Posted on 06/30/2010 6:39:31 AM PDT by bs9021
Deconstructing One Night Stands
Bethany Stotts, June 30, 2010
Casual sex, common on many college campuses, leaves many female students dissatisfied and with hurt feelings, according to the authors of a recent column for The Chronicle Review, a publication of the Chronicle of Higher Education.
For the past 12 years, I have taught a course on sex differences to college juniors and seniors, writes University of Virginia professor Steven E. Rhoades in his co-authored article The Emotional Costs of Hooking Up.
When we talk about relationships and sex itself, most of the men, sometimes sheepishly, indicate that they enjoy hookupsbut the vast majority of the women are unhappy with them, he writes.
He continues,
Women dont want sex for long without an emotional connection, a sense of caring, if not real commitment, from their partners. As one student wrote in a paper for my class, We are told not to be sexual prudes, but to enjoy casual sex, we have to be emotional prudes.
A lot of the men seem to believe what one told my wife a few years ago: She was teaching Shakespearean romantic comedy to an all-male college class and asked what sort of women the men imagined they would fall in love with, he later writes. One young man said he was not interested in love at that point because he hadnt slept with enough women yet (emphasis added).
Politics prof Rhoads is the author of Taking Sex Differences Seriously (2004). Although the article is written from a first-person perspective, he acknowledges UVA grads Laura Webber and Diana Van Vleet as co-authors.
According to professor Rhoads, a breadth of scholarship has shown that...
(Excerpt) Read more at academia.org ...
I think a lot of the men verses women afterthoughts have to do with emotional immaturity on the men’s part. A lot of guys/men still act like little boys and continue to act that way much later in life than women. And BTW, I’m a guy.
A saying I heard in Kenya: ‘a key that can open any lock is called a MASTER Key; but a lock that can be opened by any key is a useless lock.’
Sexist? I don’t think so.
The problem with this is that the more sex partners you have (male or female) the more your heart is hardened, the more difficult it will be to emotionally attach to someone. Basically they’re screwed. This is why the best prospect one has for a long term committed relationship is for both partners not to have any sexual experience (aka virgins) before marriage. The hook-up culture is just making hookers of all our women and you’d be crazy to marry one (you’d be crazy in nay case with laws so stacked against men in the west now a days).
#1 God designed sex so that it was bonding between man and woman. So it makes sense that at least women, who are more relationally motivated than men would be crestfallen when the man moves on to the next “hook-up.”
#2 Most men who are having intercourse with a woman to whom they have no intention whatsoever to commit themselves are willing to utter those words as they reach climax, “I love you.” Women are primed to believe what he’s saying. But if they really thought about it, would this mean that he actually loved all of the 50-100 women that he had intercourse with previously and to whom he uttered those same words?
I love that saying. I am going to tell it to the young ladies in my family at the appropriate time. My sense over the years is that the women I have known who hooked up were either really REALLY drunk or really REALLY calculating for some end scheme. Otherwise, they did not hook up.
Men on the other hand, want sex. Afterwards, men don’t really think about it (at first). They do ultimately reach the conclusion that hooking up is empty and unfulfilling just like women. The difference is, women reach that point after 1-5 such encounters. Men can hold out for 1,000 or more before they realize its empty and unfulfilling. Which in my opinion is the wrong conclusion-men actually realize that they just can’t be filled or satiated so it will go on indefinitely. Therefore, a man’s conclusion to an endless cycle of hook ups is more a reflection of a lack of efficiency or of some dividend to show for their industry, not that it was not fulfilling.
...ah such is human nature (at least from my vantage point).
“The hook-up culture is just making hookers of all our women.”
No, hookers are smarter than the young women who behave that way. At least hookers have some business sense.
Men don’t typically want one-night-stands either. However, men seem to be better able (or more willing) to fill a void (so to speak) with strip clubs, one-night-stands, or pornography.
Honestly, I think men are more prone than women to conflate sex and love (in and outside of marriage). Men need sex to feel loved/accepted/etc. ... and if the real thing is absent, they’ll fill the void with whatever moderately acceptable substitute they can find.
SnakeDoc
I think men hold on to the “relationship” until the pain of the nagging outweighs the pleasure of the sex. Then he moves on.
LOL, hey its Pavlovian but it works.
While I agree that women don’t appreciate one night stands I don’t agree that this is the product of al mighty “evolution” not to be reigned in because it was reigned in and to good effect for many years. Young men may have a greater propensity to accept one night stands, raping drunk women, and general sexual malfescence but that is more a product of a culture that constantly pounds into mens heads that they can’t be expected to be more than animals. Most men and women last time I checked have not had one night stands, most men don’t use prostitutes either but you wouldn’t know it from the way the issue is reported on. Most men have never used illegal drugs either to go off track a bit. I still don’t
see why ignorant destructive practices are given such unchallenged status when it is the fringe and the immature that indulge the most in such irresponsible behavior. Maturity, reason, love, and building families is just a part of the human sexuality for most people and we are lucky it is so.
Unfortunately you are becoming more correct every year. I remember a time when women matured sooner than men. Now I look around and see a world of women that are 20+ that are still acting like teenage idiots.
As a man, I admit a time when women were more mature than men and miss those times very much.
The most important thing to remember about one night stands is that “herpes is forever.”
The Evolution, I fear, is a social one and not an intellectual or psychological one.
I disagree with the article. The genders are reversed: I can only speak for myself, but I feel far more hurt than the women who I’ve had ... Temporary ... relationships with.
I’ve felt that women have had the freedom of choice, and men have to subliminally beg and plead for sex and sexual contact. This fosters other “male exclusive” tendencies, such as porn.
My experience has lead to some liberation : I learned how to play that game as well (Get good looking, or get rich... or both if you can). The result - I found a good girl, and will be getting married in 3 weeks !
Summary: I too learned how to be a “Lock” instead of a “Key”. (Thanks Spetznaz !)
“hookers are smarter than the young women who behave that way.”
Hookers presumably have a healthier attitude about what these hook-ups mean to the men involved and presumably are less susceptible to being emotionally hijacked. They certainly have healthier bank accounts and 401(k) plans.
My wife’s theory is that men mature up to the age of 13, then they just get ‘bigger, and older’. Some men actually mature to age 16 (her father, for one). She feels I’m about age 14 1/2.
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