Surviving Today’s Hook-Up Culture & Avoiding Self-Sabotage

    Gone are the days of dating and courting; say hello (and maybe a giant f*ck you) to the hookup culture. As February is dubbed the month of love I couldn’t help but question, what the f*ck happened to this world? All we see now are random hookups, one night stands, side chicks and short flings. What ever happened to effort? When did people become so uninteresting that we skip the “dating phase” and move right to the bedroom, only to be woken up by some random guy telling you your cab is here?

    We as a society have been programmed to keep our feelings at bay and let our bodies do the talking. I guess you can say this has been done as a defense mechanism. You can be hanging out with the same guy for three month’s straight; you inevitably reach that point in whatever this thing may be, and question, “So, what are we?” or have the urge to discuss your feelings. The second someone disinterested in commitment hears that, they shut down and think of the quickest escape route (perhaps the old “slide out the bathroom window” trick). This was their red flag and they refuse to surrender.

    But who can blame them? This is all just one big revolving door and it all comes full circle (and not in a good way). The ones who fear commitment were probably hurt at some point in time and are just trying to protect themselves from the shameless fool’s in the dating world. The shameless fools in the dating world have hurt girls, gotten away with it and have no problem finding their next hook-up to reel in. It’s actually quite sad.

    To stop ourselves from feeling something genuine, or worse, ignoring feelings that are already there, is just cutting yourself short, not protecting yourself ( sorry to break it to you but someone had to do). Protecting yourself means going in smart and guarded but still willing to play. Stopping yourself due to fear or giving up is not protecting yourself at all actually.

    We’ve reached a point where we deprive ourselves of possibilities and now look at potential interests as temporary flings. The dating game is all out of whack and is coming close to extinction. Let’s think about it; are we really protecting ourselves by not catching feelings, or are we self-sabotaging without even realizing it?

    When you self-sabotaging, you create problems that interfere with your long term goal. People take on bad habits like drinking, smoking, or in our case, ridding all possibilities of feeling “feelings”, ultimately making our goal unachievable. We’ve all thought about love at some point, no? Maybe love is not ideal for everyone, but companionship is. There is nothing wrong with wanting good company and having someone to share experiences with.

    So again I ask, protection or self-sabotage?

    All votes point to self-sabotage. We are willingly creating a problem that may not even exist yet, (not being able to have feelings would be deemed a problem) and allow that problem to affect our long term goal (finding long term love).

    If you’re intentionally depriving yourself of something potentially wonderful is a huge setback for yourself, congratulations. For the sake of those who are scared, let’s look at it this way; Holding yourself back from love is a lose-lose situation. If you allow yourself the freedom, it should (and could) go one of two ways: you find the love of your life, or you take it as a learning experience and move on from it.

    The funny thing about life is that you always seem to find exactly what you’re looking for when you least expect it. Think about everything that you’ve wanted in life and where you’ve found these things somewhere down the line. You find them when you stop looking for them, when you think all is said and done.

    Being ready is all about trusting the time of your life. The only way you will ever know when that time is, is when you turn those feelings back on and stop trying so damn hard to protect yourself. Let yourself feel vulnerability, let yourself feel feelings. The “feels” are a good thing, even when they’re bad; at least you can say you feel something and that just means that you’re alive.

     

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