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 dadâŠ
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 isnât 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, youâre 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, âwhy do I do it?â 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: âOh, you did a great job last night⊠let me call you an uber.â Wow, thanks.
When youâre home, your best friend disregards the entire situation by attempting to make you feel better. âPeople do that stuff all the time; donât be so down about it. Thatâs just college. Itâs just the hookup culture, dude.â Thatâs just it. The so-called âhook-upâ cultureâŠâdude.â
I donât know what happened that resulted in this âcultureâ. In fact, Iâm still trying to figure it out. I would suggest that it is a reflection of the baby boomersâ high divorce rates influencing their children, but I know people participate in this fad whose parents are still madly in love. Maybe itâs 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. Itâs 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. Iâve always wondered when talking became a relationship status instead of meaning a simple conversation. And then, I went to college.
âTalkingâ 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 otherâs 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 itâs weird if I text him? I mean we had sex, so thatâs okay, right? He saw me naked, so like, that has to mean somethingâŠno, I canât. Heâll think Iâm too clingy. Oh, WAIT! He texted me! He totally wants itâŠOh, he just wants his shirt back. Damn.
Iâm forever trying to understand why we put so much effort into our infatuation that we believe in an invisible  relationship. Since Iâve been in college, Iâve realized that college students everywhere have this odd deficiency. Itâs 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 âsexâ and refusing to give it a definition. We crave meaning that is not there.
Itâs 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 didnât 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 âI like youâ 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 âCollege (: year one!!â, âyear dosâ, or âew Iâm a juniorâ albums.
Letâs be real, sex is fun, but is that all we really want?
Iâll just leave this here.