In mainstream western society, hookups appear to be commonplace and accepted. It no longer seems to carry the taboo it carried in many of our parents’ more traditional society and value systems. Now, the subject of “hooking up” gets much more coverage in love advice columns and forums in dating sites, as well as women’s magazines like Cosmopolitan, while traditional morals are somewhat ridiculed and eclipsed with mainstream media like Sex and the City, Gossip Girl, and Desperate housewives, that take hookups and relationships with “no strings attached” lightheartedly.
The media portrayals of hookups reflect very simply on the way hookups work in an Action-Consequence manner. Hooking up being the action, its consequences including but not limiting to: unwanted pregnancy, friend drama, betrayal, awkwardness, and abandonment. (When the cases don’t end up this way, the encounter is no longer classified as a hookup.)
Additionally, to those on the outside, individuals who engage in these hookups tend to seem either metaphorically “blind”, juvenile, or impulsive – especially to adults who fall beyond the age groups that generally partake in hookups.
However fun and thrilling a hookup might seem to you, hooking up really doesn’t demonstrate many positive rewards for someone whose goal is to develop a stable, long-term, intimate relationship. Apparently, a hookup is a negatively reflected upon action, yet the widespread occurrences of hookups support the view that people are drawn to the danger, the thrill, as Paul, Wenze, and Harvey suggest. The negativity in the action supports the danger and excitement factor of hookups, but we also see that danger does not significantly aid in developing long-term intimate relationships. Rather, up to a certain point, it would do the opposite and would lead to termination of a relationship.
The way a hookup may be portrayed in the mainstream media, as in popular shows and music videos, might be clouded by the thrill of the moment of the individual in the experience, yet still, the underlying message of the action seems to reflect rather negatively on hookups. What is amazing is that despite so many negative reflections we are being bombarded with about hookups, we still seem to do it anyway – and think nothing of it. It doesn’t seem strange to talk about hookups if you’ve hooked up with someone. It is not a shushed subject. Many people strongly believe that the more hookups you have, the better your future relationships will be. In a way, a hookup has become the not-so-forbidden but poisonous apple that people think is making them (and their relationships) healthier! Why do we partake in such an act we are constantly told will hurt us and ruin our relationships (or prospective ones, for that matter)?
I’ll take a couple of examples from magazines and dating advice “gurus” online. On a women’s magazineCosmopolitan cover, it said in big bold type: “How to Tell if He Likes You or if it’s Just a Fling.” I won’t go into detail about the actual article itself, but the very title tells us something very important which is that HE DOESN’T REALLY LIKE YOU IF HE WANTS A FLING, or if you are hooking up.
On Seventeen magazine’s site, they give a link to “10 reasons why you should not hook up if you want something serious” meaning that IF YOU WANTED SOMETHING SERIOUS, YOU SHOULD NOT HOOK UP. Lastly, on yourtango.com’s Youtube advice section, people ask questions like “Will having sex with him make him want to date me?” or “Can my hookup become my boyfriend?” The advice “gurus” say hold off on sex to build a relationship emotionally first in order to build a stronger relationship. Through their advice, they show the difference between an emotional bond and just a physical bond – one being temporary and superficial (the physical) and the other as stable, strong, and lasting (the emotional). We all know which one they want us to engage in, and I agree with them.
Warning signs are practically staring us in the face from all angles. If you want something lasting, hookups are not the way to go. Sex should not be used as a kind of currency to get someone in a relationship, as it is not stable, doesn’t last, and disables you from building a relationship with one person over time, as hookups are just what they sound like:
Hookups are ‘Hook-ups’, One-night-stands are just for ‘one night’, and Flings are ‘occasional’ things (with different partners).
Nothing in the actual sense of these words foreshadows any future long-term relations.
So, as it seems, hookups are still barriers to relationship initiation and intimacy development because they are not positive romantic relationship experiences, but actually the opposite. Research shows that “positive romantic relationship experiences during adolescence can promote well-being” (Collins, 2003) but since hookups generally don’t give people experience with long-term relationships, they don’t seem like the best ways to start one.
Hookups are far from evil and are just another consensual human experience – later on in life, they may serve to help us explore in retrospect, what we want and don’t want in our actual long-term intimate relationships. However, hookups themselves cannot sustain an individual’s long-term needs for affection, control, or inclusion and do not foreshadow a long-term relationship between those partaking in the hookup.
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