One Year Later: A Reflection on 'Hookup Culture, My Experience and Why It No Longer Serves Me'.

Over a year ago, I started this blog with a post title 'Hookup Culture: My Experience and Why It No Longer Serves Me' after I made the active decision to stop engaging in casual sex. I wrote about how I used it as a way to avoid emotional intimacy and that I needed to heal within myself. I've had a very healing past year where I spent a lot of it in solitude, healing and focusing on building the foundations of who I am and following a conversation with a friend, I felt that it was appropriate to reflect on this.

It has been over 10 months since I've last went on a date and up until recently, I deleted all dating apps as I decided I was going to actively be single. This was all catalysed after I went on this date under the false pretence that it was more than a hookup. I don't remember a lot about the date except that I had a nice time. The conversation was never sexual or suggestive. It was merely two adults getting to know each other. I remember we were at the pub till it closed and I didn't want the night to end. I invited him back to mine because I thought that was what was expected of me. He paid for the drinks, I offered up the sex. I will never forget the moment he left my room and felt the chilling cold of the first of many harsh winter mornings. I remember the devastation with that came with the realisation that I didn't want to have sex with him at all and that I did it out of obligation. It didn't even occur to me until months later on that I could have said no at any point in the night and he probably would have been okay with it. I was so terrified of voicing what I truly felt which was that I had a nice time and would like to see him again, that I offered up sex in an attempt to keep him interested. When he left my room that morning, I knew I'd never see him again.

The insurmountable grief I felt through the following months after this encounter led to a lot of reflections. All the narratives I had been telling myself suddenly became so painfully obvious that they were all false and misguided. 'They're using me but it's okay because I'm using them', 'I like casual sex', 'I like it rough'. These were all narratives that were fed to me by this 'girl boss feminism' where it celebrated sleeping with loads of men and going back to your friends with all these messy, crude stories about your late romps with a new man every night. It was what I felt like I had to do. After all, I was the angry feminist and I did all these outrageous things to get back to men. I was held the power. The casual sex I was so certain I enjoyed actually never measured up to what sexual intimacy should ever be. Whilst every man I've ever been with has reached orgasm, I can only count a handful of times where I did too. I wasn't seeking pleasure or sex the way I claimed I was. It was intimacy all along. I was someone who was in a really vulnerable place and was hurting really deeply. I was desperate for a sense of control when all I was doing was engaging in a narrative that perpetuated the patriarchy. The one night stands each came with little bits of sacrifices, whether it was my physical health, mental health or safety, they all started to add up. Funny how I used to sexual intimacy to avoid the emotional bits but ended up with hurt regardless.

Whilst on a rational level I knew that casual sex didn't mean anything deeper, there were a few times where biology wasn't something I had the power to deny and the nature of my womanhood meant that there were times where the emotions did entangle with the sex. I was so ashamed of it but looking back, that was perfectly normal. It's okay that you can't separate sex and emotions and it's okay that you only want to have sex with someone you're in a relationship with. Sexual intimacy is integral to romantic relationships because it creates a deeper level of intimacy between two people. It is an act that can lead to procreation. It's a very basic animal instinct so it's no wonder that it can get emotional. I was intent on denying my feminine energy with the fear of looking emotional, clingy or attached. I wanted to be the cool girl and in doing so, I was doing myself a great disservice. I think it is great if there are women who can genuinely engage in hookup culture without sacrificing any parts of themselves and genuinely benefits from it. However, my experience as well as many of those around did not feel the same.

I carried a lot of the anxiety from that space with me for a very long time. It manifested in deep rooted fear of men and was disguised as hatred. When I left the house it felt like every man I walked past or encountered or perceived were waiting for me to do something that could be misconstrued as an invitation to act sexually violent against me. I was storing so much anxiety and trauma in myself that I had periods of time where I refused to leave the house. I looked to men as 'the other' and always assumed the worst intentions of them. I forgot that they were human beings too and just like me, they have thoughts, behaviours and feelings. By being rude, disrespectful and hateful towards them, I was only feeding this fear more. This a big work in progress for me because my experiences with men have rarely been positive and it's hard to match the fact when the evidence doesn't quite add up. However, I'm making it a point to at least try and be open and to treat everyone with the respect they deserve.

The further I grow from that person, the more I see how vulnerable and lost I was. I have spent this past year practising a lot of kindness and compassion and when I started giving that to myself, I found it a lot easier to give it to others as well. I invite everyone to give themselves the love and compassion to yourself and all past versions of you because in doing so, it will lead to a lot healing in ways you can't even begin to fathom. I look to who I was and try not to feel embarrassment or shame but instead give her the love she was so desperately seeking at the time. Because as I do that, it enables me to focus on the person I am and how I could have never gotten to this place without that version of me. To be a feminist doesn't mean to use men and to seek some control over them because it will be very rare you find success in doing so. You don't have to do things you don't want to do just because it's feels like it's what's expected of you. You don't need a 'hoe phase' if that's not what you want. To me, to be a feminist is to embrace my feminine energy and what it means to be a woman. It means not judging myself when I feel emotions in certain situations and to give myself permission to just simply feel. It means embracing my biological nature whilst also feeling compassion towards men and not view them as some other foreign being. They are human too. It means balancing the feminine and masculine energy inside me and not berate or repress either sides.

I think as women we need to hold more discussions when it comes to hookup culture because I see so many young woman doing things that doesn't truly serve them. We need to hold open honest discussions about it and not continue perpetuating this harmful narrative of 'girl boss feminism'.

Anyways, that girl who first wrote that post back in May 2022 feels very foreign to me. She was doing her best and she was doing great. The person I am now is a testament to that.

Until next time,

- Nicole x