A “hook up” is what our parents and grandparents would have called a “date”. Our generation just changed the wording because “dating” had come to mean a relationship with at least a minimal degree of stability. That is, one explicitly initiated by mutual consent of both parties and presumed to be both continuing and exclusive until explicitly terminated by one or both parties.

Going on a “date” thus implied one had a steady girlfriend, and if the “date” was with anyone else, then you, your girlfriend, and your community of friends would all describe the behavior as a form of cheating. This was simply what the words had come to mean.

What then were we to call the process of going out with different people casually in an effort to find one that fits, in advance of declaring even temporary exclusivity to any of them? Well, “hooking up” fit the bill, and we started using it.

In the sort of community where, for a male and a female, both heterosexual, of similar age, and not connected by a purely “work” relationship, to spend an evening in each other’s company socially necessarily implies they’ll immediately spend the night having sexual intercourse, “hooking up” implied sex. Just like “dating” did. Whereas in communities with even very slightly more restrained sexual norms, “hooking up” with its defining absence of even temporary commitment, necessarily excluded getting naked together. (In other words, if two people described themselves as “dating”, unless they were really outspoken Christians, you assumed they were having sex. But “hooking up” just meant going to dinner or lunch or something, where people could get to know each other.)

In other words, “hooking up” was something one did with someone else one barely knows, but thinks one might possibly like to know better. A person to whom “hooking up” implies sex has standards regarding sexual intimacy which are rather shocking even to those of us formed in the remarkably-loose 1990s.

It clearly doesn’t always mean that anymore. Except, of course, when it does.

And to answer your three questions; I think that the term ‘hook-up’ is more often used as a “post” effect rather than a forthcoming encounter.

1) a hook-up is to meet up with anyone and go with the flow. No self-control.

2)the hook-up is usually a try-out at the beginning of the relationship.

3)nothing is expected.

However, I count myself among many young persons whose strong, orthodox faith was so torn apart by attempts to build relationships within the Catholic framework that we chose to give it up entirely. My faith is dead, and strict refusal of clergy and other church leaders to discuss sex with me is probably a large reason why.

The Church was made for humanity, not humanity for the Church. The Church needs to be more responsive to the concerns and needs of its people, not simply writing off their most natural desires and actions as SIN (the all-caps were a nice, merciful touch) without any further discussion.

You will, I assure you, lose many lambs in your flock if you lead your congregation this way. There are ways to teach Truth with more compassion.

So how is a clear definition of “the hook up” going to help? Passionate kissing – sin. Petting/roaming hands – sin. Oral sex – sin. And intercourse – sin.

Shouldn’t you adult, older/wiser, more stable folks (especially the original author presented here as an authority) be warning against sin? I read here that sin is bad, but not the end of the world. Doesn’t sin damn people to Hell? Wasn’t is because of sin that Christ died. I think He was serious about sin.

I don’t think Christ desires for you to define “hook up” more clearly. I think he would say, “Be holy, for I am holy. Abstain from the very appearance of sin. Be imitators of God as beloved children, and don’t let sexual immorality even be talked about among you (Eph 5).”

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.

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.