Hooking Up : Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus (24 page)

Jake
: Yeah, of course. [Laughs]

It seems that alumni actually engage in what can be referred to as

“script switching.”7 In other words, they utilized the formal dating script during the fall, winter, and spring; however, during the summer (when they were at the shore), they utilized the hookup script. Although some of the men I interviewed were enthused about the opportunities for hooking up at the shore, not everyone held the same view.

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KB
: You spent some time down the shore during the summer. Is anything different down there than it is during . . . September to May up here?

Elizabeth
: It wasn’t for me.

KB
: Did you have the same thing of guys asking you out down there?

Elizabeth
: It was almost like being back in college. [I was like]:

“What? No! I am not going to make out with you at the bar.

What is wrong with you?” [Laughs] Maybe it’s because, I don’t know what it is, but it felt like being back in college. In a crowded bar or party, everyone is drinking and I don’t know. It was weird because I kind of felt like am I the only one who is past this now. You know? But there [were] some

[who asked]: “Can I have your number?” But, there was also lots of [me thinking]: “Can you stop breathing on me.” [25-year-old alumnus of Faith University]

Unlike Elizabeth, not all men and women simply “age out” of hooking up. In other words, the shift to dating after college is not just due to people maturing. When the environmental factors are in place, many return to the hookup script.

THE SEARCH FOR RELATIONSHIPS

Men and women find themselves playing new roles in the dating script.

During college, men were often sex driven, primarily interested in women whom they found physically attractive. In the dating culture, men redefine themselves as more conservative and old-fashioned; interactions with women take on a more serious tone. They now seek romantic relationships and desire more substantive qualities in a partner.8

For most women, their objective postcollege did not change. They continue to pursue relationships, but their sexual behavior becomes more reserved. On the surface, it appears that men and women are on the same page. Unlike their college years, both spoke of wanting relationships, including serious ones; however, their timetables for “settling down” are still at odds. Men can afford to take their time to find “the one” via dating, while women, who generally want to marry sooner than men, often have difficulty finding a serious, marriage-bound ll I F E A F T E R C O ll ll E G E

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relationship as quickly as they desire. Coming to the realization that they would not be married as soon as they hoped was very disillusion-ing for some of the women. Elizabeth, a 25-year-old alumnus of Faith University, addressed this issue.

I want to have kids now. I am like: “Obviously that is not going to happen.” I didn’t want to be, and not that it is bad for anyone who is but, I didn’t want to be thirty. Maybe I will have kids in a few years, [but]

I wanted to have them young. Soon. Now I am like: “Wow! That is not happening.” I mean like even if I met someone right now and dated someone for a year and a half at least, get engaged for a year, get married and [be] married for a year, I am thirty. “Let’s have kids now,” that is what I wanted. And I don’t even see that happening soon. So I am like “Great! Okay, [my plan is] out the window!” [I guess I’ll have to move to] Plan B. [Laughs]

Lucille, a 23-year-old Faith University alumnus, offered the following:
Lucille
:My main group of friends is very, I call it boy crazy. They want a boyfriend so bad they can taste it. [There are] lots of tears when they get drunk. They get very emotional about it.

KB
: About guys?

Lucille
:Yeah.

KB
: About what aspects, [what] brings them to tears?

Lucille
:When they get drunk they get very emotional. [Crying voice] “I don’t have a boyfriend and I just want a boyfriend.

Why can’t I find someone?” That type of thing.

Claudia, a 25-year-old alumnus of Faith University, described a common difficulty:

KB
: Would you say that you are happy with the social life that is available to you post-college and the dating opportunities?

Is what’s out there good or is it a struggle?

Claudia
: Socially it’s good. I am happy with my friends. Good group of people and we always have a good time. But dating, there is not really a whole lot out there. Like two of my good friends, unbelievably handsome men, very intelligent, very fun, and of course they are both gay. [Laughs] Of course you 156

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got to wonder if they are really good looking and intelligent, if they work, if they are employed, that is always a good one

[laughs], and you’re not going to support them, they are usually gay. It’s unfortunate [that many men of interest] are also married. So that is a struggle. There is not, I don’t see a bunch of great guys, even a bunch [of] mature or even nice guys. A lot of them are very self-centered, it’s almost like a lot of them are, I guess the term is “players.” They will just date as many girls as they can. And they are like: “I got to do it now before I get married.” I think too many are like that.

Others are just not, there is no, what is the word, real emotion. They just kind of go through their day and then it’s just another thing on their list: work, date. I haven’t met too many really okay, decent guys. If I have, they are usually gay or married. I mean I know they are out there somewhere, maybe it’s just like I don’t know the areas they are in. I assume there are some out there.

For the women, finding someone was only part of the problem. Like their college counterparts, alumni women were also eager to turn casual relationships into more committed ones and to hang on to boyfriends once they found them. Thus, the struggle between men and women over what they want from relationships continues after college.

THE HOOKUP ERA

The college hookup scene has lasting effects on alumni. First, graduates share a hooking-up background. After college, men and women enter a dating scene that is new to them because the hookup culture on campus is all that most of them have known. Despite being thrust into dating, some alumni yearn for a return to the hookup scene whenever circumstances permit. Their shared experience allows the hookup to reemerge sometimes (e.g., summertime at the beach). The fact that the postcollege environment utilizes both the dating and hookup scripts could lead to some confusion among singles when two parties might not be on the

“same page.” This scenario was played out many times in alumni accounts of one person trying to go too far sexually (according to the hookup script) when the other party was thinking of it as a date (and ll I F E A F T E R C O ll ll E G E

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behaving more conservatively as a result). In other cases, alumni, such as Elizabeth, spoke of being irritated that some men were still in hookup mode when she wanted to be asked out on dates.

