Dating Amongst Twenty-Somethings

In My Humble Opinion
21

[QUOTE=tremorviolet]
Yeah, I’m forty and my groups generally had the same patterns. However, after I hit my thirties, I no longer really had a group to hang out with and turned to online dating.

I don’t really think it’s an age thing as much as it’s a situation thing. If you’re in a large flexible group that hangs out, you’ll tend to hook up. If you don’t have such a group, you’l turn to more “traditional” dating. The younger folk are more likely to congregate in groups than when you get older and a lot of your friends have gotten married, had kids, or moved away.
[/QUOTE]
I wish this wasn’t as spot on as it is. FWIW, I am 36, single, a fella.

22

I’m 22 and while I see a lot of folks my age getting together like that, most people I actually know are sort of in-between, but leaning towards actual dates.

In-between in the sense that it isn’t as casual as doing some group social thing with friends (or hooking up), but it isn’t necessarily going out to dinner or dancing or something like that. My boyfriend and I spent our first few dates being pretty casual about it, hanging out at his place to watch movies or walking down to a restaurant. We didn’t get particularly physical for a good week or so and just recently started meeting each others’ friends.

There really wasn’t any interest in seeing other people or just staying friends. We went into it knowing that we were dating, and going to try starting a relationship.

23

[QUOTE=Boyo Jim]
Please excuse this old guy’s ignorance, but I want to clarify terms. Does “hook up” explicitly mean “fuck”? I’m sure I’ve heard it used with different meanings – but the OP seems to suggest that rather limited definition.
[/QUOTE]

“Hook up” can mean anything from making out to blow jobs to fingering and fondling to full-on sex.

Men typically use it in the context that they can brag that they “hooked up” with a girl even if it didn’t go beyond making out.

Women typically use it in the context of “we just hooked up” even if things went farther, thus being able to better avoid the “slut” label. The double standard seems to be alive and well in my observation.

But when I hear people use it, I just assume they had sex. I’m not as naive as I used to be. Just amazingly depressed, sexually frustrated and full of anxiety whenever I’m forced to think about the current sexual dynamic of my generation.

24

[QUOTE=Gestalt]
In my using, “hook up” does not mean necessarily intercourse, and indeed, there are those who would look down on you for having sex the first time. Rather, it can be anything from making out to sex.

Gestalt
[/QUOTE]

Hooking up does not mean “making out”. Never. ever. ever. If someone says, “Bob hooked up with Susie” it means he fucked Susie. Upon further clarification it can mean he got a BJ or something, but it’s definitely not making out. Making out is hardly worth mentioning with our generation, it seems. As a friend just said, “hooking up” = making out if you’re a 15 year old boy trying to sound bad ass to the other guys on the frosh-soph football team.

I think our dating rituals come from the fact that we’re a generation that is much more comfortable sexually. Maybe that’s not the best phrasing, but we’re much more sexualized than the generations before us.

My friend’s mom (who is in her 40s but a very sexual creature - she dates a lot, is VERY attractive for her age, etc. and so forth) was telling us how she never has sex with a guy before they’ve been together three months. “THREE MONTHS!?” I thought. Good lord, that’s an eternity.

With one of my boyfriend we waited 5 dates, which was probably over two weeks. I remember he later told me (two years into our relationship) that he really liked that I didn’t just whore myself immediately, but that I also didn’t make him wait forever. And you know, those 5 dates and two weeks are downright prudish compared to many of my friends.

Sex is an important part of a relationship to me and I’m comfortable with myself and my actions. I’m also protecting myself and being smart with my decisions. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying sex if you’re doing it for the right reasons and I’m comfortable in the fact that I am.

Plus, sleeping with someone early on has yet to destroy my relationships or cause them to have no respect for me. Girls can have flings, too and sometimes it’s just that. But sometimes it leads to something more and that’s always nice too.

–21 year old female.

25

[QUOTE=DiosaBellissima]
Hooking up does not mean “making out”. Never. ever. ever. If someone says, “Bob hooked up with Susie” it means he fucked Susie. Upon further clarification it can mean he got a BJ or something, but it’s definitely not making out.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t know about that…I think I’ve used it in the past to just mean making out. And I think I’ve heard people use it that way in “my generation.” I don’t think it’s unheard of at all to use hooking up to mean making out.

26

[QUOTE=DiosaBellissima]
Hooking up does not mean “making out”. Never. ever. ever. If someone says, “Bob hooked up with Susie” it means he fucked Susie. .
[/QUOTE]

I’m also a 21 year old female and my friends and I will describe making out as a ‘hook-up’. It probably depends on the group of people though and how much action they get (if you don’t get much, calling something a ‘hook-up’ makes it sound better I guess).

