9 Ways The Hook-Up Culture Is Ruining Love As We Know It

Generation-Y is the first generation that, as a whole, is openly sleeping around with one another and not being judged by others. The words "slut" and "whore" do still get thrown around, but usually by someone who has slept with just as many people as the person being labeled as such.

Generation-Y is deeply immersed in the "hook-up Culture." Hell, we invented the damn thing. When I was younger, I’d sleep with several women a week – on the good weeks of course.

I know a girl who managed to sleep with a group of friends without any of them knowing about the other – at least not until months afterwards. Unfortunately, these aren’t my proudest moments and not ones that I look back at with nostalgia.

It all seemed like such a good idea at the time. And to be honest, I can’t say that I didn’t have my fun, but the whole ordeal was entirely pointless.

The only thing I learned during those years of entertaining woman after woman is how meaningless the hook-up culture really is. I’m only glad I participated in it so that I now know to avoid it. The hook-up culture hurts us more than you know. Here’s a few reasons how:

1. You’ve been "dating" for years, but haven’t been on a date for as long as you can remember.

Generation-Y doesn’t date… we hook up. And that sucks because dating well is an acquired skill. Socializing in general is an acquired skill, but thanks to the hook-up culture, the only skill we’re acquiring is convincing others to have sex with us.

Which, to be quite honest, is not a difficult task. You can literally walk up to a woman and ask her to have sex with you and it’ll seal the deal 30 percent of the time. But what happens when you meet someone whom you actually do want to date?

Pretending to date for years when actually trying to get him or her drunk enough to become uninhibited is not the same as dating someone in order to actually date someone. You’re missing out on valuable practice time.

2. You’re making poor decisions that affect the other areas of your life.

The hook-up culture brings with it the drug and alcohol culture. Most of us don’t especially enjoy hooking up with random strangers because we know it’s a bit gross and uncomfortable.

So, we get either really drunk or really high, getting f*cked up enough to actually be able to go through with it. Especially when we decide that we’ll have to settle for a five – you can’t pull that off without beer goggles.

This all leads to late nights, hungover mornings, poor performance at work or school, and an unbalanced life. Oh yeah, let’s not forget about your alcohol and drug addiction.

3. You’re unnecessarily putting yourself at risk. STDs.

They’re not a myth – they’re real. And the more sex you have with random people, the more likely you are to catch one of them.

Sure, you use protection, but it's not 100 percent effective – because no protection method works 100 percent of the time.

In my experience, and I’m sure most of you will agree, condoms break often enough. If STDs don’t scare you, then maybe this will: babies.

4. You no longer see men or women – depending what you’re into – as people, but rather as means to an end.

When you go out to pick up men or women, you’re not going out to socialize, you’re going hunting. You have a goal in mind – to f*ck – and you’re going to find some nice piece of ass (dehumanizing them makes it easier) to get you the sex that you want.

You don’t want a partner. You want to have sex. You want an orgasm and the person that you’re sleeping with is your ticket.

Then, when you’re done, he or she can leave and you wouldn’t blink an eye. Looking at it from afar makes the whole process seem creepy and disgusting.

5. Our world has become darker due to the lack of love and to the abundance of debauchery.

Sex is what the body wants. Love is what the mind wants. You’re giving into your physical needs and not tending to your mental ones – for this reason, your world is becoming more and more physical.

You spend more time dealing with the physical world in front of you and less time daydreaming about the ideals that you’re hoping for.

On top of all of this, the physical world around you is usually filled with poor decisions and walks of shame, making for a very dark perception of the world over time.

6. You’re losing focus on what’s really important in life.

Sex is great, but it’s nowhere near enough to make you happy. To be happy, you have to attend to both your physical and mental needs.

Unfortunately, the hook-up culture is filled with unhealthy decisions, which often lead to chemical deprivations of chemicals that are necessary to your happiness – drugs and alcohol will do this, but so will the lack of sleep and generally unhealthy lifestyle that is associated with the hook-up culture.

But overlooking all of this, if you’re spending so much time hunting and f*cking, you’re spending very little time thinking about what you ought to be doing with your life and even less time doing it.

We only have so much time in our lives to do what matters. Thanks to the hook-up culture, the majority of that time is now allotted to wasting it.

7. You’re missing out on all the fun that is delayed gratification.

You don’t allow for the suspense to build, which is really the best part. Dating and relationships -- they all require self-control and the delay of gratification.

There is a playfulness that the hook-up culture is lacking because with us, it’s always straight to business. But business is never as good as it would be were we to wait a bit longer before we’d have dessert.

We lost that amazing feeling of anticipation, which makes a relationship – sex included – so much more pleasurable. It’s like having to pee, but also having to hold it in; once you do get that release, it feels all that much better.

8. You’re missing out on amazing sex.

You can have good sex with random strangers. Sometimes you can even have great sex with them. Unfortunately, it usually ends up being decent or simply average.

The rest of the time, it’s just plain bad. Sexual chemistry isn’t something that is taken into consideration in the hook-up culture – we see all sex as sex and can’t imagine how it could be bad. Until it is bad. Then we regret it all until the next time we get an itch that we can’t help but scratch.

The best sex, amazing sex, is only had by those who actually care about each other. It adds a whole other layer to the sexual dynamic that is entirely lacking in the hook-up culture.

9. Intimacy is becoming a thing of the past.

We no longer need to be intimate because we don’t like the person we are having sex with enough to want to cuddle, to want to hold him or her, or to even have him or her lie next to us after the deed is done.

Most of the time – if we’re lucky – once sex has been had, you part ways never to see each other again. It’s basically like having sex and then high-fiving afterwards.

Which, now that I think about it, has actually happened to me before. Like I said, not the best of memories. Intimacy is important, not just in relationships, but in psychological development.

The more distanced we are in our most personal of relationships, the more likely we are to have trouble with intimacy when it actually matters.

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