There’s this culture in college that students are always involved with a special someone, whether it be through “talking,” hooking up, friends with benefits, dating, engagement…or some hybrid combination of the few. These rungs on the hierarchy of attachment in college don’t always go in that particular order. So, what’s the deal here? Whatever happened to relationships?
I wish that dating made a comeback because I feel like the concept of it is so warped these days. I love old-fashioned dating aesthetics of the past, where dates were a big deal and people were more chivalrous and romantic. I feel like some of that old-school charm is lost in modern dating, where often people just screw around because it’s something to do. Why do all of the other fluffy stuff beforehand—like buying them flowers before a first date—if you can just jump straight to sex in a relationship?
Maybe I’m outdated, but I still think that sex is a big deal between two people. I don’t necessarily think that waiting until marriage is the case for every relationship, but I understand the ideology behind that premise. Don’t get me wrong though, I have a lot of friends that are “fuckbuddies” with people and that’s totally okay. Just for me personally, though, I think that I get way too attached to people to be able to label my relationship with someone as simply for the purpose of having sex.
But is it really possible to be strictly “f*ck buddies” with someone and not garner any sort of feelings for them?
If you take a human nature approach, having sex with someone of the opposite sex, per say, is our mode of reproduction. . . so a baby could possibly come from a heterosexual encounter. And a baby is a big deal. Even if it’s not a heterosexual encounter, you’re still doing some pretty intimate stuff with that other person.
We’re naturally at our most vulnerable when we’re naked, so to think that we can just have sex with someone and not catch any sort of feelings towards them is kind of ridiculous. Some people say that they’re able to do it, but I don’t always believe them. But that might be because I’m just a hopeless romantic who catches feelings for people in the snap of a finger.
I sometimes wish that I had the “don’t get attached” mindset as some people do. But I think a lot of my inclination towards getting very attached to people is something that I can’t help, just how some of my friends can’t help not getting attached to people. In the end, you can’t help how you feel about someone, no matter how hard you try to suppress or amplify those feelings depending on your situation.
So, let’s close with this: it’s okay to feel something towards someone else, and it’s okay to get attached to people. There shouldn’t be this huge culture surrounding attachment and limiting ourselves to no-strings-attached sex or whatnot. Personally, I think that the whole “f*ck buddies” concept is dumb (IMO), so let’s bring back old-fashioned dating.
––Sydney McFadden