Hookup culture has become more and more prevalent in today's world and I absolutely hate it. Hookups are temporary pleasure and offer little to no long-term positive impact. No, I'm not slut-shaming. You do you, I guess. But what's the point of hookups? They have caused us to avoid feelings and relationships in favor of "having fun" and Netflix and chill. The culture that has risen from this avoidance of feelings and temporary pleasure has caused monogamy to seem like a foreign concept to some people. The idea of being in a relationship seems scary, and in some cases, out of the question for people. That scares me. Why are we so scared to let people in and to feel something?
Nowhere have I seen hookup culture as prevalent as it is on college campuses. It's at the point where people expect to have a bunch of casual hookups because "that's college." But why is that college? Why do we expect to be going on Tinder "dates" and hookup up with random people at parties? I just don't understand why people are so afraid to have feelings for someone and actually date them.
Feelings now are talked about like a disease. If you start to feel something for someone then you "caught the feels," and it's such a horrible thing. Yeah, I understand that sometimes feelings suck because then you can get hurt, but you can also have more fun when you let someone in. The version of love that is expressed in hookup culture is distorted in so many ways that it's hardly recognizable as any kind of love. It's really the avoidance of love. We avoid feeling something for someone because if we let ourselves feel something it opens us up to the possibility of getting hurt. The possibility of getting hurt is scary, and I get that — but we're young. We're supposed to fall in love and get our hearts broken. It's painful, but it helps us grow. By blocking out the feelings, we also block ourselves off from growing into who we are supposed to be. At some point, we will probably realize that blocking out feelings doesn't protect us from getting hurt, but instead, hurts us more.
What ever happened to the "old fashioned" type of dating. The kind where you call someone or, god forbid, ask them in person to go to dinner or something. That's the kind of dating and of love that I like. That's the kind where you can freely have feelings for the other person. Yeah, you can still get hurt, but it's worth it because you also got the best part of the relationship. Hookups have provided us with a false sense of security and love that is unhealthy. The culture that has evolved around hookups encourages people to avoid feelings all together in an attempt to keep us from getting hurt but it ends up hurting us more because it also stops us feeling real love.