I think the OP’s description seems pretty accurate for my university in the US. I got asked on a real date this weekend, which was really exciting. And then I realized why it was a real date: he was more than 10 years older than me :smack:

27

Thinking about it, I think I’ve realized something that contributes to this.

Back in the day, older generations had places to go on real dates as teens. Even movie theaters were places that were worthy of dressing up a little.

As a teen in my town, there was no where to go. No little restaurants that were nice but youth friendly, no nice movie theaters, etc. and so forth.

28

Making out most certainly falls under the umbrella of “hooking up.” I know this because I once had a lengthy debate against a roomfull of people my age as to why the fuck they were so stupid as to consider “making out” the same thing as “hooking up,” considering that there’s already a perfectly good term for it: making out.

I’m not saying it makes sense, I’m just telling you that that’s the way it is.

29

[QUOTE=Soapbox Monkey]
I’m not as naive as I used to be. Just amazingly depressed, sexually frustrated and full of anxiety whenever I’m forced to think about the current sexual dynamic of my generation.
[/QUOTE]

I really hate to read this, especially as young as you are. Actually, I’d hate to hear that from anyone, but especially a young person. I don’t know how to help, either, so this post is fairly useless. Sorry about that.

30

[QUOTE=DiosaBellissima]
Thinking about it, I think I’ve realized something that contributes to this.

Back in the day, older generations had places to go on real dates as teens. Even movie theaters were places that were worthy of dressing up a little.

As a teen in my town, there was no where to go. No little restaurants that were nice but youth friendly, no nice movie theaters, etc. and so forth.
[/QUOTE]

All you young’uns are way over generalizing and getting your generations mixed up. Everything y’all 20-somethings have mentioned were common when I was your age 20 years ago. It sounds more like y’all are talking about a Pleasentville-era idyllic 50’s town. Nobody’s dressed up to go to the movies since the early 60’s. Geez. I’m forty and have lots of friends from their 20’s to over 50. Almost all of them would consider three months insanely long not to sleep together.

The big difference I can see doesn’t really have to do with dating. In my day, a BJ was considered a much bigger deal than having sex. Nowdays, that viewpoint seems to be reversed. (I blame abstinence programs personally.) But dating has remained much the same with the addeed advantage of being able to meet people online and having that stigma disappear.

31

[QUOTE=tremorviolet]
All you young’uns are way over generalizing and getting your generations mixed up. Everything y’all 20-somethings have mentioned were common when I was your age 20 years ago. It sounds more like y’all are talking about a Pleasentville-era idyllic 50’s town. Nobody’s dressed up to go to the movies since the early 60’s. Geez. I’m forty and have lots of friends from their 20’s to over 50. Almost all of them would consider three months insanely long not to sleep together.

The big difference I can see doesn’t really have to do with dating. In my day, a BJ was considered a much bigger deal than having sex. Nowdays, that viewpoint seems to be reversed. (I blame abstinence programs personally.) But dating has remained much the same with the addeed advantage of being able to meet people online and having that stigma disappear.
[/QUOTE]

No kidding. Almost everyone replying to this thread who is older than their 20’s has been saying “No, it’s the same for people my age”, but it just fails to register. Just more of the same “We’re different - We’re special, You just don’t understand because you’re old…”

Of all the women I have had sex with, I can only recall one who started out as a “date”. Kids, things have been the same for 30 years, maybe more - that’s about as far back as I can go.

32

Yeah. Dressing up meant wearing clean clothes.

33

We boomers came of age during the Sexual Revolution. The perception was, The Pill was new, STDs were few, and love was free. To one extent or another, many of us who are now 30-40 years older than the twenty-somethings were the ones rebelling against repressive sexual mores - or at least caught up in the tides of change.

You might be shocked if you knew what your parents were really like at your age.

Fwiw, contrary to stereotypes, I’m only just now beginning to wonder if I should get to know a man a bit better before sleeping with him.

34

[QUOTE=Aioua]
I’m 20, and I just want to add in that I hate the scene. See, I grew up christian, and we’d usually hang out in groups together, but there’d be some one-on-one dates before anyone got to hooking-up, as it were. As a new atheist, though, I simply cannot merge in with the secular culture. Part of it’s because I don’t drink, or particularly want to drink. (even when I am 21) Not that there’s anything wrong with getting a little drunk and having fun, but that’s all these people seem to do! No one just hangs out and has fun, they hang out and get drunk, at the very least. Then they seem shocked that, no I don’t want to go out drinking, and no, I don’t really wanna watch you get drunk. Drunk people are poor company. So yeah, screw this crappy culture where everybody has to be drunk all the time, so I don’t get to meet anybody, and get no hookups at all. Firth forbid you have fun by using your brain, not by destroying it.
[/QUOTE]

I obviously can’t speak for everyone, but I don’t think you’ll need to worry for too much longer. I’m 24, and the whole ‘drunkenness is a prerequisite for fun’ mindset has pretty much died out among my peers. Nowadays we only get drunk once every couple of months or so, and our definition of ‘drunk’ is more along the lines of ‘had too much to drive safely’ than ‘can’t remember a thing from last night’.

