I was going to start this article with an apology for actually writing something serious but fuck it. I am a complex writer and I refused to be put into a box of comedy. Instead, today, as you probably can already tell, I'm going to write something angry. I see articles all the time, on Odyssey and elsewhere, about what it's like to have a relationship in today's omnipresent "hookup culture" or how this culture is ruining meaningful, monogamous relationships, or that no one wants a relationship anymore, and it goes on like this forever. Each article is a rehashed, monotone whisper of another similar article: the hookup culture is the downfall of our generation. Or it's what makes our generation so much better than those in the past. Or it's somewhere in between.
But in reality, the hookup culture is none of these things. It doesn't exist at all or, rather, it has always existed.
The people who talk about the millennial hookup culture generally describe it as the sexual atmosphere on college campuses where students partake in open sexual encounters and have many sexual partners but tend to forgo relationships. This is, according to media and millennials themselves, a new phenomenon on college campuses. Well, boy, do I have some news for you.
The hookup culture does not exist. There is no millennial mindset of having only carnal encounters and leaving monogamy in the past. In fact, if there is a hookup culture today, then that means that there has always been a hookup culture. I have some rough news for you, kids: when your parents were our age, they were having sex with other people. Probably lots of other people--your mom might have gotten laid more often than you will in your entire life. I mean, have you ever heard of the sexual "free-love" movement of the sixties and seventies? This goes for your grandparents as well, and their parents--the roaring twenties were named that for a reason. Basically, people have always been having wild sex in their early to mid twenties before, assumedly, settling into relationships.
The real problem we have to face is why our generation is the one that gets demonized as having a hookup culture. The answer is probably because we are open about it. We swipe through Tinder and choose our sexual partners on a phone screen like we choose snacks from a vending machine. And that's not an issue -- it's no less degrading than drunkenly choosing a lover at a party or a bar (which is the only option our parents had); if anything, we put more thought into whom we decide to sleep with. We talk openly about our sexual encounters with our friends and even our families. We, as a whole, are not ashamed of our sexual lives--but that does not mean we have a new form of sexual culture. We just don't have the same pretensions as our parents and previous generations of yore when it comes to sex.
So, I'm sorry if your relationship seems less meaningful to you now that you know it does not stand out against a fictional culture rebelling from monogamy. Your relationship should be meaningful beyond spiteful contrarianism, anyway. I'm sorry if you're a single person who no longer has a hive-mindset to blame for why you can't find a romantic partner. You'll find someone looking for love in you, but it's not society's fault that some people just want to have sex in their twenties.
To conclude, and to quote the immortal Cokie Roberts, when people ask why our generation is so entitled, so horny, and so reckless, I reply "T'was always thus."
