Most people will tell you that there are two types of relationships at Brown: rigid, Facebook-official romances and hurried, efficient and occasionally chronic hookups. Though there are exceptions, most of us brag that we're too busy, even too selfish to have time for casual dating. We work hard, so of course we want to play hard.
But is that really what we want, or is it just what we say we want?
Nobody will admit that they'd like to be in a relationship that lasts longer than one night. It sounds weak. It sounds insecure. It sounds just plain stupid when college is the only time of your life when it is okay to be selfish. But people still want the comfort and familiarity of seeing the same person over and over again, even when they pretend to be too self-assured for that.
So what do they do? They do serial hookups.
Contrary to what most partiers will tell you, a large amount of casual sex isn't with different people. It's with one person. It's that same person you hookup with every Friday night, or Tuesday morning, or after sharing mozzarella sticks at Josiah's when both of you are too drunk to stand. These relationships are not accidental hookups, they are definitely not Facebook official, and they definitely don't describe casual dating.
I recently took the infamous "Sex, Gender and Society" class in the sociology department. Entire discussion periods were dedicated to discussing the definition of rape, whether masturbation counts as sex and if pornography is beneficial to women.
We could study dating and marriage practices all day because they were predictable. In class, we called that a sexual script. Go on a date, first kiss, call back the next day, go on a second date and so on.
But there was one topic we could never agree on, so we almost always avoided it. It still bothers me because I'm not sure there is an answer: When does a hookup become a relationship?
It rattled the class because there is no sexual script. Each hookup is entirely different.
Some people will tell you that four consecutive hookups over four consecutive weekends is the point of climax — no pun intended. The couple must either stop hooking up because it becomes too awkward, or they will enter a relationship. But get this — if the couple hooks up four, five or even 10 times, they can continue what they are doing, as long as the hookups don't occur consecutively. That would seem too much like a relationship.
We all know that chivalry is dead, but let's face it — dating is, too. Even couples in long-term relationships don't really go on dates. They meet each other at parties, they hang out with each other's friends, but rarely will they go out to dinner.
We are not like our parents. Marriage may not be the norm anymore for a generation terrified of commitment — even small commitments. So forget about consummating the marriage. Even a mouse click must be consummated before two people decide to become Facebook official. After all, doesn't it seem a little eerie that a couple's new relationship status only shows up in your news feed the morning after they've first had sex?
It's like we have become so accustomed to these ever-changing, sometimes confusing sexual practices that we don't even bother to question them anymore, even when some of us — or maybe even a lot of us — would like to know a person, or at least their name, when we hook up with them. Why do we always seem to connect physically with our romantic interests before we can connect emotionally?
Is it because we are no longer repressing our Freudian urges and are finally acting human? Is it because we solely want sexual pleasure, prepackaged and formulaic, so mechanical that it's almost platonic? Or is it because we're afraid that we might actually like the person we are having sex with?
Sometimes nicknamed "Generation Me," we are a group of the most confident, ambitious and assertive people that America has ever seen. Yet sometimes we're too distracted by our own Facebook accounts and Twitter feeds to notice. Coincidently, we are also the most narcissistic. Some people think we're the most depressed.
In a world where personal image is quickly becoming everything, is invincibility compulsory and any vulnerability unbearable? It must be too risky to commit to a relationship — even a casual one — when the eventual failure will be splashed across the news feeds of everyone you've ever spoken to.
Cara Doriss '15 can be reached at cara_doriss@brown.edu.
