The preparations began days in advance. Jess, a college senior, had been asked out on a first date by a year-old friend of a friend. Her tribe was buzzing with excitement. My girls were Facebook-stalking him and commenting on his looks.
Everyone wanted to Uber to the city with me and hang out at the bar across the street from where I was supposed to meet him. And while a part of Jess finds the communal attention intrusive, another part finds it quite natural.
They texted a few times after that night, but things fizzled out and life quickly moved on. Today, at 23, Jess is working at her first job and about to go on her second first date. I realize how crazy it sounds that a second voicemail about meeting up for dinner sends me over the moon. But a phone call is the real deal! Like most Gen X mental health professionals, my exposure to youth culture has waned over the years. We didβGen X. These days, committed couples seem to be the exception, at least at Northwestern, and my students are quite open about the emotional fallout they experience as a result.
For most of them, much of the course material feels foreign and, at times, irrelevant to the here and now of their lives. Nonetheless, they seem grateful to have the space and time to think critically about what intimacy means and how to achieve it.
Of course, not every student participates in hookup culture. Some are indeed in committed relationships, while others remain single but take sexual relationships seriously. When strangers or near-strangers mix sexual activity with copious amounts of alcohol, giving and receiving sexual consent becomes a tricky business. A study in The Journal of Interpersonal Violence found that 90 percent of the unwanted sex reported by college women occurred during a hookup.
