What You Really Really Want (19 page)

Let's start by defining some terms. Monogamy is generally understood to be a relationship model in which two people commit to being sexual and romantic with each other exclusively, often forever. Monogamy has a lot of powerful advocates: Many religions believe it's the only “right” way to have a romantic and sexual relationship, and Western governments, at least, give it a whole lot of help by creating marriage policies that make it easy for monogamous (heterosexual) couples to gain access to all kinds of benefits that are otherwise hard or impossible to get.

Monogamy works for a lot of people. When practiced thoughtfully, it can create feelings of stability and trust and, in comparison with polyamory (more on that in a bit), can help partners minimize feelings of jealousy. Of course, any romantic and sexual relationship—whether monogamous or not—takes a lot of work at least some of the time, and monogamy means that you have only one relationship to nurture. Unfortunately, it's often practiced thoughtlessly (and therefore poorly). And it's not the only relationship option that can work.

Polyamory generally describes a romantic relationship in which partners are free to form sexual and/or emotional relationships with other people as well. Depending on how it's practiced, those relationships may all be considered equal, or there may be a “primary” relationship that takes precedence over “secondary” relationships. These secondary relationships may be primarily sexual, or they may involve deep emotional bonds and commitments. There may also be a “primary” relationship among more than two people—that is, one form of polyamory involves three or more people, all primarily committed to each other as partners.

Polyamory—not to be confused with polygamy, an often misogynist arrangement in which a man has several wives, usually subservient to him—is a new idea to a lot of people, but it's hardly a new practice. People have been doing it in one form or another for centuries. It can get complicated—polyamory provides more opportunities to grapple with jealousy; plus, with every new person comes new challenges, such as finding communication styles that work for you both, coordinating schedules, and learning how compatible you are with each person's needs, desires, and boundaries, and not everyone is up to those
challenges. But it can also be very rewarding, encouraging self-discovery, empathy, and explicit communication and providing feelings of both community and personal autonomy that can be harder to come by with monogamy. And it rarely gets boring.

Enoch explains,

Neither monogamy or polyamory is a good excuse to avoid the direct, ongoing communication necessary to sustain a healthy relationship, but both are too often used as such, in different ways: Monogamists often rely on assumptions about what “the rules” are (for example, what counts as “cheating”? Is flirting okay?) without ever discussing them, only to discover when someone gets hurt that both partners weren't operating with the same assumptions. And polyamorists sometimes throw themselves into the distraction of a new relationship instead of dealing with issues that need to be resolved in their existing one(s).

So, if neither approach is without risk (because what's without risk?), and both offer different benefits, it all comes down to what you really really want. Depending on your background,
this may be a strange question, because many of us have never been offered an option besides monogamy. But it's a key one to consider, because it's much easier to manage the difficulties of whatever option you choose when you know you've chosen it freely and consciously.

I'm going to say something now that may sound shocking, so brace yourself: There's nothing intrinsically wrong with “hooking up.” Nothing. Nada. Not even if you're a girl.

Don't get me wrong: There's nothing intrinsically awesome about hooking up, either. It depends on what you're into. What do I mean by “hooking up”? It's when you have sex with someone for the fun of it, with no strings attached, no promise of or interest in nurturing a relationship. Just feel-good sex. For some people, attraction and affection are completely intertwined to the point where they can't be separated, and for others they have little to do with each other. The important thing is not to make assumptions or judgments about whether hooking up is acceptable, for yourself or anyone else.

In fact, in 2009, researchers at the University of Minnesota interviewed over 1,300 sexually active young adults between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four about their last sexual encounter, and then assessed their emotional well-being. Guess what? The 20 percent who had last gotten it on with a casual partner were no more emotionally damaged than the 80 percent who had most recently played with a committed partner. They weren't more depressed, and they had just as much self-esteem.

Buffy, age twenty-six, is a great example of this: “To date, my most satisfying and liberating experience was my first casual hookup,” she told me.

So why the constant freaking out about “hookup culture”? Why the endless news reports and articles and books worrying about the fate of girls who engage in casual sex? And why do we never see the same hand-wringing about boys who sleep around?

