(en) Flirt, fling, forget - what the f is hookup culture?

Since the pandemic, we've seen a surge in interest in dating and near-dating apps. Portals like Tinder, Badoo, and Yubo are incredibly popular, especially among young people.

Apps like Tinder now allow users to express their preferences for a potential partner and what they're actually looking for on the app. When I started Tinder with my friends on a trip to the lake, I felt absolutely awful about myself. When I had the option of looking for: a long-term relationship, something casual, friends, I don't know, I chose I don't know. Not because I didn't want a relationship, but what can you expect from Tinder, which has such a terrible reputation?

From my own experience, I mostly met people looking for casual relationships or friends with benefits. Many men offered only sex as a "first date," which made me gag. It was then that I first encountered the term situationship and wondered what it was. It's humiliating to look up a term and see the first result from a youth dictionary. For the uninitiated, a situationship is when you are in a relationship with someone you like, but you are not officially together. It's a bit like an open relationship; you're not exclusive, you can have sex, sure, but there's no strings attached. As someone who loves romance and tries to find love everywhere, how the hell is there no strings attached when sex is the most intimate moment of trust with another person? Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but ever since I first heard about situationship, I've noticed a flood of stories about such relationships, most of them from girls aged 16-21. I thought, "Why would you bother with something like this if the relationship means nothing to him and the only thing it can do is make you feel uneasy and give you trouble with attachment and trust?" When we search for "situationship," we immediately see a similar search term, "how to get out of it?" Well, it's best to do it quickly before the manipulation and toxicity escalate.

Without a doubt, situationship is hell for romantics and a plague of the 21st century, along with one-night stands and friends with benefits. We are increasingly saturated and tainted by ubiquitous pornography, which manifests itself either in its traditional form or through portals like OnlyFans and the normalization of so-called "soft" on Instagram. Sex is an everyday occurrence, and sexuality in art is still taboo for many, yet art always addresses this topic consciously. It's ironic that the people who complain about sexual references in music are the ones who get upset when you type the letter "p" into their search engine and sit with their friends on Discord servers where all the photos of specific OnlyFans girls are leaked.

Hookup culture is a problem closely linked to the normalization of situational relationships and the promotion of sex as a central value in partnerships. Sex is a pleasurable experience, and orgasm itself activates hormones such as endorphins and dopamine. However, the question is, is it worth abandoning the search for a stable or monogamous relationship solely for the sake of meeting a stranger? Hookup culture promotes exclusively sexual relationships, rejecting any emotional involvement. It's leniency toward infidelity and a convenient "get out of jail free" card, like a Monopoly game.

“Honey, it's nothing serious, it's just sex.” For many women, it's downright sexy. A full 79% of women in a Durex study admitted to being afraid of having sex with a new partner because it's important to them and requires a lot of trust from both parties. For many people, hookup culture is liberating and completely normal. I don't intend to judge this in this article, but I do want to show the other side of the coin. In 2024, the Institute for Family Studies published an article based on research from the American Psychological Association, showing that respondents who gave in to the need for a fleeting relationship or hookup often experienced regret, low self-esteem, anxiety disorders, or even depression. Furthermore, the APA indicated that in 2023, 70% of sexually active people aged 12-21 admitted to having casual sex. Concerns about the inability to build healthy relationships and difficulties with attachment to just one person are becoming increasingly common.

Btw, if you are interested in this topic I suggest reading „Everything I know about love” by Dolly Alderton.

Natalia