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

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hooking up with someone for a while, they’re going to want a relationship. They’re going to want like some type of like title, not title but like . . .

KB: Commitment or something?

Diane: Right. Exactly, commitment. And usually guys don’t want it.

KB: Why don’t they want it?

Diane: Because they don’t. They’re in college, they don’t want a girlfriend. They basically just want to get ass.

KB: So girls are looking more for relationships? Guys are looking more for a sexual relationship?

Diane: Yeah. [Sophomore, Faith University]

Perhaps the concept of “hidden power” can help explain why Susan did not even want to ask her hookup partner if he would consider being in an exclusive relationship with her. Social scientist Aafke Komter, who studied the power dynamic between married couples, found that many hidden power struggles go on beneath the surface of purported equal relationships. In some cases, wives would not even bring up issues that were bothering them in the relationship for fear of

“rocking the boat” and consequently jeopardizing the relationship. In Komter’s analysis, the fact that women were afraid to even raise an issue that a man might “not like” shows that men have greater power in relationships. Similarly, in my study, although women were more likely to initiate “the talk” about the status of a relationship, in some cases they did not bring up the issue at all in anticipation of a negative reaction.7

WHY WOMEN SEEK RELATIONSHIPS

Students were not always cognizant of why women sought relationships more than men. Some cited psychological reasons, such as women are “more emotional” or women “need that kind of connection.” Some women talked about wanting a relationship due to their affection for a particular man. However, there are likely reasons beyond psychology and personal biography. One possible reason why some women seek relationships during college is that they are interested in marrying a few years after graduation. The women I spoke with often wanted to be married by age 25, and the latest they were willing to consider getting 102

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married was 29. Men, on the other hand, seemed willing to wait longer to get married. Many men suggested they would not get married until their late twenties (at the earliest) or possibly even well into their thirties. Thus, men’s and women’s timetables for getting married are at odds. This puts their timetables for finding potential marriage partners at odds, too, which in turn puts their timetables for having serious relationships at odds. For this reason, several women indicated that they would like to have a relationship with marriage potential.8

KB: Do you or [your] friends . . . think about marriage at all?

Gloria: Yeah. We always talk about that. It’s so weird, we are going to have to . . . not soon, I would like to be with who I’m going to marry for a good three years before [we get married] . . .

someone I’m going to marry I’d want to be with for a long time. So I would like to meet him soon so I don’t have kids when I’m like 30 or 35.

KB: So you [possibly] would want to meet someone in college . . .

that you might end up with [permanently]?

Gloria: Yeah. I would say junior year I would like to have a boyfriend and hopefully potential marriage [partner], but I don’t know. [Freshman, State University]

However, a couple of women in their junior and senior years mentioned no longer being naive regarding finding a future spouse during their college years.

KB: Would any of the people that you have liked or been interested in, have you ever thought: “I wonder if this is someone I could marry?” Have you ever thought about it that way?

Marie: I think about it all the time. Like anyone I have ever been serious with I’m always like: “I wonder if we could ever get married.” . . . [But] I’m not that naive anymore. I know relationships come and go and you never know what is going to happen. I mean it would be nice, like my ex-boyfriend from over the summer, I really liked him a lot and I really wanted the kind of relationship my roommates have, even if it was a year or two, just something, like some stability, like you know, a possible marriage [partner], someone that you were 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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close to and I definitely could see him as that. [Senior, State University]

Another possible reason that women are more desirous of relationships than men is that women need relationships in order to protect their reputation. Over 30 years since the sexual revolution, there is still a double standard for male versus female sexual behavior on the college campus.

In the hookup culture, men are free to choose whether to have a very active sex life or to “settle down” and maintain an exclusive relationship.

Women, on the other hand, have considerably less freedom.

KB: How do people get a bad reputation, assuming there’s such a thing as getting a bad reputation?

Max: Well it’s kind of bad because if you’re a girl and you hook up with a lot of guys, then that’s looked down upon.

KB: Okay. Looked down upon by everybody or looked down upon by guys?

Max: By both genders, yeah. But, if you’re a guy and you hook up with a lot of people, like from your peers, like your guy peers, they’re going to be like: “Oh you’re the man!” [Sophomore, State University]

KB: What does someone do that they might end up with a bad reputation?

Joseph: If you’re a girll.