Second, the focus of the social scene remains (as it was in college) on friendship groups. After graduation, alumni go on dates, but spending time with groups of friends and engaging in alcohol-centered socializing is the centerpiece of social life for many. Although dating replaced hooking up as the primary means for beginning romantic and sexual relationships, it is not as central to social life as hooking up was during college. On campus, partying and hooking up went hand in hand. That is not to say that every student hooked up after every party, but hooking up was going on every weekend. The alumni I interviewed went on dates, but they were not immersed in a dating culture the way they were immersed in a hookup culture in college. Even the most active in the singles scene do not go on dates on a weekly basis.

The infrequency of dating was a problem for some of the men and women who were looking for a relationship but having difficulty finding one. Many were not satisfied with trying to find dates via the bar scene. This may account for the popularity of internet dating, speed dating, and other organized attempts to help singles find dating partners.9

Even a cursory look at the profiles on Web sites such as match.com reveals that men and women turn to these resources because more traditional avenues are not working for them.

Thus, hooking up is not just a meaningless phase that young people go through in college. Rather, the sexual and romantic lives of men and women who come of age in the hookup era are continuously shaped by their past experiences with the campus hookup culture.

8

Hooking Up and Dating

A Comparison

In
The Way We Never Were
:
American Families and the Nostalgia Trap,
historian Stephanie Coontz challenges those who lament the loss of “traditional family values” by debunking myths about families of the past.1

Coontz contends that the images of ideal family life that many people conjure up resemble a hodgepodge of old television shows’ depictions of a bygone era (i.e.,
The Waltons
[1930s],
Leave It to Beaver
[1950s], etc.), which often misrepresent the realities that families faced during those time periods. Thus, sentimental views of the past are often presented using revisionist history. Likewise, many critics of the hooking-up phenomenon have compared it to the rose-tinted version of dating, emphasizing the deterioration of courtship customs since the glory days of the dating era.2 This raises the question: How significant is the shift from dating to hooking up? In
Dating, Mating and Marriage,
sociologist Martin Whyte states that “the topic of continuity and change in premarital relations is a ‘blank spot’ in the study of social change in America.”3 With this in mind, let’s consider the similarities and differences between the traditional dating script and the contemporary hookup script in college.

SEX

The most notable difference in the shift from the dating script to the hookup script is how sexual behavior fits into the equation. But it would be a mistake to assume that men and women in the dating era were any less interested in sexual interaction than those in today’s hookup culture. In some cases, a man asking a woman on a date was a thinly veiled attempt to see how much she would “put out” sexually.4

Therefore, one of the primary objectives of a date was the same as that 158

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of a hookup (i.e., that something sexual would happen). Although men and women in both the hooking-up and dating eras had sexual objectives, the timing has changed. With traditional dating, sexual interaction occurred after the two parties had gone on a date or series of dates.

With hooking up, the sexual interaction comes first; going on a date comes later, or not at all for those who never make it to the point of

“going out” or at least “hanging out.” Marie, a senior at State University, discussed what typically happens after an initial hookup. “Most

[girls] who hook up initially get a lot of bullshit, like a lot of guys will be like: ‘Yeah, I’ll call you,’ but they don’t. You know, so it might take them a while to see you out and then hook up with you more before they really, you know, want to like call and hang out.” Some college women I interviewed said they would prefer to “get to know someone” before engaging in sexually intimate acts. The hookup script does not preclude getting to know someone prior to the first hookup; however, it does not require it, either. The dating script did require it.

The content of what can fall under the rubric of a “sexual encounter” has also changed with the shift to the hookup script. Most college students during the dating era restricted their sexual experimentation on dates to so-called “necking” and “petting.”5 Oral sex was not a part of the sexual script for the majority of people during the dating era.6 The sexual possibilities are much greater for the contemporary hookup script. According to the college students I spoke with, hooking up can mean “just kissing,” “fooling around” (i.e., petting), “oral sex,” or “sex-sex” (i.e., sexual intercourse).7 Although “going all the way” was not unheard of during the dating era, it was not the norm. There is evidence that many women had sexual intercourse prior to marriage, but most did so only with the man they would eventually marry.8 In the hookup era, intercourse is not limited to exclusive, marriage-bound relationships. The hookup script includes the potential for a wide array of sexual behavior, including intercourse, even in the most casual encounters.9 This represents a significant departure from what the dating script allowed.

THE RULES

In the dating era the rules were clear: young people, especially women, were not supposed to have sexual intercourse prior to marriage.10 Religious leaders played a primary role in communicating this standard to 160

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the American public. Since the sexual revolution, Americans largely re-buffed religious reasons for delaying sexual intimacy, and attitudes toward premarital sex became more lax.11 For example, most approve of sexual intercourse prior to marriage, but only in the context of an ongoing, exclusive relationship.12 Most of the college men and women I interviewed indicated that neither their religious affiliation nor their religious beliefs had a major effect on their participation in the hookup culture. Adrienne, a senior at Faith University, considered herself a practicing Catholic. She also indicated that her religious beliefs affected her day-to-day behavior; however, these beliefs did not prevent her from hooking up or engaging in premarital sex with her boyfriend.

KB
: Do you think that [Faith University] is any different because it’s a Catholic school with regard to male-female stuff?

Adrienne
: Not really. I don’t think so . . . well, obviously they don’t like hand out condoms. And I don’t think you’d be able, like I don’t even know if you had a problem with your birth control or anything, I don’t even know if you could like say anything to the health people. I think that might make people a little more like apprehensive to go [to the campus health center]. I mean you might have [some people who] come here that want to wait until marriage [to have sex] and stuff like that. . . . Once a year you might see a poster or something