Hooking Up : Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus Kathleen Bogle (general ebook reader .txt) 📖

Many of the women were not as fortunate as Lisa in terms of finding a boyfriend. It seemed it was easier for her to maintain a long-distance relationship than to find a boyfriend on campus among thousands of single men.

The college men were aware that some women wanted hookup encounters to evolve into relationships. So, they developed strategies for communicating their lack of interest in pursuing anything further.

Specifically, men spoke about avoiding girls after a hookup, “not calling girls back,” or “thinking of good excuses” to get out of spending time with them. Kevin, a senior at Faith University, explained how he would get his point across without actually having to say so.

Kevin: If the next day [after a hookup] she’s like: “I want to come over and hang out” and you didn’t want to hook up with her again you’d be like: “Oh, I got practice tonight.” Or I was the M E N , WO M E N , A N D T H E S E X UA ll D O U B ll E S TA N DA R D

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head of intramurals too . . . I’d be like: “I’ve got intramurals, I’ve got to run tonight over at the gym,” that would be an easy way to get out of it. The other way [to get out of hanging out with girls] is to just not talk to them.

KB: And why would you not want to talk to them again?

Kevin: If all I wanted was a hookup.

KB: But you didn’t like the person?

Kevin: It’s not that I didn’t like them; I did not want to lead them on.

I didn’t want them to think that there might be something more [when] there’s not.

For some men, hinting that they did not want a relationship did not work, so they had to verbalize it. This was the case with Brian, a sophomore at Faith University.

KB: Of all the girls you’ve met at [Faith University], whom have you liked the most?

Brian: I don’t know, I really don’t know. I thought I liked . . .a chick last semester and then she just went crazy on me. Like she wanted the relationship, she wanted everything and I was just kind of like: “Oh I can’t handle this right now.” So I kind of backed out. . . . But, I mean, hooking up . . . can sometimes make things awkward.

KB: The girl last semester that you said went a little bit crazy, what happened? What did she do?

Brian: She started asking me out and I was like: “Uhhh, I’m not, I’m not [interested].”

KB: To be your boyfriend or asking you out on dates?

Brian: Yeah, to be her boyfriend. She’s like: “Are you my boyfriend?” and I was like: “No.” And she was like: “All right, well we’re not hooking up unless you are my boyfriend.” I was like: “All right.” And that was the end of that. [Laughs]

Through experience, women learned that they could not expect a hookup encounter to turn into a relationship. Many of the women found that men’s desire to avoid relationships often forced hookup partners to remain just that. Two women explained their disappoint-ment in this way:

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KB: And, it seems like [casual hookups] were a problem for you

. . . because you seem like you wouldn’t be interested in that in the future?

Susan: Yeah, it was a problem. [The guy I was hooking up with] . . .

he would sleep in my bed and everything and we wouldn’t do anything [sexual], like he wouldn’t even kiss me. . . . But then, um, we hung out more and we started kissing and everything and then he never talked about . . . having it be a relationship. But I wanted . . . in my mind [I was thinking]

like: “I want to be his girlfriend. I want to be his girlfriend.”

. . . I was like looking for a boyfriend, looking for that connection, looking for that dependency that I had [in a previous high school relationship]. And I found it [with] him, but he wasn’t [interested in a relationship] . . . I didn’t want to bring it up and just [say] like: “So where do we stand?” because I know guys don’t like that question. So, it eventually led to sex and we only had sex once and then he continued to still want to talk and hang out with me but he never really brought up the “where do we stand” thing. That kind of pushed me away because I just didn’t want to just be casually having sex with him and it not meaning something to him. So that stopped there. [Freshman, Faith University]

KB: If people are [hooking up], is it usually with the same person repeatedly or is it more of random kind of one time thing?

Diane: Um, [for] some people it’s random. [For] some people I know it’s from a week to week basis, [they] hook up or get with somebody they don’t know. Not that they don’t know them, but they’re not like in a relationship with them. Some people will consistently hook up with the same person but then something will happen and . . . they’ll stop but then they’lll. . . find like another person and like consistently be with them [for hooking up].

KB: What typically happens to have one thing stop and another thing start? What kind of stops things?

Diane: Usually the girl gets . . . girls are crazy you know [if they found out the guy they were hooking up with] was [also]

talking to somebody else. She’ll be like: “Wait, are you talking to them?” . . . girls are like very predictable . . . if they’re M E N , WO M E N , A