There are a few overlapping reasons, but we have to start, of course, with the pervasive cultural double standard that says women want love and are willing to “give” sex to get it, while
men want sex and are willing to “give” love to get it. This is pretty gross and insulting to everyone involved. Are we all so one-dimensional that we can want only one thing at a time? And are there really no men who prioritize love over sex, or women who do the reverse? And even if men are more likely to prioritize sex, and women are more likely to prioritize love, isn't it likely that this is a self-fulfilling prophesy? I mean, if the culture's telling you from day one that if you're a woman, love should be more important to you than sex, and furthermore employing the Terrible Trio to scare you off any sexual feelings you do have, is it any wonder if you wind up thinking love is more important to you than sex?

Of course, by this point you've begun to turn the volume down on those influences, but let's not forget that most people haven't. So if you act in ways that fly in the face of that “women = love”/“men = sex” standard, it can seem very dangerous and unnatural to people watching from the outside. It's true that some of the loudest public voices (from conservative politicians to religious-right media pundits and lobby groups) screaming that the sky is falling because of “hookup culture” are actively dedicated to controlling women through our sexuality. But it's also true that a lot of other folks (like everyday parents and teachers and community leaders) who share that worry mean very, very well. They just don't have the information you have.

But there's more to the hookup conversation than just slut-shaming, and some of those well-meaning social critics have decent points to make. They're worried about the role alcohol plays in hookups (we talked about alcohol and sex in chapter
4). They worry that girls who hook up with guys aren't doing so on their own terms, and believe they're being manipulated into sex by guys or they're having it because they believe it's the only way to get a guy's attention.

These are perfectly legit concerns. The only problem is, they have nothing to do with whether or not sex is casual or committed. Do guys never sexually manipulate women in the context of a relationship? Do girls (or guys, for that matter) never get hammered in order to suppress their own inhibitions when they're dating someone long-term? When we say, “I'm worried about girls hooking up” instead of, “I'm worried about people having drunk sex, and also about unequal gender dynamics in relationships,” we accomplish two things, neither of them good. We fail to talk about the actual problems that we're worried about, and we add fuel to the slut-shaming fire that's already raging in our culture.

We also buy into the fallacy that women who hook up are ruining their chance at a “real” relationship.

Research just doesn't bear this out. A 2010 study by Anthony Paik at the University of Iowa found that the number one predictor of whether or not a new pairing resulted in a long-term relationship was whether or not both people in the pair were looking for a long-term relationship. Even those who had sex on the first date had an equal chance of going the relationship distance, as long as both people were looking for a marathon, not a sprint. So if you're looking for a marathon, be sure to go to bed with other marathoners. And if all you're looking for is a sprint, you're not going to be much worried about your marathon time, are you?

Most people, when they talk about hookups, think that girls who participate in them are “settling”—that they obviously really want a relationship but aren't pressing for one because they think a hookup is all they can “get” from the boy they're with. (This whole social hand-wringing over hookups assumes heterosexual pairings, of course.) And that happens, for sure. We still live in a sexist, unequal culture in which boys and men have more social power than girls and women, and that means that often, women are expected to put our desires and needs aside in order to cater to the needs and desires of the men we want to be with. That's real. And it needs to stop.

But that's not the
only
way unequal desires rear their ugly heads. The truth is, this same sexist culture puts pressure on men to want
only
no-strings sex, which means that they may want something more but feel too worried that their masculinity will be questioned to say so. And certainly there are plenty of women who like casual sex, whether as a regular practice
or as a once-in-a-while indulgence. Which is to say nothing of folks who don't fit the gender binary, or who are sleeping with same-sex partners, and may feel a huge cultural silencing bearing down on them as they struggle to tell their partner what they want.

Basically, the old saying is true: When you assume, you make an ass out of “u” and me. And if you're going to hook up, the only way to reduce your emotional risk is to get real about what you want from the experience. Monica, age twenty-two, told me about a situation she got into with a guy: