I do believe that words have a greater affect on people than physical touch and we are becoming a society that very utilizes less and less personal communication. I think hearing the words “I like you” scares us, because we are so used to the façade of a Facebook post or a Snapchat filter that when the real communication is right in front of us, we have a hard time taking a step outside of our profile pictures or our ‘College (: year one!!’, ‘year dos’, or ‘ew I’m a junior’ albums.
Let’s be real, sex is fun, but is that all we really want?
I’ll just leave this here.