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80Ramble November 9, 2012 at 1:19 am Granted, so are the guys.

81Tasmin November 9, 2012 at 2:02 am @Brendan “guys who are objectively more attractive are available, and sex can be deployed in an attempt to snag commitment — it is hard to resist, I think, for many women. In your day, this was enforced *against* by a culture of going steady from the top down.”

1. 1 Those LTR-ish college relationships of yesteryear were not only the cultural norm, but they were also reinforced by the fact that sex outside of a relationship was more risky, rare, and complicated. The alternative as a single person in terms of attention, intimacy/sex, and social opportunities were actually a step down; the relationship was the prize and for most people sex was part of the prize – not THE prize.

In my college years ’90-’95, AIDS would f-ing kill you if you weren’t careful. Reputation risk was real – for both men and women, though the alpha’s guys did have more latitude. Women kept their N’s in mind when making decisions; notches counted, sluts were real.

There was very little in terms of free-for-all in attitude to sustain a hookup culture, so even those who were willing to hookup found the actual opportunities to be infrequent. Hooking up was rarely PinV or even oral. It was the beginning of the (hopeful) gateway to a relationship, so hooking up was complicated, it had meaning. Both men and women considered what it would “mean” the next day in terms of progression or not. A good proportion of those make-outs did indeed end up in BF/GF situations and everyone knew it. There was far less of the “just having fun” no-strings mindset. Sure there was a fair amount of making out that never went anywhere, but making out also didn’t progress to sex very often.

“Another part is that because hookup culture has become the dominant meme (even if relatively few men and women participate in it de facto, it it still the dominant meme), that sets expectations higher for men as well, because they see girls giving it away easily and wonder why they can’t get that as well.”

This works as a disincentive for many of the men in the 80% to accept that opportunity cost in the first place – even if they aren’t even getting that free sex, because they just *might*. And it erodes at the foundation of the existing relationships because the hookup meme carries not just the fun and excitement of open-ended sex options but also drives the status (hypergamy) lifting as a result of the displacement within assortive mating.

Now, sex is the prize, it is cheap and seemingly plentiful. Relationships are work and are by definition, limiting – particularly when it comes to the sexual variety trigger for men and the hypergamy trigger for women. And self-limiting choices are precisely the opposite of the “have-it-all” culture. And even for those 80% on the outside looking in, the underbelly is visible, but asserting their will to reset/reorient the prize back to the relationship is more work (and perceived risk) than holding their noses and jumping in or just avoiding the whole thing.