hooking up

Christopher Ryan's piece below on hooking up begs the question, "why can't we have sex without intimacy"? Oh please! The word "intimacy" is so over used by therapists, authors and the society at large with no real under standing of what the word means. What is wrong with a sexual friendship? It sure as hell beats a committed monogamous marriage where the couple struggles to get it up for sex until they finally give up altogether. I'm so tired of all the cheap moralizing from people who's own sex lives are lived in shades of gray.

I played the commitment game until after I got divorced from a fairly sexless marriage. From the age of 36 on I indulged in delightful casual sex of America's Sexual Revolution. Today I look back on that period with love in my heart and gratitude for all the wonderful folks who shared sex with me. Those days were filled with some of the finest moments of intimacy I've every experienced.  Thank you Steve Otero for the link:

NPR (National Public Radio) recently joined the ever-growing list of media outlets and authors expressing confusion and poorly-veiled condemnation of what they call the "culture of hooking up" a.k.a. "sex without intimacy." According to these no-doubt middle-aged sources, intimacy-free sex is sweeping the nation.

When it comes down to it, relationships take a ton of time.  I never thought of the hookup as the replacement for dating...and I never thought of it as a time management issue.  Thank you NPR for this piece on Sex Without Intimacy:

The hookup - that meeting and mating ritual that started among high school and college students - is becoming a trend among young people who have entered the workaday world. For the many who are delaying the responsibilities of marriage and child-rearing, hooking up has virtually replaced dating.

It is a major shift in the culture over the past few decades, says Kathleen Bogle, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at La Salle University.

Young people during one of the most sexually active periods of their lives aren't necessarily looking for a mate. What used to be a mate-seeking ritual has shifted to hookups: sexual encounters with no strings attached.