Hookup Culture: Have We Lost Traditional Dating? (Part 2)

In the 2016 documentary called “The Dating Project,” Boston College Philosophy Professor Kerry Cronin seems to believe we want to be known more than we want pleasure. She saw her students were lonely, isolated, and tired of hooking up and was baffled when she learned students weren’t “traditionally dating” anymore. Professor Cronin discovered that for many students, having a sober conversation with coffee on a Sunday afternoon can be more intimate than getting intoxicated and naked with someone on a Friday night. Wanting to instill courage and confidence in her students, she decided to give her class a “date assignment.” The rules were to ask someone out face to face and not over text. The date should be 45-90-minutes with no alcohol, and the only physical contact would be an “A Framed” hug (shoulders in, hips out) at the end of the date. After the “date assignment” was completed, some of the students were interviewed about their experience. One person said, “Asking a woman out on a date and her saying ‘yes’ was a better feeling than any hookup I have ever had.” Another person said, “Talking to someone face-to-face is harder than having sex in a dark room with someone you barely know.” The students were beginning to experience real human connection and found it more satisfying than a ‘hit’ of momentary pleasure.

I remember my great-grandma telling me how different dating and relationships were when she was in college in the early 1900s. She said it was rare to hear about people having sex before marriage and women would get ‘proposed to’ by multiple men. People dated to gain knowledge about who the other person was and to discern if they would be a suitable partner for marriage. After dating for a while, there would be such a deep knowledge of their story and who they were (personality, values, likes, dislikes, etc.) that they would then choose to commit their whole life to them in marriage. Following the marriage ceremony, the deep intimate knowledge they have for one another would then be expressed in sexual intercourse. Like scripture: “Adam knew his wife Eve and she conceived” (Gen. 4:1). Think about it this way, how deeply you know a person will change the way in which you have sex with them. 

Today’s culture promotes the opposite of Genesis; open your body first, become ‘one flesh,’ and then maybe you get to know the person. According to God’s plan, we first open our heart allowing it to be known. When you find someone who cherishes YOU, knows YOU, commits to loving YOU forever, and only desires to become one flesh with YOU, it is only THEN under the sacred vow of matrimony, that we open our body in trust, allowing it to be known.