What Is Hooking Up?

This is a post from 20/40. It's a site that offers relationship and dating advice. This post is from Lisa, who explains that not everyone has the same idea of what "hooking up" really is. I found the CBS interview very interesting because it does help some guys understand more about why relationship work like they do in high school, college and post-grad. A very fun read. You can see the article here, but I'm posting it here as well because I think it's worth it.

My roommate and a guy friend of ours were all hanging out one night, eating dinner when the topic switched to “hooking up.” Beth*, my roommate, was talking about hooking up with a guy that we all know. Tyler looked surprised and wondered why he hadn’t heard about this yet. I laughed and told Tyler that I didn’t think our definition of “hooking up” was the same as Beth’s. Indeed it wasn’t. Beth considered hooking up to essentially be synonymous with making out.

Tyler and I still laugh at what we both considered to be naivety on Beth’s part. However, I just recently stumbled across and news clip, because you know I love the news clips, about hooking up. Apparently Beth was just as on target as Tyler and I thought we were. People are now referring to hooking up as anything from simply kissing to having sex to everything in between.

Turns out, the term “hooking up” in reference to everything from kissing to sex is a relatively new concept. People hook up in high school and through college rather than concentrating on traditional dating and finding a lifelong mate. Because people are waiting longer to get married nowadays, they stay in the hooking up phase until after college, when they finally settle into traditional dating and mate seeking.

I suppose it makes sense. Hooking up, to whatever extent, allows people to get their fill of fun and doesn’t require the commitment of a relationship. However, I will probably always think of hooking up in terms of having casual sex.

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