Y U NO Hooking-Up? Go Suck On Something!

You either survive parties when you are young and carefree or fail miserably. There is middle-ground when you have some okay nights. Nights starting with, "So I was with my cousins and we went to the movies" or "I spent the entire night watching TV and it was fun" somehow fail to get mentioned. The way you party is developed in your teens. It is largely based on stories you've heard from older people, your friends and what you see on TV. This party attitude normally stresses that a good night consists of: drinking, dancing and hooking-up. We know what drinking entails, dance is not a new thing but this brings me to hooking-up. Hooking-up will be looked at from a heterosexual perspective but it's relevant to everyone.

The term "hook-up" is ambiguous, perhaps purposefully, because people attach different definitions to it.

It refers to a), b), c) and d) - see the figure below to understand - with someone you're not dating and don't expect to. It can be a once-off experience or a long-term situation. It might be with a friend, as in the case of friends with benefits, or a complete stranger. It normally happens under the influence of alcohol because of beer goggles and lowered moral standards.

Hooking-up serves to fill a gap of sorts. You can pretend that you're not lonely and don't want to date anyone by simply having a really good friend from the opposite sex and hooking up with other guys. It's essentially the best of both worlds because you have physical and emotional needs covered. It makes you feel wanted and there is a sense of freedom because you can choose who you connect with. It becomes part of your party attitude once you engage in it and you can almost get a high from the acts of hooking-up with someone, as in, if it doesn't happen then your night was "okay" not "great".

The general belief of why people hook-up is based on self-esteem issues. The explanation is simply that the hook-up is a way to get any type of sub-standard attention from someone else. It's almost like instead of training to win a marathon and get the huge trophy, you go into a trophy shop, find out that all the cool trophies are gone, purchase one of those small kiddy ones and you're satisfied with it. The satisfaction is linked to side-stepping loneliness. That's dangerous because being alone doesn't equal being lonely. When you're constantly hooking-up you never learn how to differentiate the two. One day you will make the mistake of marrying someone you don't particularly care for.

Photo available here
Don't shoot me for putting them here. They weren't happy.

Hooking-up with friends can be a complete disaster! One miscalculated kiss can lead to the destruction of years of a friendship. This normally happens because one party wants more and the other doesn't want anything. Don't hook up with your best friends. The only time you will perhaps move past that mistake is if they are a bad kisser. No one wants to date a bad kisser.

Friends with benefits i.e. a long-term hook-up with a friend rarely works. The guy will carry on hooking-up with other people, because they're not exclusive and the girl will become more and more attached and want to be more than "just friends". It's a case of walking in opposite directions.
What a fail.
Friends with benefits only works on one condition. If the girl was the initiator. She normally knows exactly what she wants, can be identified as being a bit of a bad-ass and appears to think like a guy at most times. You just have to hope that the guy doesn't act like the stereotypical "friends with benefits girl" and you win.

Aside from the risks associated with losing your reputation and causing any potentially amazing boys to avoid you, you totally know that you can pick up some nasty shit. We've been drilled for ±10 years about STDs. We are the generation that should know the most about prevention measures but it is worrying when you discover that educated youths fall into the high risk category for HIV, based on the rate of new infections.
You know better. You do.
It might be because being inebriated, even sometimes drugging yourself, play such a prominent role in parties and in hooking-up that people shut off that long-term memory voice that screams at them to stop and be safe. HIV is an extreme case. Minor ones are Mono and Oral Herpes (shudder, check out that link). Gross, gross, gross.

Weirdly enough,  more people hook-up but more people are staying virgins. I guess in this time they give up other things like their "be-hymen*" in order to stay virgins (extreme case). This might be caused by a sub-culture of holding on until marriage or waiting for a worthwhile long-term relationship.

Hooking-up with a guy isn't everything. There's spending time with good friends, dancing the night away, holding onto your reputation and meeting new people that far outweigh it. Valentine's Day is coming up and all the people who haven't quickly rushed into relationships or have maintained one for a while will be looking at hooking-up. Rather spend your time with friends or improving yourself so when you meet that person, THE person that could be in your life for a chapter or books of it, you will be ready for him. Hooking-up with that guy will totally blow your socks off.

*Lissa, from Awkward. said that Jake could take her be-hymen then lay face down on the bed