Students are required to go to everything from Sex Signals to Extended Orientation workshops on drugs and alcohol.
But how are people supposed to lead up to sex through constant dating if they’ve only learned how to lead up to dating through constant sex? How are people supposed to find a soul mate when they equate trust with sexual reliability, compatibility with pleasure, and love with lust?ĭuring orientation week, Harvard makes an effort to educate its incoming class about the many temptations it will face on campus. Maybe participants in the hook-up culture recognize that there are deeper levels of intimacy than hooking up, but just want to enjoy college while they still can. When sex holds pleasure as its primary motivation, when sex objectifies someone’s body, when sex requires neither respect nor companionship, only desire and a private-but that’s not even necessary-space, meaningful relationships cannot form. When people have casual sex, they are consciously acknowledging that another’s body is just a means for self-satisfaction, a basic tool for personal gratification. On a less scientific level, the hook-up culture undermines and even prevents us from forming genuine relationships. Biologically speaking, casual sex is never casual.
Consequently, every hook-up is an uphill battle against nature-a conscious attempt to detach ourselves from emotions like care, trust, affection, and love by doing the very act which amplifies them. When we release it during sex, we want to have more sex. Furthermore, every touch, every kiss, and every orgasm releases the neurotransmitter dopamine, which increases desire for something. Oxytocin makes us trust one another and form deep, affectionate bonds. Whenever we hold hands, make intense eye contact, or have sex, we increase the concentration of oxytocin in the brain (sometimes up to 500 percent). So, what’s wrong with two people agreeing to get mutual pleasure from each other without emotional attachment?
The hook-up culture may seem like an elegant solution to the college life style-reap all the benefits of an orgasm without the commitment of a relationship-but it distorts and perverts our capacity to value each other.
Combine free condoms, distance from home, minimal responsibility, plentiful alcohol, and parties every weekend with the fact that sex just feels good and you have an equation for casual sex. While few people take casual sex to this extreme, the hook-up culture at college is no rarity 72 percent of us will hook up before we graduate. Too bad he lost track of his total count after 57. I would have thought it was a joke if he hadn’t begun reviewing the previous night’s expedition with his friend-two hangovers have better memory than one. He answers bluntly: “The Count.” It’s his measure of how many girls he’s hooked up with since Harvard began-half a semester ago. "When are able to redirect focus towards experiencing the sensations of simply being present and connected together, are able to enjoy sex without anxiety or fear," says Goerlich.I’m at Annenberg, talking about morality, when I hear, “What is that, philosophy? Sounds stupid.” As the stranger sitting across from me begins to tell me that you live and you die and life is just about living the most before then, I ask him what living the most entails if he’s never thought about these important questions.
"That pressure… takes you from being in the moment and in your body, to being in your head," says Kamil Lewis, a sex and relationship therapist in Southern California. Traditionally, intimacy can cause performance anxiety around premature ejaculation, erectile dysfunction, and the worry about ensuring orgasm. Mindfulness, restraint, and communication."Īnother benefit of tantric sex is its ability to ease anxiety. "The result of tantric practice is the creation of close bonds with one's partner, greater awareness of one's body, and the development of skills such as "You feel as if you're merging together or, rather, that the things that separate you are illusions of the material world," says Stefani Goerlich, a licensed master social worker and sex therapist. How tantric sex trains people to have more intense orgasms, and why it's so controversial