35

27 year old here.

I really think it depends on the person/group of people. There’s still people out there who do the traditional dating thing. In my case, I spent my early 20’s doing the hook-up into dating. Then I had a couple long-term relationships. When I found myself single again, I knew I didn’t want to hook-up with random girls at bars or in my group of friends anymore to form a relationship, so I turned to online dating and went on many dates without the hooking up.

I met a great girl whose dating experience pretty much paralleled my own. She’s 25. So in my experience, it’s common but most people tend to grow out of it by the time they hit their mid or late 20’s.

36

Cripes, this thread makes me feel old, and I’m only 28. I was actually talking about this trend with a good friend last week. She’s 24, and had been on very few dates and had never had a boyfriend before she got involved with the man she’s married.

She thought that she was just on the edge or beginning of hook-up culture, and I, four years older, only knew the ‘hang out in large groups and then partner off’ model. Everyone I knew in high school and college would ‘ask out’, which meant asking someone you knew at least a bit to be your boyfriend/girlfriend, which was a generally monogamous, committed relationship. That might last for a week, but usually a few months.

I feel old.

37

I think it’s totally fluid.

I went on “proper” dates in high school when I was starting out. Like, we’d go to the movies, then go get something to eat.

In college, and through the twenties. . .it was more just hanging out with someone, then maybe hooking up, and seeing where it went from there. But, usually, if sparks flew we’d do a proper date after a couple casual encounters.

And, “hooking up” meant some sort of sexual contact, but not necessarily intercourse.

And, to further muddy the waters, “hooking up” still is used in a more casual context to mean “get together”. I’ll say to one of my male friends, “we have something going on early, but let’s hook up later.”

But, I think it’s sort of false nostalgia to think of proper dating as the way it was always done. My parents met at a party where they probably hooked up, but I never pressed them on the issue. Some aunts/uncles met in high school. My parents-in-law knew each other through families. I’m sure that they went on dates – like I did with my wife – but I doubt it was ever very common to just start a relationship on a date.

Every relationship I’ve started “on a date” never went anywhere. That’s a pretty awkward way to start.

The skill is being able to adapt. Not having one particular skill that you think might have been applicable at some magical time in the past.

38

The OP’s description is pretty accurate, assuming ‘hooking up’ doesn’t just mean sex. 20-somethings I know use ‘hooking up’ to mean everything from simply meeting up for a drink to wild sweaty sex (actually, using it as a synonym for sex without supplying any details usually means it was, um, underwhelming).

Groups are need, IMHO, because people rarely dance one-on-one anymore. That’s all. (Though there does seem to be an orgiastic aspect to high school/college experimentation, whether it’s four people in the room or on one bed)

39

[QUOTE=Gestalt]
Does this jibe with anyone else’s experiences? What do y’all think of these types of mating rituals?
[/QUOTE]

That doesn’t jibe with my personal experience, but it matches what I heard and saw in college. And I think in some ways, you’re making this sound seedier than it is. People don’t always want ‘standard’ committed relationships, particularly at a young age, so they’re doing something different.

40

You know, I really have to thank Gestalt for starting this topic. I myself have many female friends but girlfriends are few and far between. The last two girls I dated (or attempted to date) fell through. One dropped me because she’s a vegan and I eat meat (a weak excuse; she says she’s considering her health, yet she smokes and drinks like a frat boy on the weekends) and the second wouldn’t even consider a date even though we’ve been friends for a while.

I have no boo-hoos or regrets, though. At first I started to think they were the problem, then I started thinking I was the one with the problem. After reading this thread, however, I now realize it’s the social dynamic that’s the problem.

I’ll be 28 this month, and I’ll admit I’m pretty old-fashioned. We meet, I ask you out (or you ask me out, either way), we go out on a few dates, and if it works, it works. If it doesn’t, well, it was fun, good luck! Hope we’re still friends.

The last girl I asked out gave me the “Wow, I barely even know you. I’d like to get to know you a little better before we date, k?” I really didn’t understand (“Isn’t that the point of the date?”). However, I see now that she thought I was asking her to hook up. :eek:

It’s sad that things have come to this. I always throught you date and then have sex, but now it’s the other way around.