Why “Hook Up & Hope” Is A Bad Dating Strategy

 

“I just wake in the morning and feel so bad about myself!” one college girl client recently shared with me after yet another night of partying and a casual “hook up”. She is far from the only one to wake up this morning feeling this way.

 

We are discussing this because what she wants is to be taken seriously and be in a serious relationship with someone she can take seriously. 

Instead she has a sex life, but no romantic life. 

And she, like many of her peers, is stuck in the cycle.

“I had this awkward moment on my way back from class today” a 21 year old male college student told me last Thursday. “I bumped into this girl I’d been ‘getting-with’ for the first time since I had to break it off with her when she got too into me… I told her from the start I am not looking for anything serious.” and then he read me the awkward text exchange they’d had a week earlier where she tried to play it off as no big deal.  

Clearly it was though.

On the list of most common topics of discussions I have with my adolescent clients, this one is near the top.

A client says “I want a girlfriend” or “I want a boyfriend”.  

Then, instead of the timeless practice of dating, getting to really know another person, building a personal connection and finding broad compatibility, they default to the common practice of their generation – Hooking Up & Hoping:

It typically goes in this sequence:

A high school or college student or single person in their 20s meets someone or meets-up with someone they like  (typically while drinking/drunk), “take a walk” with them (getting some privacy), “hook up” with them (which means doing anything sexual, beginning with kissing and often not ending there) then return to the party, sometimes they exchange phone numbers (or Snap’s) and start “talking.” Then repeat.

If they meet in a bar, instead of “taking a walk” they might go home with the person, sleep with them and hope it is not a one night stand.

Sometimes instead of meeting at a party or bar, they meet online. 

The pattern is the same: 

Instead of taking deliberate time to slowly but surely get to truly know someone and determine if they are compatible as a partner to have a serious relationship with, they get sexual with them and it quickly flames out, often leading to disappointment, guilt, resentment and even disgust.

Don’t take my word for it: Ask your teen or young adult son or daughter how common this is!

This lifestyle is largely transactional and often remains almost entirely physical. 

Anyone who’s actually been in a long term relationship knows that a healthy vibrant relationship is always way more than transactional and physical, and that when it becomes only that, it is usually time to end it!

All that being said, it is true that every now and again, maybe once in a thousand times, “hook up and hope”  leads to the couple winding up in a legitimate healthy lasting relationship.

Why if the likelihood of this leading to a person becoming a healthy girlfriend boyfriend relationship is at best 1 in 1000, do they continue to do it this way?

Great question.

While there is a timeless truth about adolescence and hormones and curiosity (who doesn’t remember their first kiss??!) that typically starts it all, it tends to continue and go further quickly due to reasons that are far more psychological and sociological than they are biological:

For many high school and college aged girls it is a way to remain “relevant” and included in social groups, especially to be invited to parties. Many also just do it blindly because it is what everyone around them does and they know no other way. “Hooking-up” has become glorified through contemporary adolescent media and trends.

Countless times I hear teen girls and young adult women say that if they don’t make it that easy, they will be perceived as being prude and guys will lose interest. They think it is the only chance they have to get something real.

They are not exactly wrong.

Boys find themselves steeped in the “hook up” lifestyle for various reasons of their own. 

First and foremost, with hormones raging often amplified by watching so much porn, the physical excitement and sexual experiences that easy “hook ups” satisfies for themselves without strings attached, is incredibly enticing. 

Boy culture also tends to gamify “hook-up” culture. Boys who are more part of “Bro culture” will talk and even brag about “body counts” and will keep score and compare with one another… The “body count” equates to how many girls they have “gotten with” which is the even more transactional lingo for “hooking up”.  

For them it’s not just how much they can bench press that gives them status.

Many boys tend to continue to participate in “hook up” culture for similar reasons that girls do: 

It is what everyone does and they blindly follow the crowd, or they do it to remain relevant. Some do it out of pressure to prove their masculinity or sexuality. 

Most boys won’t freely admit that to their peers, but I have heard it many times in their private conversations with me. 

I’ve also heard many boys who wind up worrying they have erectile dysfunction, as the combination of alcohol and porn-comparrison-performance induced stress, causes so much stress it impacts their sex lives.

“Boys are stupid” “Girls are crazy”

I’ve heard it hundreds of times from girls who are shocked that a guy they ae hooking up with thinks it’s okay to be hooking-up with other girls 

I’ve heard variations of this hundreds of times from boys who are shocked that a girl who said she’s into casual and not wanting more commitment (“friends with benefits”) suddenly gets bitter at them when she sees him talking to some other girl.

“No they are not Crazy or Stupid” I tell them repeatedly. “You are just naive!”

I then go on to explain this as close to universal truth as I have found:

“Deep down every fundamentally healthy person wants deep connection, to be seen, known and feel not alone in the world. Girls just seem to realize it sooner than boys do.” 

(I say “fundamentally healthy” because I cannot speak to what goes in the mind of a sociopath or people with other major organic issues that may make them an exception to this otherwise universal truth).

Because of this the act of having a one-dimensional physically intimate relationship without deep partnership and multi-dimensional connection, is almost always going to come up short, often ending badly.

 

 

Up next: A New Solution:  “What To Do Instead”