SEX WITHOUT INTIMACY: NO DATING, NO RELATIONSHIPS
By Brenda Wilson
NPR Morning Edition
June 8, 2009

http://www.npr. org/templates/ story/story. php?storyId= 105008712&ft=1&f=1001

The hookup -- that meeting and mating ritual that started among high school
and college students -- is becoming a trend among young people who have
entered the workaday world. For the many who are delaying the
responsibilities of marriage and child-rearing, hooking up has virtually
replaced dating.

It is a major shift in the culture over the past few decades, says Kathleen
Bogle, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at La Salle University.

Young people during one of the most sexually active periods of their lives
aren't necessarily looking for a mate. What used to be a mate-seeking ritual
has shifted to hookups: sexual encounters with no strings attached.

"The idea used to be you are going to date someone that is going to lead to
something sexual happening," Bogle says. "In the hookup era, something
sexual happens, even though it may be less than sexual intercourse, that may
or may not ever lead to dating."

Young people from high school on are so preoccupied with friends, getting an
education and establishing themselves, they don't make time for
relationships.

New Goal: Fun, Not Marriage

"Going out on a date is a sort of ironic, obsolete type of thing," says
25-year-old Elizabeth Welsh, who graduated from college in 2005 and now
lives in Boston. She says that among her friends, dating is a joke. "Going
out on a date to dinner and a movie? It's so cliche -- isn't that funny?"

It seems it's far easier to have casual sexual encounters or hookups, though
several national surveys of college students found a stalwart 28 percent who
remain virgins. The term "hookup" is so vague, however, it might well
encompass someone's idea of virginity -- it involves anything from kissing
to fooling around, oral sex and sexual intercourse.

"For me, it's been anytime that I was attracted to a guy and we spent the
night together," Welsh says. "It has been sex; it has just been some sort of
light making out. That's the beautiful thing about the phrase. Whatever
happened is hooking up."

Bogle interviewed college students on a small and a large campus, as well as
recent college graduates, to find out what was going on. The hooking-up
phenomena has been traced back to the 1960s and the 1970s, when male and
female students were thrown together in apartment-style dormitories, and
there was a revolt against strict rules on having a member of the opposite
sex in your dorm, lights out and curfews.

"What you see on college campuses now, even in some cases Catholic campuses,
is that young men and women have unrestricted access to each other," Bogle
says. Throw in the heavy drinking that occurs on most campuses, and there
are no inhibitions to stand in the way of a hookup.

The alumni Bogle spoke with were less into hooking up after leaving college,
but she says that's changing. It is catching on among young working adults,
mainly because of the Internet and social networks.

The Evolution Of Dating

Dating itself represented a historical change. It evolved out of a courtship
ritual where young women entertained gentleman callers, usually in the home,
under the watchful eye of a chaperone. At the turn of the 20th century,
dating caught on among the poor whose homes were not suitable for
entertaining, according to Beth Bailey's history of dating, From Front Porch
to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America.

Young couples would go out for a movie or dinner. The expectation was that
dating, as with courtship, would ultimately lead to a relationship, the
capstone of which was marriage. Precious few of these young women attended
college.

According to experts, the main reason hooking up is so popular among young
people is that in the United States and other Western countries, the age at
which people marry for the first time has been steadily creeping up. As of
2005, in the United States, men married for the first time around the age of
27, and women at about 25 years of age.

Bogle says the hookup is what happens when high school seniors and college
freshmen suddenly begin to realize they won't be marrying for five, 10 or 15
years.

Prioritizing Career And Social Life

Marriage is often the last thing on the minds of young people leaving
college today.

"My first few years out of college was about trying to get on my feet and
having a good time," Welsh says. Dating and a relationship interfered with
that.

Avery Leake, 25, knows what this is like from the other side. He's in a
relationship now, but he says that, in general, most of the young women he
used to meet "just wanted sex. They're independent." Being in a relationship
was not important to them, especially if it interfered with their careers or
their pursuit of advanced degrees, he says.

Leake found that he was also up against women who had as much money as he
had, if not more, and he says dating had just become too expensive. "You
used to be able to get away with paying $30 for a dinner and a movie," Leake
says. "Not anymore."

Empowerment Or Loss Of Intimacy?

A number of experts accept this relaxed attitude toward sex outside of
relationships as a natural consequence of the sexual revolution, women's
growing independence and the availability of modern contraceptives. But
Deborah Roffman, who conducts human sexuality workshops for middle- and
high-school- age students and their parents, sees that as a distorted view of
liberation.

"It's not a new model. I think most people would probably look back and
agree that this has been a more traditionally, or at least stereotypically,
male model," says Roffman. "What I've seen over the last few years is girls
adopting a more compartmentalized view, and feeling good and empowered by
it."

She's not convinced that this is a good thing for women, and says that being
able to say yes is only one way of looking at freedom. She would feel much
better if young men also were developing a greater capacity for intimacy.

Being able to engage in intimate relationships where men and women bring all
of themselves to the relationship is the cornerstone of family, Roffman
says.

But young people like Elizabeth Welsh don't see the hookup as an obstacle to
future relationships:

"It is a common and easy mistake," Welsh says, "to assume that the value of
friendship and those relationship building blocks have no place in longer
term relationships."

If you're honest and open about what you're doing, and willing to commit to
a relationship, she says, a hookup and friendship can be fused into a
lifetime partnership.

Partnership Still The Ultimate Goal

At 25, May Wilkerson would like a relationship, but not a family -- not
quite yet. She's lived a lot of places: Argentina, Canada and Paris.
Wilkerson says she hasn't found much intimacy with the men she's
encountered.

In New York City, where she moved two years ago, people seem even more
emotionally detached, and she thinks it is because so many of the people who
come to the big city are focused on success.

"For many of us, the requisite vulnerability and exposure that comes from
being really intimate with someone in a committed sense is kind of
threatening."

And the thought of being in love with someone, Wilkerson says, "is the most
terrifying thing."

Yes, she has been in love, but the guy wasn't quite into it. There was one
older guy who was serious; he used to bring her cupcakes. She couldn't work
up an interest in him.

Today, Wilkerson says people hook up via the Internet and text messaging.

"What that means is that you have contact with many, many more people, but
each of those relationships takes up a little bit less of your life. That
fragmentation of the social world creates a lot of loneliness."

Hooking up started before the Internet and social networks, but the
technology is extending the lifestyle way beyond the campus. Deborah Roffman
says no one is offering this generation guidance on how to manage what is
essentially a new stage in life.

The dilemma for this generation is how to learn about intimacy, she says:
"How am I going to have a series of relationships that are going to be
healthy for me and others, and going to prepare me" for settling down with
one person?

Wilkerson doesn't really focus on the concerns of people like Roffman, who
fear that hooking up doesn't bode well for the future of young people. She
thinks young people will be able to sort it out for themselves.

"We all attended health class in middle school and high school. We know
about condoms and sexually transmitted disease. Sex is fun, and a lot of
people would argue that it is a physical need. It's a healthy activity."