For those who are presently spending their social lives within the world of college, it might not be immediately evident that hookups at college can be vastly different than hookups in real life. While, on the one hand, there is no way to reinvent the proverbial hookup wheel, the conditions and circumstances leading to a hookup during your college years will be almost entirely different from that of the hookups you have later in life. How so? Keep reading.
Hookups at College
It’s Friday night and you’re trying to get laid. After a long week of studying and working your butt off, you just want to do something with it that will actually bring you some pleasure. That guy/girl you’ve been crushing on for months in in the corner, eyeing you. Your friends are nudging you and encouraging you to go speak to them (often, no matter if you already have a significant other or not). At that moment, you realize there will be no better way to end this night than rolling around with the one you lust. In other words, college hookups are often used as a method of having fun and relieving stress. Moreover, they are also seen as normal and even accepted amongst college students. Students are often pressured into hooking up with those they find attractive by other peers.
Hookups in Real Life
On the flip side, hookups in real life can be a totally different experience. Also used as a method of stress relief, hookups in real life are more likely to be fueled by loneliness or need for companionship, above all else. This is because most of the peer pressures we face begin to dissipate after we exit the college setting. In other words, once we no longer feel the need to engage in hookups as a social convention, we then begin to use them as a means of defeating feelings of loneliness or as a means of getting to know a potential partner. There is also typically less instances of shaming in the adult world as the rumor mills begin to shut down once you are free of the pressure to fit in with any particular peer group. In addition to that, hookups in college are typically expected to be just that, whereas hookups in real life have more potential to result in a relationship, or, at least a steady series of hookups.
Overall hookups at college and hookups in real life are simultaneously similar and different. The main difference is that hookups in college occur more so because they are the thing to do, while hookups in the real world are typically a result of seeking too fill a void or to satisfy our sexual appetite in between serious relationships.
