Defining the Hook-Up Culture
What exactly does it mean and how is it affecting young adults' behavior
As a young professor at a big university, I’m able to talk to my students about rather personal issues like hooking up, relationships and sex. In one class, I asked students to diagram, on a large whiteboard, the evolution of a relationship — from first meeting to marriage. This was a fascinating exercise, and highlighted one key challenge in the dating game for young adults: “Hook-ups” are very common, but no group of college students can agree on exactly what the term means.
Studies tell us that more than half of college relationships begin with a hook-up. Translation: Before two college students have a dinner date, a meaningful conversation or even exchange phone numbers, there’s a good chance of a hook-up.
But what is a hook-up?
Does hooking up mean smooching? Some intense making-out? Maybe some hands wandering? Or does it mean sex? And what are the emotional expectations surrounding a hook-up?
Back in my day (I graduated from college in 1999, so a while ago, but not eons in social change terms), if a friend told me she’d hooked up with a cute guy the night before, I’d have assumed they made-out, maybe a bit more, but certainly not had sexual intercourse. Today, some of my students tell me that hooking up usually means sex — or “at least” oral sex — while others say just kissing can be considered a “hook-up” as well.
And it’s this ambiguity that causes problems.
False information
If you hear tales of many friends “hooking up” and you assume that it’s sex, then you would also assume that everyone else is having a lot more sex than you are. Then, when you’re in an intimate situation, you might go farther sexually than you might otherwise feel comfortable doing, because you think that “everyone’s doing it.”
But everyone isn’t doing “it”: Repeated surveys of college students find that the average undergrad has one or fewer sexual partners in a year.
Think of it this way: If the reality is that hook-ups are more innocent — passionate kissing, for example — then you’ve just been given some false information. That false information gives you a skewed idea of what other people are doing, and it’s dangerous, because it impacts what you might do, too.
TAKE THIS SURVEY!!
What is a hook-up?
When does a hook-up happen in the evolution of a relationship?
What is expected after a hook-up?
Take the Hook-Up Culture survey here and share your opinions and insights. In a future column I’ll post the results.
As young adult Catholics, often we struggle to figure out how to both follow the Church’s teachings, and be socially “normal” when it seems like everyone else is having sex all the time. It’s hard enough to try to live out these teachings with support — but with lots of misinformation and social pressure, it often seems impossible.
So let’s define our terms and help clarify things. You tell me:
What is a hook-up?
When does a hook-up happen in the evolution of a relationship?
What is expected after a hook-up?
Take the Hook-Up Culture survey here and share your opinions and insights. I’ll share your opinions and insights in future columns.
I’m about the same age as the author, so I definitely have a share of memories about ‘hooking-up’ culture in my college days. Been there!
As more of a ‘grown up’ now, I look back on hook-up culture and it makes me rather sad. Hooking-up is, on the whole, not the ‘way in’ to a relationship. It’s generally viewed as a one-time thing, no expectations. At “best” it may lead to future hook-ups which might eventually meander into a relationship, but again the expectations and likelihood are pretty slim-to-none. Hook-ups take people emotionally beyond the realm of healthy, which helps explain those dreary dramatic after-effects.
But there’s something critical missing from this article. It is the very real fact that hooking up is 99.99% in conjunction with alcohol. The feelings one gets while ‘tipsy’ or even worse drunk, give the illusion that certain feelings or attractions exist that in reality do not. (ie we give it names like “liquid courage,” “beer goggles,” etc.) This is why people wake up feeling not only physically horrible, but emotionally drained to realize they’ve acted out on feelings that are either untrue, overdramatized, and in the case of hook-ups conveyed attraction that either isn’t ‘really’ there in the first place, or regret of having mixed oneself up with someone they wish they hadn’t.
Social pressure is a factor in hook-ups, and again it’s almost always in the context of alcohol – parties, bars, spring break, post-game “after parties” and the like. Looking back, I think the majority of my friends (women and men alike) almost always felt embarrassed, awkward and remorseful after hooking up. And equally so with the #of drinks they had, which is used to blame or excuse them from the event.
and to answer your questions:
1. what is a hook up?
it’s more than a kiss but less than sex. it typically lasts an hour or more, and sometimes involves staying the night w/ the other person. (too drunk to leave!)
2. when does a hook-up happen in the evolution of a relationship?
i’d say pretty much never if you define a relationship as a healthy relationship involving monogamy and commitment. hook-ups are either one-time events or bizarre escapades between men + women who are incapable of forming a healthy relationship w/ one another.
3. what is expected after a hook-up?
a physical and emotional hangover. guilt. remorse. drama. not hearing from the other person highly likely. or running into them in the future and feeling embarrassed or wondering if a hook-up is going to happen again if they linger around them long enough.
Thanks, Catholic, for your great comments–and you are absolutely right! Alcohol is a HUGE part of the hook-up culture. Great point.
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