As an introvert who struggles with intimacy socially and romantically, hooking up never appealed to me, at all. However, I still found myself sucked into it this culture because of social pressures, FOMO and curiosity. And after some awkward experiences with it, my original notion of how hooking up wasn’t for me was reaffirmed.
Entering college for the first time, I already had a set of expectations as to what college social life was going to be like: the intense partying, the continuous binge drinking and, the most prevalent, hooking up. Whether it’s the influence of the media perpetuating the “token college experience," a tactic to rise up within the social hierarchy of your friend group or simply just because “you can," hookup culture has been blatantly pervasive among college students — especially when you live on an isolated campus with thousands of hormonal, sexually frustrated kids in close proximity, it makes sense to take advantage of your freedom and to experiment. With the increasing popularity of Tinder, Grindr and other various dating apps, hooking up is becoming a trend anyone can participate in. However, it takes a certain person to participate in this culture.
As someone who is naturally reserved and guarded, the idea of being intimate with someone I barely know never resonated with me. In general, getting to know people on a personal level has always been a challenge in itself, taking me a while to be completely comfortable with someone. And although I’ve met a large number of people at college, I’ve connected with fewer than a handful of them on an emotional level.
So apply this mentality to a situation where I must engage in physical intimacy with someone I barely know — something is bound to go wrong. With this in mind, how can I be comfortable enough to make out with strangers if I’m not comfortable enough around people in the first place? So whenever I go to a party with my friends, I’m usually that awkward guy dancing in the corner by myself while my friends are drunkenly hooking up with someone.
Even though I see the appeal of a low commitment, temporary partner, I’m incapable of engaging with others in solely a physical sense. Maybe it’s because I’m a hopeless romantic who delves too deeply into the idealized fantasies of my crushes, or that all the pretentious indie rom-coms that I’ve watched skewed my perception on what romance entails. Personally, physical intimacy comes after being emotionally invested in the person at the very least. I’m not saying you have to be head over heels over the person you’re engaging with, but there must, at the bare minimum, be some sort of spark between them, right? I just can’t imagine myself being comfortable in a situation where I’m locking lips with someone whose last name I don’t know.
This isn’t to say that hookup culture is morally wrong, however. There’s this preconceived notion among our generation that hookup culture is ruining the dating scene because of the negative connotations it has on encouraging reckless sex and perpetuating relationship issues. I believe that hookup culture serves a purpose for those who are less emotionally attached than others. It isn’t fair to demean those who participate in casual sexual encounters because it doesn’t match with your standards. As long as it fulfills them, and there’s mutual consent, it shouldn’t affect your opinion on them. So even though I don’t participate in this scene, I still respect those who do.
