Hey Chris,

I heard the NPR piece, and I also sensed a certain tut-tutting in its tone, despite its ostensible goal of describing a social trend. The primary practitioner of "hookups" sourced in the segment -- who by the way came across as very grounded and healthy -- acknowledged that that term has a host of meanings, ranging from sex to "light making out," and that the vagueness/flexibility of the word is part of what makes it useful.

It seems to me that part of the problem with the piece is in its title, and its narrowly drawn definition of "intimacy". Having an intimate conversation with a friend requires trust, openness, honesty, and no small measure of vulnerability -- but it doesn't imply or impose permanence or exclusivity -- or the pursuit of those things as mutual future goals. And given that, for instance, two straight women can engage in intimate talk, intimacy doesn't even have to have be charged with sexual attraction/energy.

Much is made in the NPR piece, and in general, about the role of alcohol and its inhibition-lowering power in the friendly hook-up phenomenon. That power is far from trivial, but it has been a factor for teens and (especially) college students for generations. Historically, getting liquored up was a lubricant for one-night stands with strangers or acquaintances -- not only people with whom one never intended to share a lifetime (or perhaps even breakfast), but also, by definition, people about whom one knew next to nothing.

This practice led to the cliche (but truth-based) Hollywood scenario of the awkward "morning after" couple who have nothing to say to each other, and who can't get away from each other quickly enough.

The difference in the friendly hook-up generation, it seems to me, is that the pairs getting together for sex are friends: They know each other, have talked at some length before hooking up, and will talk further afterward. They trust each other and care for and about each other, even if they have no plans to spend the rest of their lives together (get joint checking, have babies, buy a timeshare, etc.).

Isn't there more intimacy -- and honesty -- in that than in previous generations' notions of "romantic" conquest, and its aftermath of embarrassment (or even shame) and disappointment?

I agree with you, Christopher, insofar as you present one side of the story. The other side, which I hope it's possible to present nonmoralistically, is that hooking up can present a problem when young women and men ultimately *do* want more but find that the mores have shifted, to the point where transitioning into a relationship, with either the friend or a date, is tough because they sense, accurately or not, that hooking up has become the new norm.

I'm basically with you, then, in terms of this potentially working as "friends with benefits." Nothing wrong with that; it's great when it works. Problems arise only when students and other young people say, with *some reason* these days, that hooking up has eroded the culture of dating, because dating just seems, well, outdated!

You can see the issue both ways, I'm sure. Ultimately, yes, people can find their own way and work out what they want. In the same way, sure, some gay couples managed to survive in the 1970s, even when being in a long-term relationship was kind of looked down upon (even, let's admit, derided) as conventional, bourgeois, you name it. Mores shift, of course, as they have in the gay community, where being coupled is now posing a kind of peer pressure, but among straights if it gets to the point where dating goes out of fashion, well, maybe that has quite big implications for the next generation, in ways that may not be all entirely positive, especially if relations across the board become shallower and thus too fragile to sustain anything longer term.

I hope I'm not coming across as moralistic on this. I'm interested more in the social and cultural implications.

To put things in perspective - what's decried here as a new social problem is the way much of the world outside the US behaved for *50+* years.

I'm 42, from Eastern Europe, and had traveled extensively throughout Europe. I grew up in the world with no dating whatsoever - after 20 years in the US, mate-shopping is still a very weird and uncomfortable concept for me. Evaluating every person from the start like they may be the last human on Earth for one must be incredibly stressful!

We simply "hooked up" with people we knew, had fun, sex, whatever. Sometimes, it would go nowhere. Sometimes it would stay a friendship. And sometimes, it would grow into love. Sex was simply not a life-and-death decision.

Yet, most of my friends over there have been happily mated for more than a decade (people tend to marry and have children later than here, but seem to have less divorce too). Could it be that the no pressure environment results in less hasty decisions and more opportunities to find a mate?

The tired argument that the freely available sex without consequences will result in a 24/7/365 impersonal orgy has been pulled out again and again whenever something that would allow for more sexual freedom pops up - women outside the house, abortion, the Pill. Please give it a decent burial, it smells.

I wonder how many college students - particularly engineers, computer scientists, architects, and other useful majors - are actually partaking in "The New Norm"? Like most "popular" social trends, I think this is merely the most visible and/or interesting tidbit from the lives of a handful of wealthy, attractive individuals with too much free time and too little discretion.